tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67663088664829077512024-03-13T23:26:48.647-07:00Books, Brews and BanterGrab your cup of coffee or tea and join the members of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in West Des Moines, Iowa, as we talk about some of our favorite books.Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.comBlogger116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-8423657885139586952021-10-21T15:57:00.002-07:002021-10-21T18:28:54.935-07:00The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmTlv-j6MaCBKHfk7s_h9LX6faqEVvBvMS_ZlFsU9Dd1GEiVM7m2mvlsj-Lu8uX4AX8LTtCMDj3p-PUZFOc0pUjwqWbi0C15CVTw24_5vtzUxbdei5hOWfSA5cW_jwUFGe5FGcCEYOCEhjKyao81OiQs95U3X4LfmTRWXiO5tg9Z3C6tQYBZExDaWhng=s293" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="195" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmTlv-j6MaCBKHfk7s_h9LX6faqEVvBvMS_ZlFsU9Dd1GEiVM7m2mvlsj-Lu8uX4AX8LTtCMDj3p-PUZFOc0pUjwqWbi0C15CVTw24_5vtzUxbdei5hOWfSA5cW_jwUFGe5FGcCEYOCEhjKyao81OiQs95U3X4LfmTRWXiO5tg9Z3C6tQYBZExDaWhng" width="195" /></a></div><p>In <i>The Magician’s Assistant</i>, Ann Patchett tells a wonderful story of real life. She shows us love, cruelty, joy, grief, reinvention, and revelation. The narrative is a delightful mashup of the dead and the living; the past and the present; Los Angeles and a tiny Nebraska town where the Walmart is a wonderland. As always, Patchett’s characters are notable in their particularity, and her settings (especially that rice paddy in Vietnam ☺) feel viscerally real. </p><p>The book was published in 1997 and takes place in the nineties—a time when aids was a deadly scourge, homosexuals were often hated and feared, and the country was still dealing with fallout from the Vietnam war. Sabine, the main character, is paralyzed with grief because her beloved Parsifal (who married her only so she could be his widow) has died of an aneurysm in the footsteps of his Vietnamese lover, Phan, who died of AIDS. <i>The Magician’s Assistant</i> is a novel about grief. It also takes on homicide, domestic abuse, and family dysfunction. And by allusion, the holocaust and the Vietnam war. </p><p>And yet. And yet, it is a remarkably loving story told with lots of glam, glitter, and hyperbole. </p><p>The characters are kind to each other, with the notable exceptions of Guy’s father and Kitty’s husband, who become catalysts for transformation. The horrors of domestic violence motivate Guy to transform himself into Parsifal the magician. Howard’s meanness drive Kitty into Sabine’s bed. And Sabine and Kitty (we assume) will eventually find true love with one another. </p><p>The story is realistically told, but with just enough razzle dazzle to make it feel like it’s about . . . well . . . magic. The opulence of Sabine’s house in Los Angeles; the incredibly fine detail of her architectural models, the huge, beautiful, pricey rugs. All those teeny beads Phan sews on Sabine’s wedding gown. The unsettling similarity in appearance of Parsifal and Kitty. The gorgeous androgyny of tall, thin Sabine wandering around in Phan’s silk pajamas. Plump, placid, omnipresent Rabbit. All a bit over the top, but so compelling—especially the dreams that feel more like travel in the afterlife. </p><p>And then there’s Sabine’s card trick at the wedding. The morning before the wedding, “<i>she found she could give the deck four extremely careless taps under any circumstance of noise with an utter lack of concentration and the aces still raced to the top of the deck like horses to the barn. That very morning, she had leaned out of the shower and tapped the deck four times with a soapy hand. Bingo.</i> </p><p>When she, in an act of faith that a magic trick with no trickery will actually work, performs this at Bertie and Haas’s wedding reception, the guests are underwhelmed. They would have preferred something flashier with baby chicks instead of a quiet card trick. But the bride intuits something special has happened.
Perhaps the “trick” that is not a trick is a quiet but profound sign to Sabine. The Parsifal she adored for so many years—never suspecting how little she knew him, what a total trickster he was—has led her to his sister. He has made a miracle for her and Kitty. </p><p><i>The Magician’s Assistant</i> is the human condition revealed with pizzazz and affection. </p><p>-- Sharelle Moranville</p>Julie Feirerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13463445585135982978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-68247497660145503642021-10-11T09:43:00.005-07:002021-10-11T09:56:29.087-07:00The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkLV_v1Cnr3Du6CZ-K884UU3OgFxlqMzUto0s83SAlMBPN85lLKfQfqT4W9IhvCzO0DDY5QDTN5mXSUDiIZC4JpwzQmhAsAgkzH0AjZQcV9jybR_OH38C3d0Cb7sLT71LrzhT6GVNACPxJnGzqbb-LVxIyQErCiiHMkugx21l3pJo-WtvOIYshMi83iQ=s499" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="325" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkLV_v1Cnr3Du6CZ-K884UU3OgFxlqMzUto0s83SAlMBPN85lLKfQfqT4W9IhvCzO0DDY5QDTN5mXSUDiIZC4JpwzQmhAsAgkzH0AjZQcV9jybR_OH38C3d0Cb7sLT71LrzhT6GVNACPxJnGzqbb-LVxIyQErCiiHMkugx21l3pJo-WtvOIYshMi83iQ=s320" width="208" /></a></div><p>Peter Frankopan, an Oxford historian, sweeps us through the last 2,000 years of world history, showing us how it looks from an Asian perspective rather than from the European perspective that dominates our educational experiences. He posits that the Middle East, Central Asia, call it what we will, is the focal point of the world's trade in ideas, commerce and wealth. For most of these 2,000 years, Europe was a backwater, not the driving force we imagine. He gives us example after example of how European events reacted to events in Asia -- from the crusades to colonization of the Americas, the industrial revolution, and the world ward of the 20th Century.</p><p></p><p>Frankopan's perspective intensifies as he nears the present; forty percent of the text deals with the period from World War I to the present. As we were reading this book during the final days of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the immediacy of Western cluelessness about this part of the world was poignant. If only Frankopan's broader worldview had been a part of our foreign policy considerations over the last century!</p><p>This book is a long, hard read. At over 500 pages thick with unfamiliar names and places, if feels encyclopedic. Most of us felt the effort was rewarded with a new outlook on world affairs and international relationships. It is the textbook to the world history course we wish we had taken. For those looking for the Cliff Notes version, two related books are available. Frankopan has published The Silk Roads, and Illustrated New History of the World (2018), aimed at young adult readers and found in the children's section of our library. It was a welcome companion for several of us. Another member was sent Frankopan's The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (2019), which extends his discussion into the world he sees unfolding in Asia today. We have added it to our list of possible future books.</p><p>-- Bill Smith</p><p><br /><br /><br /></p>Julie Feirerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13463445585135982978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-17701476581829476272021-09-09T14:45:00.005-07:002021-09-09T16:07:57.316-07:00The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #181818;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_xtz0rXJJI8/YTlh_o_lU-I/AAAAAAAAB0w/xoWo5QcqjsAONYas6fP1bbNRUfbdTOv8QCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/6572062.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_xtz0rXJJI8/YTlh_o_lU-I/AAAAAAAAB0w/xoWo5QcqjsAONYas6fP1bbNRUfbdTOv8QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/6572062.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span>Biblical in nature and scope, <i>The Last Report </i>is replete with floods, snakes, sin, and forgiveness. Father Damien Modeste has lovingly served the Ojibwe settlement of Little No Horse for eight decades, forming his life around their needs. He may well be a saint. But he’s also a woman. Behind his priestly garb he’s actually Agnes, who transformed herself into a Catholic priest after living a full life as a Catholic nun, farm wife, and general adventurer, with random interactions with outlaws, floods, dead cows, and Chopin.<br /> <br />The epic tale of Agnes’s early life requires a total suspension of disbelief as she faces one passion after another, often losing herself in Chopin to such a degree that she ends up ecstatic and naked on the piano bench. This, not surprisingly, gets her kicked out of the convent. She finds love with a German farmer who dies defending her but leaves her his prosperous farm. Then Agnes gets caught in a disastrous flood, which sends her down the river in her wispy white nightdress, hanging on to her grand piano. When she lands, she finds a dead priest hanging in a tree, so she takes his dry clothes and his identity.<br /><br />As one does.<br /><br />This novel follows Agnes until she is over 100 and deeply entrenched in being Father Damien, while maintaining vestiges of her real, feminine self. She wraps her breasts tightly to hide her feminine identity and learns the rules of being a man, as she defines early in the book:<br /><blockquote>1.Make requests in the form of orders.<br />2. Give compliments in the form of concessions.<br />3. Ask questions in the form of statements.<br />4. Exercise to enhance the muscles of the neck?<br />5. Admire women’s handiwork with copious amazement. <br />6. Stride, swing arms, stop abruptly, stroke chin.<br />7. Sharpen razor daily.<br />8. Advance no explanations.<br />9. Accept no explanations.<br />10. Hum an occasional resolute march. </blockquote>Despite her subterfuge, the Ojibwe know she's a woman and are just fine with her pretending to be a man, although they don't understand the necessity. <br /><br />In one delightful section, Nanapush, an elder Agnes has learned to admire and love, questions her during a game of chess. He knows Agnes wants to keep her femininity a secret, so Nanapush chooses to address her during an especially tricky move because, quite simply, he wants to win the game:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><blockquote>“What are you?" he said to Damien, who was deep in a meditation over his bishop's trajectory.<br />"A priest," said Father Damien.<br />"A man priest or a woman priest?"</blockquote>Agnes panics until she realizes Nanapush is really only curious.<br /><blockquote>"I am a priest," she whispered, hoarsely, fierce. <br />"Why," said Nanapush kindly, as though Father Damien hadn't answered, to put the question to rest, "Are you pretending to be a man priest?”</blockquote>Why, indeed? Because the Catholic church doesn't allow women to be priests and, throughout the book, when asked who she really is, Agnes consistently answers: “I am a priest.” A lover asks it, a papal investigator asks it, Agnes asks it of herself. Why: Because I am a priest.<br /><br />The book encourages comparisons with other classics, from <i>Death Comes for the Archibishop, </i>by Willa Cather,<i> </i>to<i> Tom Jones</i> by Henry Fielding, with a little Faulker and Shakespeare thrown in, plus a bit of the Bible.<br /><br />Erdrich's reprises her most memorable Ojibwa characters—Fleur and her daughter Lulu, plus the Nanapushes, Kashpaws and the Puyats—which she introduced in previous novels (<i>Love Medicine, Four Souls, Tracks</i>). The book stands on its own, although it makes you want to read more to get the backstory on these people working hard to live a life of truth. <br /><br />Chapter 18, <i>La Mooz, Or the Death of Nanapush</i>, is a classic, worth reading by itself. Perhaps more than once. And the sections on Mary Kashpaw, from the very beginning (her aggressively terrible coffee) to the end and her final, silent care for Agnes/Damien, are heart-rending yet beautiful, a picture of true love.<br /><br />What’s the miracle? There are many: the people, the land, the priest. <br /> <br /><span><br /> </span></div>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-67148883763308269072021-08-13T14:52:00.004-07:002021-08-13T15:07:46.027-07:00Classic Restaurants of Des Moines and Their Recipes by Darcy Dougherty-Maulsby<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pgdqHQrr5U4/YRbpcOGh8vI/AAAAAAAAAL4/6N5mpMJFQmssZiU_AtVAE16KYc0ZOpCLQCLcBGAsYHQ/s488/GUEST_06174d02-0de4-4440-a63d-99a94c710a16.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="488" height="279" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pgdqHQrr5U4/YRbpcOGh8vI/AAAAAAAAAL4/6N5mpMJFQmssZiU_AtVAE16KYc0ZOpCLQCLcBGAsYHQ/w290-h279/GUEST_06174d02-0de4-4440-a63d-99a94c710a16.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><p>I moved to Des Moines in 1970 and have always enjoyed eating out in Des Moines restaurants, so was very pleased to get a copy of Darcy Maulsby's new book. What a fantastic gift for food-loving residents in Iowa. It was such fun to flip through these pages and reminisce about past dining adventures in Des Moines and see recipes for favorite local dishes. So, after reading a few chapters, and enjoying it so much, I recommended it to my book club, which agreed to read it.</p><p>In the early 70's most of the restaurants in Des Moines, it seemed, were Italian. We tried them all: Johnny's Vets Club, Fatinos, Tursi's Latin King, Noah's Ark, Chuck's, Gino's, even Alice's Spaghettiland (even though it was a long drive). Later in years, we went frequently to Ajno's as it was nearby our house. But, after a while other types of restaurants also became popular.</p><p>When I worked for Iowa Hospital Association in the early '70s, I officed on Ingersoll, not too far from Colorado Feed and Grain. We often stopped there after work for drinks, and occasionally at dinner there. We were so regular that the waitresses all knew what we meant when we ordered our "usual". We also ate lunch regularly at close by Maxie's. I remember smelling like french fries after returning to work. I still eat at their West Des Moines place and always enjoy the Maxieburger.</p><p>Also in the 70's and 80's my wife and I ate at Bishop's Cafeteria, as our good friend (and best man at our wedding) was the manager there and often joined him and his wife for dinner there. About the same time, the top of the Holiday Inn was a favorite place, as it rotated once every hour, giving a great view of Des Moines.</p><p>Without my wife knowing, I used to sneak out to get an occasional drink at Ruthie's, who was famous for balancing a beer glass on each of her 48DD's. Another place I went to without my wife (as she hated it) was George the Chili King. It was handy for lunch and I loved their chiliburgers.