More Short Book reviews

These reviews originally appeared on the blogsite Sixtyandme.com. Enjoy!

Eleven Brief Book Reviews - oh the joy of reading

I can’t stop reading!  Spurred by a client who writes humorous short essays, I keep finding wonderful, funny women to share.  And there are lots of other women from Queen Elizabeth II to Josephine Baker, a queen in her own right; so much to learn, so little time.   

Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure by Rinker Buck (Avid Reader Press 2022)

As we watch the mighty Mississippi getting shallower and shallower in the fall of 2022 due to drought, I’m glad I read this book.  I now understand that above Cairo, IL, where the Ohio meets the Mississippi, both rivers are bucolic, with more or less natural banks and local docks.  Below that, the Corps of Engineers has groomed the Mississippi into a shipping channel.  Muddy banks are now unnatural and unwalkable rip-rap of huge concrete blocks.  There is no pleasure boating.  Amateurs are a danger to themselves and the huge barge conglomerations that are precisely powered up and down the river by professional pilots in huge tug boats.  Rinker Buck is an affable tour guide and I enjoyed joining his foolhardy trip in a flatboat.

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis (Hachette 2022)
What a woman!  And I knew little about her except photos of the topless banana dance from her early Paris career.  Tracing Baker’s life from birth in St. Louis, Lewis emphasizes her amazing work from 1940 through 1944 as a spy for the British and the Gaullists.  Beloved entrainer in Europe and North Africa, her ability to travel and perform served as the cover for information gathering and communication at the highest secret levels.  This is an informative read, but I did not love the writing.  Lewis seems compelled to repeat endlessly the dangers faced by Baker and her entourage.  Once you get the hang of the repetition, you can skim at will. Unfortunately, many of the sources used by Lewis are long out of print, and never translated from French.  It would be interesting to read these original accounts written by her fellow spies. 

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Avid Reader Press 2019)

In my last set of short reviews, I covered Lisa Taddeo’s new book of short stories Ghost Lover. It was not a favorite, but I wanted to read her previous best-seller non-fiction book Three Women.  It’s about a portion of three women’s sex lives.  It is billed as non-fiction, but from the beginning, it read as fiction.  The three women: Maggie from Fargo ND who is sexually involved with her high-school teacher while in high school, Lisa from Indiana whose husband won’t touch her, and Sloane from Newport RI, who enjoys threesomes with her husband either watching or participating.  It’s a quick read, and the subject matter is interesting.  My takeaway is that women still come out on the short end of the sexual revolution, feeling guilty about their pleasure and protecting their exploiters.  Granted, no men were able to present their points of view in this book.

The Palace Papers by Tina Brown (Crown 2022)

The Queen dies one week to the day after I finished reading The Palace Papers.  I was prepared for the funeral.  Brown covers the last 20 years of the Royal Family, picking up where her first Royal Family book, The Diana Chronicles, ends.  Brown’s writing is engaging; she’s a journalist by trade.  She’s British, she’s connected, and she loves a good story.  If you are “Royal curious”, as I was, enjoy this book.  As for Diana, except that she seems to have been a better mother than most royals, this book turned me off to her entirely. 

The End by Salvatore Scibona (Riverhead Book 2008)

Aghhhh, this book was so dense.  When it was published, it was shortlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award.  I picked it up because in my last set of reviews, I read and commented on his second book, The Volunteer.  In ’08, the literary folks went wild for Scibona’s style, a combination, they said, of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce.  Now that should have told me not to read this book.

The End is about Italian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century through the mid-50s.  Mostly set around Cleveland, the locus is as dim as the city where the sun shines only 166 days a year.  The plot, if there is one, is told in flashbacks from the August 15th Feast of the Assumption.  But I only figured this out after I completed the book and was compelled to reread the first several chapters, trying to understand the sequence of events.  Aghhhh, don’t waste your time unless you are forced to write a term paper on novels that needed better editing.

Would Everybody Please Stop? Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas by Jenny Allen (Sarah Crichton Books, 2017)

Continuing my search for funny women authors over 50, I stumbled across Jenny by researching her agent for a client of mine.  In her essay called “Canonize Me” she uses her newly discovered spiritual superpowers to right all the wrongs in our lives—like eliminating fat-free half and half, reruns of Two and a Half Men, single-ply toilet tissue, and Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kolb.  She made flossing bad for us.  You have to love this woman.  Enjoy this collection of essays, I did. 