</p><p>Later, in the 90's and beyond, Court Avenue was a favorite place in the evenings. Spaghetti Works, Kaplan Hat Co., The Metz, Gringo's, and Julio's were regular evening haunts for my wife and I and our kids. I also officed downtown and spent many lunch hours there.</p><p>For many years (not so much recently) we regularly attended the State Fair. We even camped out there a couple of years with good friends. Our favorites were corn dogs, pork tenders, and turkey legs. Although Darcy mentioned that the food there never changes, the DM Register published an article on July 13 that specified that there are 63 creative new dishes at the Fair this August.</p><p>For many years, I regularly ate breakfast with a business partner at the Drake Diner, and since then, our grandchildren love to go there for dinner in the evenings. We also used to go regularly to Stella's Blue Sky Diner (at both the one in the Skywalk and in Clive), but stopped going there after finding a bandaid in my dinner.</p><p>Darcy included a large chapter about Babe Bisignano and Babe's, his famous restaurant. What a life he led, and she covered it from his early life and well beyond. I remember often going there to eat and he was always going around, visiting with all the customers and often offering them a free drink. After I bought a downtown restaurant in 1988, I found that the previous owner had taken a lot of the restaurant equipment. But Babe took me down to his basement and gave me a dishwasher and other equipment -- for free. He had a colorful personality, tough exterior, but a kind heart.</p><p>Now for a review of the book:</p><p>Author Maulsby serves up a "feast" of Des Moines restaurant classics, mixed with their history, complete with iconic recipes. She brings back many fond memories for anyone who has visited or lived around Des Moines.</p><p>In addition to writing about many restaurants in the Des Moines area, she also covered a number of famous people, including Ronald Reagan, who lived in Des Moines in the 30's, and Roger Williams, who as an 18-year old kid majoring in music in Des Moines, got his first professional job playing piano at Babe's, and went on to become one of the world's most famous pianists. She even covered the life of Edna Griffin, who, on July 7, 1948, was denied service at the downtown Katz Drug Store. Her actions preceded Rosa Parks' bus ride, and resulted in civil actions every bit as important in attacking racism.</p><p>And, Darcy covered a number of other restaurants I have enjoyed over the years, including Taste of Thailand, Younkers Tea Room, Big Daddy's BBQ, The Pier, King Ying Low's, Maid Rite and The Machine Shed. And well beyond restaurants and recipes, she also gives savory stories of race relations, women's rights, Iowa Caucus politics, the arts, immigration and assimilation.</p><p>In conclusion, it was such a "delicious" book of local history and food -- and such fun to scan through the pages, bringing back so many special memories of Des Moines eateries. I highly recommend it.</p><p>Ken Johnson</p>Julie Feirerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13463445585135982978noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-26109069676010545532021-07-17T14:05:00.003-07:002021-07-17T14:05:56.350-07:00The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6KBQu0byAiA/YPNF9D_r6cI/AAAAAAAAB0I/ja-S1znnyekJK6VW5aLjiTEgajls1BJTACLcBGAsYHQ/s465/25152052.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="308" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6KBQu0byAiA/YPNF9D_r6cI/AAAAAAAAB0I/ja-S1znnyekJK6VW5aLjiTEgajls1BJTACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/25152052.jpg" /></a></div><br />Isabel Allende’s novels often take place during a time of war and its aftermath when characters are forced to tap unknown reservoirs of strength and find creative, unorthodox ways of forming families to protect the vulnerable.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Her novels are invariably well plotted and often include a thread of magical realism. And they tend to be beautifully written—though in <i>The Japanese Lover</i>, likely the translation does not do justice to the original manuscript.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The time of war in this novel is World War II, with the concentration camps in Germany and the Japanese internment camps in America. And the long tail on the war likely made places like Moldova (where Irina’s story begins) a place to leave. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Early in the war, young Alma, with her Jewish parentage, is sent from Poland to live with the wealthy Belasco family in San Francisco. In her loneliness, she is befriended and comforted by her older cousin, Nathaniel Belasco. And she is utterly captivated by young Ichimei Fukuda, the Japanese gardener’s son, whose family is one of many sent to an internment camp. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As the years pass after the war, Ichimei’s life takes its own path, and Alma grows up and marries her cousin Nathaniel and has a son with him. And the son grows up and has a son, Seth, who grows up to be one of the main chroniclers of his grandmother’s life—including the undying love story between her and gentle Ichimei.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In the time present of the story, Alma is elderly and Seth is trying to complete a history of the wealthy and well-known Belasco family before his grandmother dies. Of great puzzlement to Seth is why, “early in 2010 his grandmother’s personality underwent a complete change in the space of two hours. Although she had been a successful artist and someone who always fulfilled her obligations, she suddenly cut herself off from the world, family, and friends, shutting herself away in an old people’s home that was beneath her and deciding, in her daughter-on-law Doris’s opinion, to dress like a Tibetan refugee.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The overall movement of the novel is to discover <i>why. </i>Why does she do his sudden, outrageous, and inexplicable thing? What happened to cause such a dramatic turn?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Seth and Irina (a young woman who works at the old people’s home and hides a huge secret of her own) come together to love and support Alma, and to find out why she made such a dramatic change. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">To tell the story, the narration begins with a few steps forward in the characters’ lives, reaches back in time to reveal something important, takes a few more steps forward, reaches back in time to reveal something else important. Over and over again—until the reader finally<i> </i>and satisfyingly understands why Alma’s whole life changed in the space of two hours. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Allende, through Alma, as seen by Irina—who is a kind of acolyte in the complicated ritual of dying—presents an evocative, compelling picture of aging unto death. Yes, aging is troublesome. It involves unrelenting loss. And it is inevitable. But Alma moves toward it with passion, discipline, imagination, and a touch of whimsey. Her soothing ritual of long weekends away with Ichimei help her linger on the bridge between life and death with her true love.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Japanese Lover </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">feels singular in the way it depicts growing old and dying as a heady distillation of life. — <i>Sharelle Moranville</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-22758426832894328682021-07-07T20:08:00.000-07:002021-07-07T20:08:20.658-07:00Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague, by Maggie O’Farrell<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ueyl2-INl3A/YOZrcBJ4MMI/AAAAAAAABz0/YD-6T_OEkso756EoHw9umuIioXfWT9iGACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/48677123.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="268" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ueyl2-INl3A/YOZrcBJ4MMI/AAAAAAAABz0/YD-6T_OEkso756EoHw9umuIioXfWT9iGACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/48677123.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">As the author tells us in her opening</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <i>Historical Note</i>: “In the 1580s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Susanna, then Hamnet and Judith, who were twins. The boy, Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called <i>Hamlet</i>.” And in her closing <i>Author’s Note</i>, O’Farrell writes, “This is a work of fiction, inspired by the short life of a boy who died in Stratford, Warwickshsire, in the summer of 1596.” </span><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the book is so very much more. The story is not much about this boy, Hamnet, nor about his father, who is never named in the book, only referred to, first, as “the boy,” and later “the Latin tutor,” or “the husband.” This is a story of Agnes, Hamnet’s mother, Shakespeare’s wife. It is about her strangeness among women of her time; about her knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants; about her fierce love for her husband and her family; about her ability to sense what is wrong under the guise of the normal; about her ability to manipulate the patriarchal system to make happen what is best for the people around her.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The flyleaf on the book jacket describes Agnes as “a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people.” I would disagree – While her gifts as a healer and in understanding plants and potions are undeniable, I would argue that she has a profound understanding of herself and the people with whom she lives.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At every turn, we see a woman so in touch with herself and with her community that she is able to defy community mores and truly be her own true self.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a beautifully written work, full of such descriptions of sixteenth century English life that we can feel and smell and almost touch the streets, the houses, the farms. But again, so much more. These relative simply sentences capture better than anything I have ever read the reality of labor: “She feels another pain coming, driving towards her, getting closer, like thunder over a landscape. She turns, she crouches, she pants through it, as she knows she must, holding tight to a tree root. Even in the throes of it, when it has her in its clutches, when it drives everything from her mind but the narrow focus of when it might end, she recognises that it is getting stronger. It means business, this pain. It will not leave her be. Soon it will not let her rest or gather herself. It means to force her out of herself, to turn what is inside outside.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And surely, the grief that comes with the death of her son is so magnificently written that we too are overcome.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wish I had the words to recommend this book as highly as I’d like to. Alas, I don’t. But it is among the best books I have ever read, a book that holds you so tightly that you don’t want to put it down, much less begin reading another. It is a gem.- <i>Jeanie Smith</i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-70302511032016854712021-06-15T09:52:00.010-07:002021-06-15T14:41:34.350-07:00Who Ate the First Oyster? By Cody Cassidy<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uJC8WQgvke4/YMjZ8dIctBI/AAAAAAAABzA/9_FBpc_MYS4NdrbMytdxTsVL777qp2EzACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Who%2Bate%2Bthe%2Bfirst%2Boyster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uJC8WQgvke4/YMjZ8dIctBI/AAAAAAAABzA/9_FBpc_MYS4NdrbMytdxTsVL777qp2EzACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Who%2Bate%2Bthe%2Bfirst%2Boyster.jpg" /></a></div><br />How did humans get the way we are? Pants-wearing, horseback-riding, disease-fighting jokesters, some of whom eat oysters? Cody Cassidy has a few answers, in a book that’s far more well-researched and thoughtful than its quirky cover suggests. <i>Who Ate the First Oyster? The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History</i> is inventive and clever, which makes it appeal to a mass audience and to those of us who yearn for a little light, but not dumb, reading. It is supported by substantial research<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">in evolutionary biology, archaeology and anthropology, and</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">makes innovative connections that stitch together three million years of human development. Cassidy starts at our pre-human stage, but places the most emphases on the past 300,000 years, since the arrival of the first anatomically modern Homo sapiens.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">When did we begin wearing pants? As far as scientists can tell, that happened 164,000 years ago—a date that is measurable because it matches the arrival of the body louse, which evolved from the head louse. Why? What? Huh? Apparently the louse jumped from the head of one of our ancestors and onto his clothing, which means he had clothing. Probably not pants, more likely some sort of adornment, but duds nevertheless. Cassidy calls this person Ralph, after Mr. Lauren.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">We can trace horseback riding to 5,600 years ago, when anthropologists date the first known bridle, which allowed a rider to control a horse. Before that, horses were used as meat and milk (kudos to people who have the guts to milk a horse) but were too wild to consider riding. No doubt many broken bodies preceded the first successful ride, which, Cassidy notes, changed history and became the dominant from of transportation until the 20<sup>th</sup> century. It also changed economics, because those without horses could not compete for resources with those who had the beasts and could control them. Cassidy names the first rider Napoleon “in honor of Napoleon Cybulski, the Polish physiologist who first isolated adrenaline, a molecule that played no small role in this moment of inspiration.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The first oyster? That came because Oyster Gal—not one of Cassidy’s best choices of names—figured out how the moon affects the tides, so she could know when it was safe to go to the sea for her oysterfest. Why eat them in the first place? Because she saw other animals doing it, and surviving. Also, she was probably hungry and darn tired of eating roots. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">In a sobering and eye-opening section, Cassidy explains how the tools of warfare typically evolved from toys, and how the bow and arrow was the first weapon not to mimic nature. It was invented by a man he calls Archie, for obvious reasons.