I Got Sick and Then I Got Better a play by Jenny Allen

A monologue developed by Allen after her illness with cancer.  She was diagnosed with endometrial cancer and underwent a hysterectomy to treat it. Analysis of the tissue from her hysterectomy uncovered stage IIc ovarian cancer.  I know from my aunt’s experience with uterine cancer that many “female problems” present to a physician as heartburn, or bloated feeling, or random pains in the stomach.  And by the time they are diagnosed, often a year or more has passed with worthless treatment for the wrong ailment.  So it was with Jenny Allen.  Makes you cry and maybe laugh.  Ladies, please use female doctors!

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, read by Anne-Maria Nebirge (Blackstone Publishing, 2019)

Crazy, mingled stories of Black women (mostly lesbians, mostly taking place in the UK).  At first, I was put-off by the premise all-Black female lesbian theater—the writers, producers, directors, and actors.  But by the time I’d had enough of one character, another tangential one is developed and off you go.  I listened to the book in 16 hours on a trip to and from Stratford, ON.  Nebirge is a good reader.  The frequent change of location, and character focus mixed it up just enough, and the resolution was clever.  This book won the Booker Prize in 2019.

Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails by Estelle-Sarah Brille (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) originally published in French in 2018

One line of my ancestors is from Versailles, FR.  They owned and managed a sugar cane plantation on the island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies.  In 1848, pushed out by the largest and last of the many slave revolts, they left everything, and boarded a ship for New Orleans.  Speaking only French, they felt welcome in New Orleans, but there was no future for a farmer.  So, like many immigrants from the French West Indies, the deLaureal family made their way slowly up the Mississippi and settled in St. Louis.  Papa Dor and Mama Tee purchased land northwest of the city and named their new home Florissant.  The original home still stands and the surrounding suburb bears the name Florissant. 

Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails is a generational story of families who intermarry, depend upon siblings and cousins, fight in local riots, and eventually emigrate to the Homeland, France.  Well-written.  I enjoyed learning more of the contemporary history of Guadeloupe.  The French aren’t a benevolent colonial power, and today, they pretty much ignore their West Indian possessions.  Though I got the impression that citizens from the West Indies are treated better than those from North Africa.  Just an impression as the book does not deal with French politics.  A good read to broaden your horizons. 

About My Mother: True Stories of a Horse-Crazy Daughter and Her Baseball-Obsessed Mother by Peggy Rowe (Forefront Books, 2018)

The first of Peggy’s funny books.  I call her Peggy because I know she would be a BBF if we were to meet.  Heartwarming, easy to read, and occasionally laugh-out-loud.  An excellent gift book for a special mother in your life.

Vacuuming in the Nude and Other Ways to Get Attention by Peggy Rowe (Forefront Books 2022)

She’s so funny!  Here Peggy shows us how to make a new book out of her previously published stories.  They are tied together with her clever narrative, and I didn’t feel anything but pleasure reading this. 

Trigger Warnings -- How Much Warning Can We Expect Regarding the Content of a Play?

Whether we pick up a book or go to see a play, we don’t always know what the plot is all about. And sometimes that makes it even more interesting. But is that always the case?

Here I offer my thoughts on three works:

The Luckiest by Melissa Ross, Produced by Raven Theater,

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Produced by Remy Bumppo Theater, and

Klara and the Sun, a Novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Published by Knopf, 2021

Click here to read the article.

Quick Book Reviews - January through April 2022

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker (Doubleday, 2020)

A must-read—because we understand so little about schizophrenia. Well written and understandable. The point of view is that of a family of 12 children, 5 of whom develop schizophrenia. The family became a major contributor of DNA samples to medical research for the genetic basis for the condition. Hidden Valley Road will likely change your understanding of mental illness.

The Swimmers a Novel by Julie Otsuka (Penguin Random House, 2022)

Julie Otsuka writes sad books. Her first two, The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine deal with displaced Japanese in the U.S. Buddha is told by Japanese picture brides who immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900. The Emperor is about Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during WW II. The Swimmers is about dementia. The writing throughout is elevating—rhythmic, description, engrossing. But if you are getting on in age, prepare to be saddened by the description Otsuka writes about her mother (presumably) diminishing every day. The New York Times Review of Books gave The Swimmers front page coverage, a long review, and never mentioned that it was about dementia. I give them red marks for that—not honest with the reader.

The Summer Country, a Novel by Lauren Willig (William Morrow, 2014)

To learn more about Barbados after my trip there for a bridge tournament, I chose this historical fiction as a good starting place. Situated on Barbados in the both the early and mid-19th century, we learn the family history of early planters on the island. There are wealthy British plantation (sugar cane) owners and their slaves. There are indentured laborers from Scotland, called “Red Knees”, the badges from working on their knees in the fields. There is an ill-fated slave revolt. There is the growth of a small but industrious class of freemen as slavery is outlawed in England. Plotwise it’s a predictable romance, but the historical background is informative.

The Childhood of Jesus (Viking, 2013), The Schooldays of Jesus (Viking 2016), The Death of Jesus (Viking 2020) – three short novels by J. M. Coetzee

I began this series with the last book—picked up just because it is written by Coetzee, a formidable writer. It was interesting enough to make me read the trilogy. The setting is dystopian, but not futuristic. The plot is interesting—a young boy, David, abandoned on the voyage from the old world to the new is rescued by a kind-hearted single man. They eventually form a family unit with a self-contained woman who wants to be a mother. As David grows, he is drawn away from the family and develops a following of eccentrics. He dies as a teenager. There are a few plot points that are analogous to the story of Jesus, but don’t let a search for the meaning of the titles influence your reading. These short books are worthy on their own.

Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age by Sara Wheeler (Pantheon Books, [2019]

If you enjoy Russian literature, this book will reward you. Wheeler is a well-known travel writer, who hangs her travel narratives on unique attractions, mostly the Artic and Antarctic. Here she visits the homes and territories of famous Russian writers. Since they mostly lived in northwest Russia, I was interested because we visited St. Petersburg and areas west to the Baltic. Another book by Wheeler that I found fascinating is O My America!: Six Women and Their Second Acts in a New World. In it Wheeler travels in the U.S. following the trails of woman in the 19th century who immigrate or visit the U.S. and find new lives in their audacious endeavors.

I’m Dyin’ Here: A Life in the Paper, by Tim Grobaty (Brown Paper Press, 2015)

Love newspapers and magazines? Sad about their demise or reincarnation as digital publications? You will enjoy Grobaty’s memoir about 40 years writing humorous columns for the Long Beach newspaper. He’s the quintessential homeboy. His love for Long Beach, his family, and his colleagues shines through. His columns interstice the memoir. I didn’t put it down until I read it through. Much fun.

Lyndon Johnson: The Passage to Power by Robert Caro (Knopf, 2013) Fourth in the LBJ biography series by Caro.

For history wonks only. This is the fourth of Caro’s series about LBJ. It covers the time from his election to the Vice Presidency to the passage of the civil rights legislation. All four books are masterful and have changed my views about Texas, politics, Washington D.C., the Kennedys—so many of the historical events and people who surrounded my life from childhood. Highly recommended reading. Caro is still working on the Fifth book about Johnson and the War in Viet Nam. He’s in his 80’s, fingers crossed he makes it through to publication.

We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays on Taking Life a Smidge Too Seriously by Anna Lind Thomas (Thomas Nelson, 2021)

Truth: I read this as research for my client, a writer of humorous essays. What a delightful discovery. Anna Lind Thomas is funny! Laugh out loud funny! Read this book and enjoy. She has another coming out later this year.

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth (Overlook Press 2002) originally published in 1932

Similar to Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, but not as long nor as slow. This is the story of a military family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the brink of WWI. Beautifully writing. Like Buddenbrooks, you constantly wanted to grab the characters by the shoulders and shake them into awareness. Great read for history lovers.

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being A Woman by Nora Ephron (Alfred Knopf 2006)

Another research book worth sharing. Ephron never grows old. Though in this book when she laughingly talks about death, it’s hard not to wince. She was writing in her mid-60s and died at 71. A great read especially if you have already read it once.

Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan (Penguin 2021)

Ryan writes about Ireland; about how the land occupies the people. He writes beautifully about small people in small places. Though I felt the plot was a bit “pushed”, the book is still worth a read – as are all of his other books.

Why Is this Book a Best Seller? “The Alchemist” by Paul Coelho – Book Review

Thumbnail review:  For 17-year old’s – possibly a good family discussion book.

The Alchemist is one of the 25 best-selling books in the world.  So, I had to read it.  But I didn’t cotton to it. 