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Cassidy personalizes his characters throughout, explaining that most early Homo sapiens could have handled a contemporary discussion or task just fine, given preparation, although they might have been shorter, with larger brows. His names, while often witty, show an understanding of history and culture. The woman who invented fire is called Martine after a French geologist who was “jailed for witchcraft, which you can imagine is an accusation our Martine, after striking the first fire, would almost certainly have risked as well.” The first person whose name we know is Kushim, a bookkeeper who lived along the Euphrates River and signed his name on his tallies. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Noting that Columbus was the last person to discover the Americas, he introduces us to the first, whom he calls Dersu, after the Siberian explorer Dersu Uzala. Why? You’ll have to read the book. I’ve probably told you too much already.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">This is an easy read, but it offers much to think about. Chapters are digestible and short, and you can read one at a sitting, never worrying about losing the storyline. The book comes with maps and a timeline that help illustrate what is essentially a highly accessible history of the development of human civilization. Sometimes Cassidy’s conclusions feel like a stretch, but they make you think of what might have been and how it might have happened.—<i>Pat Prijatel</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-27474485219690626582021-05-18T07:06:00.002-07:002021-05-18T07:06:32.639-07:00The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1SQ_adngREk/YKPJBkWrKWI/AAAAAAAAByw/JEkj2k8_60AObqYSBxGtiJxa2LCLvWFrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s304/shopping.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="304" data-original-width="203" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1SQ_adngREk/YKPJBkWrKWI/AAAAAAAAByw/JEkj2k8_60AObqYSBxGtiJxa2LCLvWFrgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/shopping.jpeg" /></a></div>The characters and events in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry are indeed unlikely: Harold makes a spontaneous decision to walk the length of England in yachting shoes to keep his old friend Queenie alive. He gradually abandons structure and convention as the journey progresses—finally paying no attention to night or day or weather or food or where he sleeps. He is utterly shocked at the grotesque deathbed disfigurement that has come from Queenie’s waiting for him. None of these things seem quite realistic or likely, yet the overall story comes to feels universally true and important.<div><br /></div><div>At the beginning, we meet Harold and Maureen: “Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with a slice of toast that he wasn’t eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen’s telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbor’s stockade fencing.” Maureen is cleaning, which she does a lot. She likes her toast cold and crisp. And she is dismissive of everything Harold says and does. </div><div><br /></div><div>Immediately, Queenie’s letter arrives with the news that she is dying, and before long Harold is off on his unlikely pilgrimage to hand carry his inchoate written response to her news, believing that the long journey will delay her death. </div><div><br /></div><div>At first, Harold and Maureen feel pathetic in their dysfunction—like characters only the author could love. But as they open up to the reader (but not to each other), they begin to feel like survivors who may deserve our understanding, instead of victims who need our pity. As the revelations land, we learn of parental abandonment and indifference. Of a brilliant, but troubled, addicted son who hangs himself. </div><div><br /></div><div>A universal story begins to unfold of childhood tenderness and trauma, of young adulthood with its peaks and perils. If we’re lucky, true love strikes and makes us dance crazy. But even then, our past nags at our present. Shortcomings show themselves. Mistakes are made, hearts are broken, memories are wrenched into false truths. We blame, we feel guilty. We ache. We mourn. We deny. </div><div><br /></div><div>Harold’s pilgrimage on a narrative level is about keeping Queenie in this world as long as possible, but his real pilgrimage is to fall in love with Maureen again, and have her fall in love with him again. And for them to share good, true memories of their son who, like everyone, ultimately made his own choices. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the end, when Harold and Maureen are leaving the nuns after Queenie’s funeral, they find themselves laughing about something one of them said at their first meeting. What was said isn’t shared with the reader. It’s just their memory, which enhances the new sense of intimacy between them. “They caught hands again, and walked toward the water’s edge, two small figures against the black waves. Only half way there, one of them must have remembered again and it passed like a fresh current of joy between them. They stood at the water’s edge, not letting go, and rocked with laughter.” —<i> Sharelle Moranville</i></div>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-84499051849765466472021-03-26T06:59:00.037-07:002021-03-26T07:25:56.398-07:00The Likeness, by Tana French<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EPze7JXdBCQ/YF3ogsqv4CI/AAAAAAAAByE/TLP3LUOsKnE-dyzwvgoiesIH-6iTEjrWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s475/5941114._SY475_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="307" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EPze7JXdBCQ/YF3ogsqv4CI/AAAAAAAAByE/TLP3LUOsKnE-dyzwvgoiesIH-6iTEjrWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/5941114._SY475_.jpg" /></a></i></div><i><br />“Some nights, if I’m sleeping on my own, I still dream about Whitethorn House.”</i><i style="color: #333333;"> </i><p></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial="">The first line of Tana French’s The Likeness tells you much of what you need to know about the novel: The house is key to what happens, as are ideals of home, family, and belonging. But it all revolves around protecting the house while its spell controls and defines the lives of those who live under its graceful roof.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style=color: #333333;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Central to life inside Whitethorn is Daniel, who inherited the house from his bachelor uncle, and the friends he has chosen in graduate school: Abby, Rafe, Justin, and Lexie. He’s carefully curated his friendships to build his own family, with one unbreakable rule: No pasts.</p><p msonormal="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p msonormal="" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">When Lexie gets murdered, her doppelganger, Detective Cassie Maddox, takes her place in the house to try to solve the crime. Adding to the mystery is the fact that, when she worked in undercover, Cassie invented Lexie. She knows that whoever this woman is, she’s not Lexie because Lexie is not real.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #333333;">What follows is a French-style psychological thriller, with an emphasis on character development, showing how people who are broken damage themselves and one another while searching for belonging. To the five main characters in this compelling narrative that means complete fealty to their homemade family. When that bond breaks, nothing else can hold.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #333333;">Some of this is difficult to buy. Do the people who spend all day, every day with Lexie not notice that Cassie is a different person, no matter the physical resemblance and preparation? But it’s easy to dispel disbelief and just dig into this deeply-told tale.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #333333;">A conversation between Daniel and Cassie-as-Lexie shows that Daniel understood the bargain he was making with his friends and his house:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #181818;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""><i>“There's a Spanish proverb," he said, "that's always fascinated me. "Take what you want and pay for it, says God.'"<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""><o:p><i> </i></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""><i>"I don't believe in God," Daniel said, "but that principle seems, to me, to have a divinity of its own; a kind of blazing purity. What could be simpler, or more crucial? You can have anything you want, as long as you accept that there is a price and that you will have to pay it.” </i></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial="">The Likeness</span></i><span background-repeat:="" color:="" initial=""> explores that price. As in other books in the Dublin Murder Squad series, most of the pieces fall together at the end, but French leaves us to make our own sense of much of it. Just like life. —<i> Pat Prijatel</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span> </p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-27678261731820135392021-03-01T15:32:00.017-08:002021-03-15T09:13:53.496-07:00Running Away To Home, by Jennifer Wilson<p> <span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xxz_wSkFayU/YD15IyOwgQI/AAAAAAAABxs/eQCC3aB_-XsaoDTC5nyzbchYcUQsh_N6QCLcBGAsYHQ/11222943.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="310" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xxz_wSkFayU/YD15IyOwgQI/AAAAAAAABxs/eQCC3aB_-XsaoDTC5nyzbchYcUQsh_N6QCLcBGAsYHQ/11222943.jpg" width="157" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">A dinner of door mouse (it tastes like chicken), nights on an ancient futon in a randomly finished attic, a bathroom door that won’t shut, an annoying barking dog next door, drunken neighbors, and a solid language barrier. Such was the glamour that faced Jennifer Wilson and her family when they took a break from their stressful American life to move for four months to the home of Jen’s great-grandparents,<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">Mrkopalj, Croatia. The family went looking for family and adventure and found both. Comfort? Not so much, at least not in the usual sense of the word.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Wilson recognizes physical characteristics that tie her to the people she meets, especially the deep-set eyes so like her own. She eats the food she remembers her beloved Grandma Kate making, such as povitica, a sweet nut bread. She shares local beer with local drinkers, learns to garden the Mrkopalj</span> <span>way, finds old roots and builds new ones.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" msonormal="" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this funny and insightful book, Wilson shows us life in Croatia in 2008, and defines what we mean by family. She meets blood relatives, but bonds with an assortment of delightful, maddening, and perplexing neighbors who welcome her, her husband, and their two young children, providing food, advice, and research help.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Initially, the kids, Sam and Zadie, miss their Iowa home and family, but when it is time to leave Mrkopalj</span>, both mourn the loss of the community that embraced them as part of the tiny village where nothing much happens except at the local bar or the Catholic church. But to kids, that meant freedom to roam, to ride bikes on streets with few cars, to play games non-stop with the neighborhood kids, and to eat popsicles on hot afternoons. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wilson takes us on the family’s journey, peeling the onion of <span>Mrkopalj</span> to find the layers of tears below. Depending on their age, residents survived World War I, II, and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Many family members died, those who survived faced a life of trauma, the scars of which show in the men’s drinking, a sadness the falls over conversations, and the bad teeth from a lack of dental work and, possibly, bad water. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After months of searching for her past, Wilson recognizes her own good fortune in being the descendent of those who left. But she sees the strength and goodness of those who stayed behind. Past and present blur as her definition—and ours—of home and family expands. —<i> Pat Prijatel<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-24687653041549247392021-02-12T14:31:00.000-08:002021-02-12T14:31:21.687-08:00In The Woods, by Tana French<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.866666793823242px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2D0XBTdWhwk/YCcBF7znAPI/AAAAAAAABxU/13nJnWvsqO02mxUAPBCvmbQpJCbC4-bYwCLcBGAsYHQ/2459785._SY475_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="309" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2D0XBTdWhwk/YCcBF7znAPI/AAAAAAAABxU/13nJnWvsqO02mxUAPBCvmbQpJCbC4-bYwCLcBGAsYHQ/2459785._SY475_.jpg" width="156" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tana French’s debut novel,<i> </i><i>In the Woods,</i><b> </b>is fascinating, complex and ultimately leaves its different readers with many different impressions of how we are to view the main characters and what actually happens in the story.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In literary genre circles, this book is classified as a “police procedural.” The story takes place in and around Dublin, Ireland, where the weather, the atmosphere, the ethos of the place are almost characters in the plot. The book is narrated by Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan who, we discover early in the book, has an unsolved mystery at the heart of his life. His memory of the incident is gone. And he tells us, “Contrary to what you might assume, I did not become a detective on some quixotic quest to solve my childhood mystery. I read the file once, that first day, late on my own in the squad room with my desk lamp the only pool of light….It was these arcana I craved, these near-invisible textures like a Braille legible only to the initiated. They were like thoroughbreds, those two Murder detectives passing through Ballygobackwards; like trapeze artists honed to a sizzling shine. They played for the highest stakes, and they were experts at their game.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rob and partner Cassie Maddox, the only person other than Rob’s parents who knows about his relationship to this old unsolved mystery, are assigned a murder case involving a 12-year-old girl from the same suburb where Rob grew up and where the old unsolved mystery took place. Should he be investigating this new case? His doing so is absolutely against department regulations, but he and Cassie proceed anyway. Thus we begin a journey into the intertwining of these two stories.