Digging through various Google searches to discover the power and attraction of this simple book, I found glowing descriptions about its enchanting magical realism, powerful emotions, deep characters, and inspiring wisdom.  Coelho, from Brazil, wrote the book early in his career – and initially, it did not sell.  Only after his second, and more popular book, Brida, was successful did his publisher reach back and reprint The Alchemist – and it began to sell.  (The not unusual case of a new book pulling the backlist along with it.)  In 1994 Harper Collins published the first English edition. 

This blurb from Madonna (Yes, THAT Madonna) summarizes the arc of the plot: “a beautiful book about magic, dreams and the treasures we seek elsewhere and then find at our doorstep.”  That praise just about summarizes The Alchemist and also perhaps explains its enduring appeal.

This is a quest book – for spiritual treasure and material treasure.  Santiago, the hero who sets out from Spain on a journey through the deserts of Africa to Egypt, is led by the eponymous alchemist, allegedly 200 years old, to discover the most wondrous treasure known to man. In the manner of Indiana Jones, they encounter snakes, windstorms, nomadic tribes, and shamans.  The plot is salted with feel-good pep talks, a bit of romance, a lot of self-discoveries, and a comfortable resolution. 

This book has sold over 200 million copies – and that does not count all the pirated versions.  I hope Mr. Coelho’s success enables his publishers to take risks on better written, more substantial books.  But heck, why mess with success?

Harper 1988, 175 pages

A Timely Read about the Weather -"Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History" by Eric Larson - Book Review

Thumbnail review:  An easy and interesting read, published in 2000

Never been disappointed by an Erik Larson book, though some are more involving than others.  So, when I encountered Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, it was a must-read. 

In light of the increasing severity of hurricanes boiling over the heated Gulf of Mexico, the history of the storm that destroyed Galveston TX in 1900 is captivating.  6,000 – 12,000 people died – the largest natural disaster in U.S. history.  No one really knows what happened to people as the city was blown apart and most of the dead swept out to the Gulf.  Built directly on the Gulf of Mexico Galveston was the central shipping terminal for goods entering and leaving Texas.  Following the storm, the port was never rebuilt and Houston, shielded by rivers and bays because the main terminus for Texas shipping.

Isaac’s Storm is the story of the development of the U.S. Weather Bureau.  It did not really exist in 1900 – at least as we know it today.  It was an office of the Department of Agriculture that recorded temperatures and events after they occurred.  Reporting was spotty and mostly used to influence the prices on the Chicago commodities exchanges.  Appointments were political, there being few trained scientists.   Isaac Cline had meteorological training from the U.S. Signal Corps but had to learn about the Gulf, the southwest, and hurricanes on the job. 

The long-held belief at the time was that severe hurricanes could not make it past Cuba into the western reaches of the Gulf of Mexico.  Cline strongly supported this position.  Hurricanes hit Cuba and/or the Dominican Republic, veered north, passing over Louisiana and Mississippi and back east.  This is the path of Hurricane Ina that devastated Louisiana and then the Northeast in August 2021.   When Galveston residents in 1900 learned of a large storm approaching, they thought no more of it. Tragically, Cline lost his wife and home.  Miraculously, his three daughters survived. He went on to a long career as head of the regional U.S. Weather Service in New Orleans.

Publisher: ‎ Penguin Random House; 1st edition (July 11, 2000) 323 pages

EXQUISITE AGONY Script Review – Straight from the Heart

Click here for a link to my review of Exquisite Agony published on PictureThisPost.com

"FAIRVIEW" Script Review – What’s Fair Is Fair, or Not

Click here to enjoy my review from PictureThisPost.com of the script for the Pulitzer Prize winning play Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury

"Cowboy Is a Verb: Notes from a Modern-day Rancher" by Richard C. Collins, University of Nevada Press 2019, Review

Most think of Arizona as the desert. Richard Collins takes you into the grasslands southeast of Tucson where it is higher and cooler. Streams thread the rock-filled pastures. Native grass grows waist-high. But this can easily be destroyed when cattle are left to graze in one area too long. The grass, and the wildflowers and many shrubs are eaten and the streams become fowled by manure and urine. The answer to this travesty is sustainable ranching. With supervision of the government, the number of cows allotted to graze is determined each year, and the herd is moved from pasture to pasture, allowing time for the area to regenerate.