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We remember that Rob-the-narrator has also told us in the first line of the first chapter of the book: “What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception.” So, is everything that follows somehow “fundamental but cracked truth”? Are we part of a web of deception? Is Ryan himself part of that web?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This first book in French’s “Dublin Murder Series” is a highly satisfying read, open to interpretation and re-interpretation. Are there clues we have missed? What is the significance of the object found in the remnant of the woods, now an archeological dig, at the end of the story? Can we add up the brief flashbacks that Rob experiences during the course of the current investigation?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.866666793823242px; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Read it yourself and see what you think. — <i>Jeanie Smith</i></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-68713258355816695202021-01-15T15:21:00.002-08:002021-01-15T15:34:40.603-08:00Braving the Wilderness, by Brene Brown<p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">It may be worth noting up front that our group read</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Braving the Wilderness</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">in January of 2021, with our first of two discussions taking place just after an attack on the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the process of ratifying Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election. This made it a very timely and relevant read for many of us who were struggling to see these acts as anything other than “us versus them.” Having moved even deeper into the divisive and polarized culture that existed four years ago to acts of violence in 2021, Brené Brown’s words from 2017 now seem rather prophetic.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"></p><blockquote>“The flags are flying from every porch and the social media memes are trending, all while fear is burrowing and metastasizing. What feels like a rallying movement is really a cover for fear, which can then start spreading over the landscape and seeping into the fault lines of our country. As fear hardens, it expands and becomes less of a protective barrier and more of a solidifying division. It forces its way down in the gaps and tears apart our social foundation, already weakened with those delicate cracks.”</blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;">In this short but powerful book, through her characteristic mode of vulnerable storytelling from her own emotionally raw experiences, Brown lets the reader know she’s seeking truths to help us all cope – not telling us she has all the answers. She challenges us to take a hard look at our responses in the face of fear and anger and whether, in our quest for belonging, we’re doing more than surrounding ourselves with like-minded others and pointing fingers for blame. While her suggestions for moving out of our own bunkers to find a greater sense of belonging absolutely make sense, they’re also no easy tasks: moving in and listening to people with whom we disagree, speaking truth to B.S. in a civil and non-dehumanizing way, and keeping a strong back, soft front and wild heart. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;">A paradoxical quote by Dr. Maya Angelou, which Brown wrestles to understand throughout the book, is this: “You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.” If the key to belonging is feeling bold enough to live authentically in every place, it opens up a lot of questions about how we raise our kids, how we form our identities and relationships, and even how we act as a church. The idea transcends any notion that one way of thinking is “correct.” </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><i>Braving the Wilderness</i> sparked a lot of reflection and conversation in our group of like-minded friends, but I can also see it being used as a starting point for open discussion among people who disagree. At any rate, it’s worth reminding ourselves to stay open to that conversation, and that fear of the other must be confronted in order to heal. — <i>Julie Feirer</i></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-82934790681042875462020-12-22T13:12:00.001-08:002020-12-22T13:12:34.825-08:00Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger<p><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--QNbACmLFWs/X-Ig4j2RriI/AAAAAAAABwM/J7Px6LZCms4naGHHwzDSCTHt1eCqtsfUwCLcBGAsYHQ/227571._SY475_.jpg" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="311" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--QNbACmLFWs/X-Ig4j2RriI/AAAAAAAABwM/J7Px6LZCms4naGHHwzDSCTHt1eCqtsfUwCLcBGAsYHQ/227571._SY475_.jpg" width="157" /></a></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Leif Enger’s</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Peace Like a River </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is a delightful and discussable novel. The story of the Land family—</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />Jeremiah, Davy, Reuben, and Swede—is set in the early 60s in rural Minnesota and the North Dakota badlands.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The narrator is Reuben as an adult, reflecting back on a childhood marred by severe and unpredictable asthma. Much of the tension of young Reuben’s story is his nervous, sometimes resentful, monitoring of his dad’s miracles—always hoping for the big one: that his dad will cure him. Reuben knows his dad can perform miracles because he has witnessed them—curing an undeserving school superintendent of a skin condition, healing a flaw in Swede’s saddle, rendering the Land’s Airstream rig invisible to the Law. And ultimately, Jeremiah does cure his son’s asthma, by miraculously gifting Rueben with his own lungs—the occasion for this miracle, by the way, compliments of the evil, murderous Jape Waltzer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">While young Reuben wrestles with his asthma, his little sister Swede—sidekick and foil—is pounding out a kind of parallel saga of Sunny Sundown and the wicked Valdez on a manual typewriter, often while riding a saddle on a sawhorse in an Airstream trailer heading West in search of fugitive Davy. Sunny Sundown’s saga is told in charmingly awful heroic verse. And significantly, Swede can’t kill Valdez—though if ever a fictional villain deserved death it is he.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: lightgrey; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The novel explores very serious and weighty matters: life and death, good and evil, crime and punishment—all the while making us laugh at the most unlikely moments. For example, the gruesome hunting scene near the beginning of the story, rendered hysterical<i> </i>by Swede’s unwise enthusiasm to retrieve the downed goose.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">We see the transformative power of love in Roxanna who, when we meet her, is graceless and plain. But when she and Jeremiah marry, she is graceful and beautiful. And as she is transformed by them, so are they transformed by her: Jeremiah to health and the children from motherless to abundantly mothered.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Enger’s characters, which are both types and utterly singular, push the boundaries of realism. But because they are so original and engaging, and because the pacing of the story is quick and the stakes are high, the reader cheerfully goes along for the ride. The oversize characters are easy to love, easy to despise, and easy to equivocate about. Jeremiah is Good. Almost like Christ. Jape Waltzer is Evil. Almost like Satan. And Davy, Reuben’s outlaw brother, is Morally Ambiguous. Almost like us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Enger’s poses a kind of Yin and Yang dualism. We can’t have life without death, or good without evil, or joy without sadness, or doubt without miracles. Perhaps the reason Swede can’t kill Valdez is because Sunny Sundown can’t live without him. Jape Waltzer needs to murder Jeremiah so Reuben can receive the miracle. And we can’t bear the grimness of it all without being able to laugh. —<i> Sharelle Moranville</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-67480176370012101062020-11-30T09:47:00.002-08:002020-11-30T09:49:50.071-08:00Climbing Lessons, by Tim Bascom<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q7NLx6Ai-y4/X8Uvu1mB4RI/AAAAAAAABv4/xvfzeVX8euEbWFBXjLSTHCKHmpWb9SxIQCLcBGAsYHQ/51duMVHyQeL._SX358_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="360" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q7NLx6Ai-y4/X8Uvu1mB4RI/AAAAAAAABv4/xvfzeVX8euEbWFBXjLSTHCKHmpWb9SxIQCLcBGAsYHQ/51duMVHyQeL._SX358_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="173" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Members of St. Timothy’s Brew, Books and Banter book club had the great opportunity to visit again with author Tim Bascom, this time to discuss his new book,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Climbing Lessons</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, via Zoom.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A couple of years ago we enjoyed his visit to discuss his first book,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Chameleon Days</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, his memoir of growing up in Ethiopia, where his parents were missionaries during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the honor of his presence after his second book,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Running to the Fire</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, about his return to his teenage life in Ethiopia,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="color: #030303; font-size: 12pt;">during the Marxist Revolution that overthrew the emperor.</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Climbing Lessons</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;"> is a collection of moving stories illustrating the bond between fathers and sons, a bond often nurtured through outdoor adventures, and how that changes with generational time. Beginning in small-town Kansas, these tales span three generations. The first part of the book focuses on his life as a son and grandson. Early on, he describes how his over-eager father, while trying to demonstrate how to climb a huge sycamore, ends up dropping 12 feet and landing on his back, unable to move. Stunned, he finally recovers, and gasps, “So that’s how it’s done.” In that moment, he becomes a symbol for all fathers, trying to lead, failing, but getting back up to continue showing the way. This “climbing lesson” is just one of 40 stories, drawing on the experience of four generations of his Midwestern family.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">I was struck by the fact that, during the book, there were so many comparisons between Tim’s and my lives, beginning with the fact that we both grew up in rural Kansas communities, graduated from the University of Kansas, taught in college, and authored books. In the indented sections below, I describe some of those similarities. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">While Tim had two sons, I had two daughters. In one of the stories in this first section Tim talks about spanking – some he got from his father, and those he gave to his sons. I was reminded that, by contrast, I only got spanked once by my father, who was unhappy that I spilled mercurochrome on my parent’s new blanket. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">The book’s second part depicts stories about his life as a father where he experiences failures also. <span>When Tim takes his own turn at fathering, he realizes that his previously devoted toddlers are turning into unimpressed teenagers. No longer their hero he had hoped to be, he must accept a new, flawed version of himself, not unlike his father before him. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Tim and his wife Cathleen, an Episcopal priest, parent a couple of boys, the first one nearly dies of “failure to thrive." After three more years, another son is born, and Tim takes them on hikes and tells them stories. In one chapter, he goes hiking with his youngest son, his brother and nephew. He takes great pleasure in seeing the strong bond between his 16-year-old and the mischievous nephew. Several months later, the family moves through a terrible crisis as their nephew commits suicide. When Tim’s sons go off to college, charting their own courses, they both struggle to deal with the loss of their cousin. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">Tim talks about his sorrow that his first girlfriend left town with her family. That happened to me too. Also, in Taking a Hit, he describes his initiation to football, where he got smeared, but didn’t quit. By contrast, in my first game, I received the kickoff and ran down the field until I got smeared. Upon being tackled, my helmet fell off and rolled down the field. Several guys from the other team thought I fumbled the ball and jumped on it. When I got to the sidelines, I found that our coach also thought I fumbled the ball and was livid, critically yelling at me. At halftime, we were behind, and our coach went on a rant about how we should be doing better – for him. Not for the team, or the town, but just for HIM. It was such a bad environment, after the game I quit the team. Although I always felt guilty about quitting, but in retrospect, given all the current issues with brain trauma, I’m glad I didn’t spend a lot of time on the football field afterwards.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">The last section mainly deals with the health problems of his father. After his father shatters a hip, Tim races home to Kansas. Drawing on his father’s strength and experience to care for his boys, he realizes he must now assume a caretaking role. When he later receives news that his father has had a massive heart attack, he races back to Kansas again. His father conveys to Tim that it will soon be time to take the role of showing his sons the way. “You’ll get your turn. Trust me, we all do.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In the final section, Tim describes his two cats. The kitten is hyperactive, constantly leaping toward any distraction.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The older cat, by contrast, likes to snuggle.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We have two cats with identical tendencies. He also describes his grandfather Doc Bascom, as being extremely smart, productive and admired by all.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It reminded me of my grandfather, Hank Mayse, who was a lawyer, postmaster, editor of the county newspaper, and very much admired by all.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.693333625793457px; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">While many can tell family stories, few can tell them with such warm-hearted detail as Tim. He succeeds in creating something both intensely personal and irresistibly universal. Although the book’s primary focus is on the beauties and difficulties of father-son relationships, the stories in <i>Climbing Lessons</i> warm the reader’s heart. Bascom’s skillful prose style immediately draws one into these moving tales. These brief inter-linked stories show that abiding affection can prevail, bringing fathers and sons closer, even as they tackle the steepest parts of the climb.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;">Bascom completed his MFA at the University of Iowa, taught at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and now heads up the Kansas Book Festival in Topeka, Kansas, where his wife Cathleen is the Episcopal Bishop of Kansas.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> — <i>Ken Johnson</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i></i></span></span><br /></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-54228638076250054262020-11-10T09:04:00.004-08:002020-11-11T08:13:40.033-08:00The Overstory, by Richard Powers<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PDhPgrp2dZQ/X6rJQ4_zLtI/AAAAAAAABvc/DC53JoALWuwQyy--7Go7Fw3ocRZis_LWACLcBGAsYHQ/s475/40180098._SY475_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PDhPgrp2dZQ/X6rJQ4_zLtI/AAAAAAAABvc/DC53JoALWuwQyy--7Go7Fw3ocRZis_LWACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/40180098._SY475_.jpg" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><br />This is a remarkable book, a feat of imagination, research, imagery, and character development. The winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, it can be a challenge to read—no cruise-control mindless scanning will get you through this one. But once you finish, your world will look different. You’ll sit in your backyard and wonder what the trees are saying to one another. You’ll take a special trip to check out one of the few remaining chestnuts in Iowa. You’ll start noticing trees on your daily walks—how one gingko loses its leaves all at once and another does so gradually. You’ll recognize trees as part of their own communities and as protectors of our own. This book will stay with you, and it is worth every minute you give to it.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/books/review/overstory-richard-powers.html"><i>The New York Times</i></a>, Barbara Kingsolver wrote about how author Richard Powers, a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, created a work of art with significant scientific merit:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span font-family:="" inherit=""></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Overstory</i> accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span inherit="">Powers told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/11/richard-powers-interview-the-overstory-radicalised">the <i>Guardian</i></a><i> </i>that he read at least 120 books on trees and this research changed him. He talked about his motivation for the book and its effect on him:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">When you look at the statistics of what’s happening to species, to rainforests, to forests of all kinds, it’s so overwhelming that it’s difficult to believe it. It’s utterly daunting. I wanted to tell a story about ordinary people who, for whatever reason, have that realisation about the irreversible destruction that’s happening right now and who get radicalised as a result. The book explores that question of how far is too far when it comes to defending this place, the only place we have to make a home. The act of writing this book has made me more radicalised, for sure.</span></blockquote><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>In a <a href="https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fnewshour%2Fshow%2Fthe-overstory-author-richard-powers-answers-your-questions&data=04%7C01%7Cpatricia.prijatel%40drake.edu%7C048a6caa6d374c1efa2308d8805fbf49%7C6f028129009c4b33b633bbfc58bbd960%7C0%7C0%7C637400496015552093%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=OFagXCSIlgU0gC3aWPk4lyeFdvg6r%2FEXfFRkbbs673w%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">PBS Interview with Jeffrey Brown,</a> </span>Powers explained the scientific backbone of the book:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>Whatever I present in the book as scientific fact was, to the best of my ability at the time of publication, verifiable, consensually repeated and agreed upon.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The book seems so real that, as Kingsolver wrote, readers Google characters to see if they actually exist. In some ways they do. One of the central characters, Patricia Westerford, is a scientist who discovers that trees communicate with one another, creating a community in which members help others in crisis, plan for the future, and guard against common threats. This is based on the ground-breaking work <span>of real-life ecologist <a href="https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ted.com%2Fspeakers%2Fsuzanne_simard&data=04%7C01%7Cpatricia.prijatel%40drake.edu%7C048a6caa6d374c1efa2308d8805fbf49%7C6f028129009c4b33b633bbfc58bbd960%7C0%7C0%7C637400496015542140%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=pgsYGk2dJ48MUUN2kRoVs61RmeBybbu4hLkfUsKsRSQ%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">Suzanne Simard</a>. In <i>The Overstory</i>, Westerford writes a book, <i>The Secret Life of Trees</i>. In reality, author Peter Wohlleben wrote </span><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;"><a href="https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fmg23230971-500-trees-life-in-the-slow-lane%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cpatricia.prijatel%40drake.edu%7C048a6caa6d374c1efa2308d8805fbf49%7C6f028129009c4b33b633bbfc58bbd960%7C0%7C0%7C637400496015552093%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=oh%2FOrcQEnYYXBj%2FyDb9kXxII%2FcGNTmg3PYQKsn5YPL4%3D&reserved=0" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The Hidden Life of Trees</a><i> </i>in 2016,</span> using Simard’s work as a central focus.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="https://lithub.com/richard-powers-there-are-things-more-interesting-than-people/">Literary Hub</a> </i>writer <span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;">Kevin Berger</span> spent a day visiting Powers in his Appalachia home and was there at the poignant moment when the author read <span>Kingsolver’s review for the first time. “I have found my people,” Powers said. And, for every writer who feels compelled to crank out words for the sake of words, Powers emphasized the importance of the contemplation he learned living near the forest, a truth for most of what we do in life: </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I lived in cities, I wrote out of a tremendous work ethic. I felt if I were to be a serious writer, I needed to produce 1,000 words a day. When I didn’t, I was tremendously anxious. But since coming down here, and committing myself to communication with the plant world, I’ve been much more comfortable in letting an hour or two or more go by in a reverie state. I don’t feel compelled to have a word count at the end of the day, but rather to prepare myself as a ready receptacle for whatever might happen.</span></blockquote><p>This is a book about trees, but it's also about us. Trees have natural resilience. Those we destroy today will provide roots and seeds for regrowth, which may take hundreds, even thousands of years. Whether humans will be around to see that resurgence is an open question.—<i>Pat Prijatel</i></p><o:p></o:p><p></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-60591484356641674462020-10-11T15:09:00.002-07:002020-10-11T15:09:22.157-07:00 Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JW6v8CHM2N4/X4OBimlk3JI/AAAAAAAABvA/3DV1VuLxMH8N3T5CI_r09cItSDJLwu5NACLcBGAsYHQ/s346/51aHoqAu29L._SY346_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="228" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JW6v8CHM2N4/X4OBimlk3JI/AAAAAAAABvA/3DV1VuLxMH8N3T5CI_r09cItSDJLwu5NACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/51aHoqAu29L._SY346_.jpg" /></a></div><br />When a book begins with a nine-year-old getting pushed out of a moving bus by his mother and ends up twenty years later with him hosting The Daily Show, you want to see what mysteries unfold in the middle.<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Trevor Noah’s mother, who he calls a “force of nature,” is the one who shoved him out of the speeding minibus, jumping out with him—to protect both of them from a driver who showed serious intent to harm them both. And so begins the book about a young man who took after the mother he adored, refusing the rules intended to keep her, and him, in their proper places—whatever that was in South Africa’s system of apartheid that separated people by race to a degree that few understood. Chinese were colored, but Japanese were not, and Trevor, who had a white father and a Black mother, wasn't considered colored, but mixed, an entirely different category, with different rules. Their union was illegal, so he literally was born a crime.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Obviously a bright child, Trevor learned to master the many languages and accents of his complex and diverse neighborhoods, including English, Zulu, German, Afrikaans, and Sotho, which gave him an advantage when getting mugged, cheated, criticized, conned, or when just wanting to communicate with somebody different. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Language, he writes, is part of a shared identity and “even more than color, defines who you are to people.” Language can unify and divide us, he says. This makes the story of his high school matric dance (prom) even more ironic. He wooed a girl for a month, considering her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. When she agreed to go to prom with him, he spent a fortune getting the right outfit and planning the perfect night. He was late picking her up, then got lost, and they were two hours late to the dance. Once there, she refused to get out of the car, and he had no idea why. It turned out she was terrified of the whole chaotic situation, something she could not communicate because she did not speak English and her language, Pedi, was one of the few he couldn't speak, a fact that somehow eluded him in his ill-fated courtship.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Much of the book is about how he tried to find his place as a light-skinned Black man, finally turning to comedy to try to make some sense of it. He was such a misfit, in fact, that at one point neighbors used him as a guidepost when giving directions: <span style="letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">“The house on Makhalima Street. At the corner you’ll see a light-skinned boy. Take a right there.”</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Noah’s mother, Patricia, had no interest in remaining a subjugated woman and living her life defined by White culture and Black men. She chose to have a child with a man of German-Swiss descent, with no plans of ever marrying him; she trained as a typist at a time when women were supposed to stay at home; and she moved into neighborhoods that were alternately dangerous or above her “station,” all to avoid staying in a small village or a small life.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Patricia was Trevor’s guiding light, foil to his escapades, greatest love and greatest challenge. His biological father remained in his life, even though that was not part of the original agreement and offered a touch of support from a distance. His stepfather Abel provided a model of the kind of man he did not want to be.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">For her part, Patricia saw Jesus as her guide, and she and Trevor spent most of each Sunday going to three different churches—White church, Black church, and colored church, providing a framework for her faith, but demonstrating the divisive society in which they lived.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Trevor countered constant bullying with humor, which became his defense and led to a high- paying career. As a teenager, he was eating caterpillars to keep from starving, which he describes in appalling detail, while iiving in a garage or sleeping in cars every night and wearing clothes too big for him so they didn't have to replaced so often. Now, at the age of 36 he is making $8 million a year.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The book is essentially an interwoven series of monologues that are harrowing, insightful, terrifying, sad, and, because of the telling, often funny. But there is nothing funny about the system of apartheid under which Trevor was born and the racism and classism in which he lived. Perhaps there will be a sequel to this, explaining how he ended up where he now is. Better yet, maybe his remarkable mother will write a book. — <i>Joe Kucera and Pat Prijatel</i><o:p></o:p></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-58767597159348790142020-09-20T13:41:00.000-07:002020-09-20T13:41:00.270-07:00The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ajkT7z8mA8Y/X2e91oy6Y3I/AAAAAAAABug/dUp5tG3h15IkJ-KzLlQaBYnKK4frrXBYACLcBGAsYHQ/s475/44318414.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ajkT7z8mA8Y/X2e91oy6Y3I/AAAAAAAABug/dUp5tG3h15IkJ-KzLlQaBYnKK4frrXBYACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/44318414.jpg" /></a></div><br />Patchett is a connoisseur of imperfect characters who are compelling mixes of the saintly, the clueless, the wise and loving, the selfish and manipulative—characters the reader can’t help but care about because they are just so<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">human.</i><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Dutch House, </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Patchett uses the grand VanHoebeek’s mansion that came on the market after World War II as the spine of the multi-generational story.