If you are interested in how sustainable ranching really works both with and in spite of state and federal monitoring, this book is for you. Richard's writing style is easy with lots of stories that will make you feel like your are talking to a long-time friend.

Cowboy is a Verb is testament to the power of collaboration among the ranchers in the watershed. They educated their novice government supervisors, accepted rational intervention and built a strong community of cooperation.. This book should be a case study in the power of community involvement.

Full disclosure: Richard C. Collins in a client. Loved the book in spite of that!

Available on Amazon.

The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution, Written by Peter Hessler, Penguin Press, 2018 Press,

Hessler at Abydos where you can clearly see the narrow Nile Valley and the abrupt change to desert.

Excavating at Abydos

Beautiful two daughters in from of the apartment entry.

Looking up the elevator shaft with the spider web iron work.

Dive into this engrossing book of creative non-fiction about Egypt, mostly since the overthrow of Mubarak.  The focus is on the Arab Spring, beginning in 2010, through 2016.  Hessler, his Chinese wife and identical twin toddler daughters, arrived in Cairo in 2011.  On the strength of his three previous books about his experiences in China, he travels with an idea, but no contract for this book.  He had just received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship that enabled the venture.

In a unique way, the Hesslers immerses themselves into Egyptian culture.  He and his wife study Egyptian Arabic, the street colloquial spoken and written in Egypt.  It differs significantly from al-fusha, Classical Arabic, which is the bridging language among the 26 or 27 colloquial versions used through the Arab world.  They hire a unique tutor who uses words and situations from their immediate experiences to teach.  Thus, the weekly vocabulary he shares with us is a springboard for what is happening around Cairo.

Portraits of the people who live and work with the Hesslers, for them, and around them populate the book.  The garbage man and his family are front and center representatives of the role reserved for Coptic Christians and the illiterate lower classes.  An Egyptian reporter becomes a fast friend.  He is a homosexual in a country that still executes men and women who are caught in this “sin”.  The site manager at The Buried, the oldest of Egyptian ancient burial sites and located in Upper Egypt at Abydos, exemplifies how ingenuity wins over bureaucratic stupidity and rapacious looters.  Chinese retailers come to Egypt with nothing and succeed selling sexy lingerie in a country where most women are covered from head to toe in public. 

Hessler’s  picture of Egypt the country is not flattering.  Egyptians lack the basic skills of organization.  Their sense of time does not work with the Western world.  Theirs seems influenced by the eternal time of their history rather than impetus of the present.  Education is a muddle; better schools are taught in English, French, German—there are no significant schools based in the Egyptian language and culture. Yet, with Hessler, you will cheer for the small successes—which like everything else in Egypt can easily be buried by the immense desert sands that line the ten-mile wide oasis of the Nile River that is this country. 

Highly recommended for all readers of history, the Middle East muddle, and travel books. 

When you read this book, you learn that the Hesslers live in a Cairo apartment building adorned with ironwork spiderwebs.  There are no photos in the book, but Peter Hessler was kind enough to send me some.  He and his family now live back in China.         

“The Only Woman in the Room” by Marie Benedict, published by Sourcebooks Landmark, 2019 – a Short Book Review

For a woman who had such a fascinating life, The Only Woman in the Room seemed like Hedy Lamarr “light.”  It’s a short book, a quick read.  It’s hard to keep in mind that it is a novel since it’s written in the first person. 

There is so much of Hedy Lamarr’s history that deserves expansion: her childhood in Vienna, the only child of successful Jewish parents; her immediate success on Austrian stage and screen; her marriage at 19 to an Austrian arms dealer to the fascists; her escape from her overbearing husband to the U.S., and subsequent success at MGM.  Perhaps most important is how she developed a patented scientific discovery involving shifting radio frequencies and torpedoes/missiles.   Last, but not least, what led her to six more marriages?

Subsequent to reading The Only Woman in the Room, I did look at her first movie, Ecstasy, which runs about 75 minutes with no more than 20 lines of dialogue.  It is referred to as an “art” movie, and the blocking and cinematography does seem advanced.  But the movie is dull, even the few nude scenes of Hedy as a nubile teen-ager.  Then I realized this was way too much time to spend on a subject of so little relevance to me, especially when there is so little information about how she and George Antheil, an avant-garde composer, developed their frequency hopping guidance system, adopted by the U.S. military three years after the Lamarr-Antheil patent expired.

Recommended for a light read about an interesting woman.