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When Cyril Conroy buys the Dutch house (with all</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the VanHoebeek’s personal possessions and</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">three servants included) as a surprise for his wife Elna, it is a cruel gift to the quiet, would-be nun. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The changes brought about by moving into the Dutch house eventually send Elna fleeing to Bombay to work with Mother Teresa (who is actually in Calcutta). After she leaves, the Conroy children, Maeve and Danny, are in the capable, loving hands of the housekeeper, the cook, and the nanny, Fiona (aka Fluffy), who is a warm, humorous presence from before the beginning of the story through the end, three generations later.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Danny, as the narrator, shows us life in the Dutch house. After their mother, who has been disappearing for increasingly long spells, seems perhaps not to be coming back ever, he and Maeve wonder if she is dead. Probably, their dad tells them. She probably died in India. Information which is neither comforting nor edifying.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Then young and attractive Andrea begins to come and go in the Dutch house. The children are left on their own to figure out what this means. Maeve becomes suddenly and seriously ill with diabetes. Despite all this, young Danny still feels secure and loved by the servants and especially his sister, who has taken on a quasi-motherly role.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When their dad marries Andrea, she brings two little girls, Norma and Bright, into the Dutch House. Maeve and Danny come to love the little girls, but Andrea—in a vein of casual cruelty, gives Maeve’s room to Norma when Maeve goes off to college. And when Cyril dies of a heart attack shortly after Maeve graduates, Andrea calls Maeve and says of Danny: “Come and get him.” Thus Danny and Maeve are summarily banished from the Dutch house and Norma and Bright. Equally shocking, Maeve and Danny discover Andrea now owns everything: the Dutch house and all of Cyril’s real estate and investments. Danny and Maeve are left with Maeve’s car and a foundation established for the education of Cyril and Andrea’s four children.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Thus begins Danny and Maeve’s period of watching the Dutch house and plotting. In Maeve’s car, they take up posts, smoking and talking, with Maeve planning ways for Danny to use up the foundation money by the longest, most costly education imaginable. And from this revenge plot, Danny eventually and unwittingly becomes a doctor, when all he wants to do is get a little money together so he can start investing in real estate and follow in his dad’s footsteps.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Danny’s girlfriend, Celeste, in training to be the best doctor’s wife ever, discovers she has married a landlord instead of a doctor—repeating Elna’s pattern of discovering her husband was not who she thought he was. And Danny ironically repeats family history too by surprising Celeste with a beautifully restored brownstone in Manhattan not at all to her taste.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Over the years, through various bits of information, Danny and Maeve gradually come to understand their mother is still alive, living and doing good works among the homeless in the city. Danny struggles with how to feel about this, but Maeve embraces the woman she still calls Mommy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Near the end of the story, Elna convinces her children, as only she could, to go with her to visit the Dutch House. This causes a tectonic shift among the characters. Now demented, Andrea is enormously comforted by Danny, who she believes is Cyril returned to her. Ever compassionate (except perhaps to her young children) Elna moves back into the Dutch house (unchanged all these years) and works with Norma (who actually <i>did</i> want to become a doctor) as Andrea’s caretakers. Maeve, who feels abandoned by her mother once again, dies of what is surely meant to be taken as a broken heart. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As the story ends, Danny and Norma become siblings of sorts (“a half-sister from a second marriage,” as Danny cautiously puts it). Elna begins to disappear among the poor again. Danny finally gives up his rage at his mother and replaces it with “familiarity.” Danny and Celeste divorce. Fluffy visits the Dutch House now and then and sleeps in her old room above the garage. And May—Maeve’s namesake—gains fame and fortune as an actress and ultimately buys the Dutch house and brings back parties reminiscent of the VanHoebeek era. And the portrait of Maeve, originally painted to stare down the VanHoebeck’s portraits hanging across the room, looks to all the world like May. There’s a sense of rightness about this ending. Finally, the Dutch house has come into its own as the Conroy house.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Dutch House </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is a rich and conversation-provoking story showing us the human condition in fascinating particulars. — <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Sharelle Moranville</i></span></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-7524854819486945632020-09-11T16:30:00.000-07:002020-09-11T16:30:14.290-07:00 The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ur86ZBc1VV8/X1wIXbrpJVI/AAAAAAAABuM/aPhqfGi7EjIPLZifL2m1CKO-39A3kk3FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/44153387.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="261" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ur86ZBc1VV8/X1wIXbrpJVI/AAAAAAAABuM/aPhqfGi7EjIPLZifL2m1CKO-39A3kk3FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/44153387.jpg" /></a></div><br />Is this book autobiography?<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Memoir?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Is it the story of a quest for the answers to an absorbing crime story with an uncertain ending?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Is it scientific history?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Answer: All of the above!</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> In weaving together these several strands, this non-fiction tale led to provocative discussion. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Kirk Wallace Johnson opens his tale autobiographically:</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He’s suffering from PTSD in the aftermath of the war in Iraq.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">His current work, seeking to resettle Iraqi interpreters in the US, meets with limited success and constant frustration.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">To relieve his depression, he takes up fly-fishing.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">From his guide, he learns about fly-tying, the creation of beautiful works of art that are ostensibly for use as hooks to attract salmon.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">In reality, these salmon flies are almost never actually used to fish.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">They are bought and sold and hoarded as the works of art they are.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> Trouble is, however, that the “best” require the use of rare and expensive bird feathers, many from extinct or near-extinct birds. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">As the author enters the world of the fly-tiers, he starts to hear of a theft from the British Museum’s ornithological collection held at the Tring Museum outside London.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">This theft was accomplished by a young man, barely out of his teens, named Edwin Rist.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">To explain not only the lure of the beautiful bird feathers that drew Rist to the heist, but also the scientific value of the birds taken, the author discovers the work of naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who in the middle years of the 19th century, traversed the Malay Archipelago where he gathered and catalogued over 125,000 specimens of rare birds.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">His meticulous efforts to tag the date and location of each skin, as the bird carcasses are called, led him independently from Charles Darwin to arrive at the theory of evolution via natural selection.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">But what of Edwin Rist?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Rist is an American young man studying flute at the Royal Conservatory in London, hoping to be selected to play with a major European orchestra when his studies are completed.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He is also an up-and-coming expert fly-tier, featured in the fly-tying world’s website as “the future of fly-tying.”</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He needs money to purchase the exotic bird feathers to use in tying his flies.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">His visit to the Tring museum awakens him to the possibilities of securing a supply of rare feathers for his own fly-tying and of a steady source of income from feather sales to other fly-tiers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The subtitle speaks of obsession and there are many to examine in this book.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">There is, first, the scientific obsession of Alfred Russell Wallace, the collector of the specimens, who from his lower-class origins sought academic recognition that was at the time only granted to upper class Britons.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">There is Edwin Rist’s obsession with tying classic fishing flies that motivates the theft.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">And there is the author’s own obsession with the crime and with recovering feathers for the museum, an obsession that has therapeutic value in alleviating his PTSD symptoms.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Fly-tying with exotic feathers has exerted an obsessive pull on anglers and on pure hobbyists, with an upsurge of interest in the late 20th century.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">With that enthusiasm comes the obsessions that fuel an underground market in rare and often illegal feathers.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Edwin Rist fell into this obsession as a young teenager.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">He was later arrested and tried for the theft, was found guilty but lightly punished with a short period of probation after pleading incapacity due to Asperger’s syndrome.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Many of our discussions were prompted by the judicial treatment of the case.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Could the system do justice to all the interests of society?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The police were essentially done when Rist was identified and tried.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The prosecutor and judge felt limited by prior decisions on the Asperger defense.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The museum’s interest waned when the specimens that were recovered were missing their sourcing tags or had been cut into marketable parts.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The general silence of the “feather underground” made it more difficult to track the fate of the specimens.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">What do we think should have been a just punishment or a restorative action imposed on Edwin Rist?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">And could he have pulled this off alone?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Where does the value of the specimens to the scientific community collide with the value of the birds as objects of true beauty that the public might want to see?</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Fly-tiers ask:</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> “Why does the Museum need so many examples of the same bird anyway?”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i>The Feather Thief </i>is a good read, provocatively posing questions to which different readers might well derive different answers. — <i>Jeanie and Bill Smith</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-3744273553909225142020-08-15T16:18:00.001-07:002020-11-25T08:22:02.155-08:00Virgil Wander, Leif Enger<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;">
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<span font-family:="" inherit="">This quiet, gentle story is remarkable for the artistry of it words, the realistically oddball characters, and its touch of Northwoods magic realism. The main character, Virgil Wander, almost drowns when his car slides off the road and into Lake Superior. The accident damages his brain and, as a result, he quietly and gradually reinvents himself, leaving behind his hesitant, staid self—the “former occupant” of his apartment, clothes, and life. In his place is a man willing to take a few risks.<o:p></o:p></span>
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<span font-family:="" inherit="">Comparing his flight into the lake with his new life, he says: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“A person never knows what is next—I don't anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.” </span></blockquote>
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<span font-family:="" inherit="">Virgil owns a down-on-its-luck movie theatre, the Empress, and is also Greenstone’s city clerk. (When he explains this latter job, he addresses the reader directly asking, “Did you think I made a living at the Empress?” It’s a delightfully engaging moment.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span font-family:="" inherit="">After his plunge into the lake, Virgil has a unique mental quirk: He cannot remember adjectives. But no matter, Enger demonstrates the power of all parts of speech, in quote-worthy paragraph after paragraph, as Virgil creates a new life from the leftovers of his old one. The language alone makes the book a wonder to read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For example, when Virgil first meets the mystical Rune, he describes how the old man smoked his pipe: “The smoke ghosted<span background-repeat:="" initial=""> straight up and hung there undecided.” Who needs fancy adjectives when you can create an image so economically and so powerfully?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And when Virgil finds the ominous Adam Leer burning clothes behind his house, he again evokes the smoke-in-need-of-direction image, this time using an adjective in a way that makes the reader wonder why other writers haven’t used this description: “Tendrils of tea-colored smoke uncurled to explore the immediate region.”<span background-repeat:="" initial=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some lines are laugh-out-loud funny, as when Virgil observes, “The evidence of my life lay before me, and I was unconvinced.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Virgil, who narrates the book, introduces us to his community in the bad luck town of Greenstone, Minnesota, north of Duluth. Residents have landed there by chance, as Virgil did, lured by a lake view and cheap real estate; others were born there, as was the mysterious and sinister Leer; and then there's the elfin Rune, who shows up on the shore of Lake Superior flying kites. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But these are no ordinary kites—they're so mystical that people passing by stop and wait their turns to fly the giant dog, or the bike with wheels that turn, a burning fireplace, or even an anvil. Rune is in town looking for stories of his son Alec, whom he never met, and who flew out over Lake Superior one day in a tiny old plane, never to return. Nadine, Alec’s widow, takes over his neon sign business, creating pieces of art she sells nationally; Virgil loves her from afar, assuming he has no chance with her, until he does. When the two finally connect, he observes, “She kept looking away then back to me, as though at a nice surprise. This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone’s nice surprise.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Two fatherless boys, Bjorn and Galen, help pull Virgil toward himself and away from the previous tenant, aided by Ann and Jerry, married but not really, who are trying to move beyond the margins of their lives. Then there’s a giant sturgeon, a bomb, a festival called Hard Luck Days, and a cameo by Bob Dylan, who wrote a song about Greenstone, but Virgil can’t remember which one. And a priceless set of old movie reels Virgil refers to as imps in a jar, and which get the Empress a new roof.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span background-repeat:="" initial="">Like the kites, the characters’ lives move with slow precision and eventually reach a conclusion that ties the story lines and loose strings together. A few bits are left hanging (What actually did happen to Leer?) and some are tied up with a bit of sadness (Jerry’s luck gets harder, although he might have left the city better off).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Toward the end of the book, the community comes together for Virgil, who does not expect it, and he says, poignantly, “Your tribe is always bigger than you think.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We all dream of finding but what’s wrong with looking? When the sun rises we’ll know what to do.”</span></div></blockquote><p><i><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>—Pat Prijatel </i></p>
Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-4690160157877440292020-08-04T19:57:00.000-07:002020-08-05T17:23:04.555-07:00In The Garden of Beasts:Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, by Erik Larson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This solidly researched account of Germany and the U.S. before World War II reads like a novel full of intigue, love affairs, disloyalty, honor, dishonor, evil, and power. Erik Larson tells the story from the unique perspective of the American ambassador from 1933-1938, William Dodd, and his family. Dodd was a scholar who was looking for an ambassadorship simply because he wanted to finish his three-volume book on the Old South. He ended up in Berlin because nobody else wanted the job—a fact he didnt realize until he was committed to the position.<br />
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Dodd was a Jeffersonian Democrat who chose to live on a budget and walk to work instead of being chauffered about in a giant gas guzzler, as was the custom of ambassadors.He remained a misfit during his entire time in Germany because he was not one of the wealthy elites who normally fill such posts. Initially, he argued away the threat of Hitler and the Nazi party, but ultimately he tried to warn the Roosevelt administration of the reality of Hitler's danger to Germany and to the world. He was deemed an alarmist by his "colleagues" in Washington, and his warnings were dismissed as the work of an academic unqualified for diplomatic work.<br />
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Larson demonstrates how America and the German people might have stopped the pure evil that descended on Germany, but they chose to leave it to others, thinking it would get better on its own. Worse, many Americans at the time excused Hitler's most despicable acts, reasoning that Jews caused their own problems.<br />
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Larson researched hundreds of books, artices, and newsreels, but relied heavily on Dodd's papers and on his and his daughter's autobiographies. The daughter, Martha Dodd, was a notorious partier who had affairs with Germans, Russians, and anybody in between. She was blindsided by Nazi charm, until their crimes became too obvious for her to ignore. Her story is a juicy counterpoint to her father's more staid approach.<br />
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Larson shows the complexities of the era, creating in Dodd a character who has the guts to publicly decry Nazi policy, but who remains somewhat naive about the political web he's caught in. Likewise, Larson makes clear that, while many Germans remained complacent and complicit in Hitler's evil, some even within the Nazi hierarchy tried to work against Hitler.<br />
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After Dodd was replaced as Ambassador, he toured the country, warning Americans of the true evil of Hitler's regime. Even then, he was often seen as exaggerating. —<i>Pat Prijatel</i>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-85881962388487690492020-07-23T19:32:00.000-07:002020-07-23T19:52:19.800-07:00Fiction to Consider, July 2020<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">
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<span style=font-size: 11pt;">It's 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer. She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street. </span><span style="color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;"><br /><br /><span style=
background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Josie is caught between the dream of an elite college and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans lures her in her quest for truth, dangling temptation at every turn, and escalating to the ultimate test. </span><br /><br /><span style=background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">With characters as captivating as those in her internationally bestselling novel Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys skillfully creates a rich story of secrets, lies, and the haunting reminder that decisions can shape our destiny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11178225-out-of-the-easy" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11178225-out-of-the-easy</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-transform: uppercase;">THE OVERSTORY, BY RICHARD POWERS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;">The Overstory</span></i><span style=font-size: 11pt;"> is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style=
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/richard-powers-the-overstory/559106/" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/richard-powers-the-overstory/559106/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-most-exciting-novel-about-trees-youll-ever-read/2018/04/03/bb388a4e-3686-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-transform: uppercase;">VIRGIL WANDER, BY LEIF ENGER<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style=
font-size: 11pt;">The first novel in ten years from award-winning, million-copy bestselling author Leif Enger, </span><i><span style="color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;">Virgil Wander</span></i><span style=
color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;"> is an enchanting and timeless all-American story that follows the inhabitants of a small Midwestern town in their quest to revive its flagging heart.</span><span style="color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;"><br /><br /><span style=background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is "cruising along at medium altitude" when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals--from Rune, a twinkling, pipe-smoking, kite-flying stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son; to Nadine, the reserved, enchanting wife of the vanished man; to Tom, a journalist and Virgil's oldest friend; and various members of the Pea family who must confront tragedies of their own. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.</span><br /><br /><span style=
background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">With intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their defunct industrial district. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures including movies, fishing, necking in parked cars, playing baseball and falling in love, </span><i>Virgil Wander</i><span style=background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> is a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked American Upper Midwest by a "formidably gifted" (</span><i>Chicago Tribune</i><span style=background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">) master storyteller.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><i><span style=color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;">Reviews:<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/leif-engers-fans-have-waited-10-years-for-virgil-wander-was-it-worth-it/2018/10/01/93afd8ae-c512-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/leif-engers-fans-have-waited-10-years-for-virgil-wander-was-it-worth-it/2018/10/01/93afd8ae-c512-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/books/review/leif-enger-virgil-wander.html" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/books/review/leif-enger-virgil-wander.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #181818; font-size: 11pt; text-transform: uppercase;">LOCKDOWN, BY LAURIE R. KING<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-size: 11pt;">Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School: a day given to innocent hopes and youthful dreams. A day no one in attendance will ever forget.<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> </span><br /><br /><i>New York Times</i><span style= background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> bestselling author Laurie R. King is an award-winning master of combining rich atmospheric detail with riveting, keen-edged mystery. Now, in her newest standalone novel of psychological suspense, King turns her sharp eye to a moment torn from the headlines and a school under threat. </span><br /><span style=background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">A year ago, Principal Linda McDonald arrived at Guadalupe determined to overturn the school's reputation for truancy, gang violence, and neglect. One of her initiatives is Career Day--bringing together children, teachers, and community presenters in a celebration of the future. But there are some in attendance who reject McDonald's bright vision.</span><br /><br /><span style=
background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">A principal with a secret. A husband with a murky past. A cop with too many questions. A kid under pressure to prove himself. A girl struggling to escape a mother's history. A young basketball player with an affection for guns. </span><br /><br /><span style=
background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Even the school janitor has a story he dare not reveal. </span><br /><br /><span style=background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">But no one at the gathering anticipates the shocking turn of events that will transform a day of possibilities into an expolsive confrontation. </span><br /><br /><span style=
background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Tense, poignant, and brilliantly paced, Laurie R. King's novel charts compelling characters on a collision course--a chain of interactions that locks together hidden lives, troubling secrets, and the bravest impulses of the human heart.</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laurie-r-king/lockdown-king/" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laurie-r-king/lockdown-king/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-804177-93-1" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-804177-93-1</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-transform: uppercase;">LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, BY GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUES</span></b><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-transform: uppercase;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is heartbroken, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again. Marques won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. <i>Love in the Time of Cholera</i> was published in 1988<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/06/books/books-of-the-times-garcia-marquez-novel-covers-love-and-time.html" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/06/books/books-of-the-times-garcia-marquez-novel-covers-love-and-time.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2009/1101/classic-review-love-in-the-time-of-cholera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-90291826312030312092020-07-19T19:12:00.001-07:002020-07-19T19:14:08.163-07:00Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In <i>Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World</i>, David Epstein began with a theme that resonated strongly with the liberal arts folks in our group. Our schooling was based on the traditional notion that diverse strands of a broad education strengthen each other. For some of us, that theme has been borne out by diverse and even checkered work histories. We were pleased to have Epstein explain why our bias may be valid.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Epstein begins by contrasting Tiger Woods’s early specialization in golf with Roger Federer’s dabbling in many sports until he settled rather late on tennis. Specialization and repetitive practice leads to positive results in what Epstein calls “kind” learning environments. In these environments, patterns repeat and feedback is usually rapid and accurate. Quick recognition and response is enhanced by practice. Examples he cites are flight crews and surgical teams. By contrast, “wicked” learning environments have a greater number of variables and are less predictable. These environments value more intuition and judgment, which are developed better through a broader range of experience. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Epstein dissects the learning process, showing that our learning skills have evolved to keep up with the shifting nature of the problems we deal with. Over generations, we have become better accustomed to abstract and conceptual problems, “wicked” learning environments, as shown by improved IQ test scores. He shows that slower learning may be deeper learning – with implications for both kind and wicked environments. He expands this thought through varied examples of musical and artistic development and unconventional career paths in other fields such as video game design, economic forecasting, and work team configurations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He also shows how the accumulation of wider-ranging experiences can lead to changes in work directions and ultimately to better vocational “fit.” Military service academies provide a well-documented basis for this discussion. The early specialization of the academies does not lead to officers with longer service tenure, but rather produces mid-level officers ready to try other professional directions. Other recruiting sources bring people into the officer corps with more diversity of experience and whose later choice of this career path often leads to longer tenure. Epstein gives a related discussion of how “grit” adds or subtracts from performance. Persistence can be a virtue, but so can jumping to a new career track which other experiences now support. These “sampling” experiences also change problem-solving skills, with consequences in invention, incident management, and other areas.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Epstein’s writing is based on extensive review of scholarly work on learning and development, but presented in highly readable prose and laid out in engaging flow. His conclusions are more like realizations that emerge from a review of the academic research and historical examples he marshals to demonstrate the points. I never felt he was pushing me to agree, but simply showing me his way of view and inviting me along. —<i> Bill Smith</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-43445788246848581092020-07-13T15:11:00.000-07:002020-07-13T15:11:05.627-07:00Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, <i>Station Eleven, </i>begins with famous actor Arthur Leander’s real-life death as he plays the role of King Lear on stage. At the same time, outside the theater, people are beginning to sicken and die of the Georgian flu as it sweeps the planet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In the opening pages, the reader is tossed into a compelling post-apocalyptic world. Who will have the luck, grit, and skill to survive? <i>How </i>will they survive? How will they travel? Eat? Find shelter? Keep their sanity? Form communities? Move on? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The novel has an ensemble cast (a nod to The Traveling Symphony and the troupe of Shakespearian actors): Arthur, Clark, Miranda, Elizabeth, Tyler, Kirsten, and Jeevan—with Arthur as the connection among all the other characters. Clark is his best friend. Miranda is his first wife. Elizabeth is his second wife, mother of their young son, Tyler (who becomes the cruel, Calvinistically-bent Prophet). Kirsten is a child actress, cast as one of Lear’s young daughters. Jeevan is the person who rushes the stage in an effort to save Arthur. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Mandel pairs Kirsten and Tyler in a very Shakespearian way. They are both eight years-old when the flu wipes out almost everybody. Both are children of Arthur (he is Kirsten’s stage father). Both have copies of Miranda’s comic book, <i>Dr. Eleven—</i>which is a graphic expression of the pull between good and evil, awake and asleep, life and death, love and hate, beauty and ugliness that runs throughout the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As a grownup, as the Prophet, Tyler has become a cruel and terrifying cult leader in the name of God. Kirsten, on the other hand, before the company’s performance of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream, </i>describes the world thus<span style="color: #385623;">: </span>“What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream </i>in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Near the end of the novel, inevitably, Kirsten and the Prophet must face off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">To weave her tale, Mandel uses a rich and flexible narrative structure sort of like crochet, where there is a string of linear yarn, but the story is told in a series of interlocking loops that often go back to the beginning and start again—growing richer with each pass. She does playful, clever things to make connections. Lots of Shakespearian allusions; four different dogs named Loki; a paperweight which is a hostess gift to Miranda at a dinner party years before Arthur’s death, which Miranda gives back to Arthur, which he gives to his lover <i>du jour, </i>which she gives to Kirsten, which she gives to Clark for the Museum of Civilization. And everything, big and small, supports in some way awakening into a brave new world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Jeevan, in the old world, was a paparazzi in a relationship with a shallow, indifferent woman. In the new world, twenty years out, he lives in a settlement in Virginia practicing primitive medicine. The end of the day finds him drinking wine amidst “the gentle music of the river, cicadas in the trees, the stars above the weeping willows on the far bank. . . . He was overcome at his good fortune at having found this place, this tranquility, this woman, at having lived to see a time worth living in.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Mandel shows us a new world which is a slow and painful work in progress. We get our parting look through the eyes of Clark who “has no expectation of seeing an airplane rise again in his lifetime, but is it possible that somewhere there are ships setting out? If there are again towns with streetlights, if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And the Traveling Symphony is going on the road again, taking a new route, perhaps to find the far southern town with the electrical grid. The first horse-drawn truck in the procession, as always, bears the creed: <i>Because survival is insufficient.— </i>Sharelle Moranville<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-18987241101082415192020-05-29T16:25:00.002-07:002020-05-29T16:44:19.205-07:00Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Pachinko is largely a game of chance, a combination of a pinball and a slot machine, with balls subtly manipulated behind the scenes by owners of the parlors in which it is played. It’s an onomatopoeia, a word that sounds like what it defines—<i>pachinko</i>. Popular in Japan after the Second World War, pachinko parlors were often run by Korean immigrants who had no other choice and were often called mobsters, no matter how honest they might have been. But, considering the prejudice against them, being considered Korean might have been just as bad as being considered a criminal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Author Min Jin Lee titled her multigenerational novel <i>Pachinko</i> and, like much of the book, that was a stroke of genius. The book chronicles four generations of a Korean family who become immigrants in Japan and whose lives are like games of chance, one person’s actions sparking a reaction in another, then another, with powerful forces always maintaining some level of control. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But it’s also a book about human strength, family bonds, love, determination, and hope. It’s the type of book that makes a reader just want to settle down and soak up each page, reveling in the vivid character development, story, and sense of place.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The book begins:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>History has failed us, but no matter.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Min Jin Lee is speaking of Koreans, and her story starts at the turn of the twentieth century, with a fisherman and his wife, who are never named, and their son Hoonie, born with a cleft palate and a limp, who comes of age just as Japan annexes Korea. And, for the rest of the book, Hoonie and his daughter, grandsons, and great grandson are pachinko balls, creating their personal history as they have to leave Korea but are never allowed to assimilate into Japan. Shoved into a ghetto, denied passports or the ability to work in any other than low-level jobs, the family nevertheless survives and never loses their spirit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The thread holding the family, and the story, together in Sunja. Hoonie’s daughter, whose brief affair with a handsome stranger she meets in the market, forces her to marry the sweet, educated, but impoverished minister Isak. Their son, Noa, takes after the biological father he never knew exists, but reveres the loving man he thinks of as father. Yoseb, his uncle, and Kyanghee, his aunt, who have to children of their own, are like second parents. Sunja and Kyanghee become as close as sisters. A second son, Mozasu, completes the little family. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But always in the wings in Honsu, the stranger, an extremely wealthy gangster, who watches over Sunja and her family, like something between a godfather and a sinister uncle. Manipulating their lives to suit him. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Through war, death, birth, and the vagaries of fate, sexism and racism, Sunja and Kyanghee build lives for themselves and those they love. Minor characters—some Korean, some Japanese, some American, show that history and culture shape us but only confine us if we allow it<o:p></o:p></div>
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The book took her thirty years to write, and her dedication is apparent in every page. It’s a thick read—479 pages in the paperback version—but it’s a book you really don't want to end. —<i> Pat Prijatel </i><o:p></o:p></div>
Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6766308866482907751.post-35386479487102853332020-05-16T09:16:00.002-07:002020-05-16T11:06:23.410-07:00Burn Scars, by Patricia Prijatel<span style="font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>
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<b><i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2NdfJAm7Tls/XsARujlCFJI/AAAAAAAABqM/YZfPDUV_ljYyNBPXpuN7Rcpx-LEHEpkvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/51xsxlRdcQL._SX331_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2NdfJAm7Tls/XsARujlCFJI/AAAAAAAABqM/YZfPDUV_ljYyNBPXpuN7Rcpx-LEHEpkvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/51xsxlRdcQL._SX331_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></i></b></div>
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<b style="background-color: caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i><span style="color: blue;">COMMENTS FROM BBB MEMBERS:</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As I read this beautifully written memoir, it was like having my own sense of loss affirmed by someone who truly understands. When a landscape we love and are intimate with (whether it's splendid mountains and valleys or our own backyard), is destroyed by the freakishness of our changing climate, it hurts. It changes us. We stop trusting nature. We feel stress. Maybe we get sick. We need to recover. </span><span style="font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578658208?fbclid=IwAR2cl2NmE4233JAIk9ApfYY8aqZzitphuTAMVn58Q6zex7LBxiVUCZpp-Zo">Patricia Prijatel's beautifully written account</a> of the burn scars on "her" mountain and on herself is a must read if you care about climate change. It's well researched and informative, fast paced and vivid. And perhaps surprisingly, in places it's laugh-out-loud funny. — <i>Sharelle Moranville</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This is a beautiful book. The author has infused the opening chapters with descriptions of this land and its people she so loves. But there is a clear sense of suspenseful foreboding for a catastrophe that you know is coming. Her descriptions of the fire and the response of the human beings who are affected by it gain weight the farther we get from the event itself. Far from going back to normal, she chronicles the work of the people to prevent land erosion, how difficult and sometimes impossible it is, and the emotional toll it takes. What grows in the wake of the fire is not a regeneration of what was there before but in some cases harmful plant life that will change the landscape forever. We watch human emotions as they deny, accept, grieve and try to move on. What we learn in the process of reading this book is how precious our earth is and, in taking it for granted, how much we have endangered it. —<i> Jeanie Smith</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578658208?fbclid=IwAR2cl2NmE4233JAIk9ApfYY8aqZzitphuTAMVn58Q6zex7LBxiVUCZpp-Zo">"Burn Scars"</a> tells the true personal story of a Colorado family’s love for the land and the mountains. They enjoyed a wonderful life near the East Spanish Peak. Then fire erupted. They fled for their lives. Courageous firefighters saved most of the homes but the trauma lasts to this day. Prijatel talks about the personal grief. She tells the impact of fire, wind and flood on the plants and animals. She describes the increasing danger. Each year spawns higher temperatures and dryer forests. Each year sees more and bigger fires. Her well researched story flows easily. Read this book. — <i>Ray Gaebler</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "amazon ember" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The author did an extraordinary job of giving us a personal account of climate grief and educating us. Very readable, relatable and touching. —<i> Karen Peters</i></span>Patricia Prijatelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08346233311451068354noreply@blogger.com0