GLORY ROAD

Glory Road, Robert A Heinlein, G P Putnam's Sons, 1963, 288 pp

 

 

Notice:

I am afraid you who follow my blog are going to be reading about a larger number of old books this year. I have committed myself to a firmer push to get through the lists of My Big Fat Reading Project, to reading 4 a month from those lists rather than 2 a month as I did last year. Seriously, if you want to get the flavor of a year from your past, there is no better way than to read the literature. Of course, if you are not as ancient as I am, 1963 might have been a past life for you!

 

Review:

This is the 14th book I have read by Heinlein. I decided to follow him in my project because he was one of the science fiction greats but also because he became a controversial figure as his politics evolved. Being controversial seems to go hand in hand with the speculative fiction writer territory.

 

The guy wrote in a variety of voices and from a variety of viewpoints. In Glory Road he uses his fast-talking, strutting his stuff voice for the main character Scar and his adventure yarn style.

Scar Gordon is a disillusioned army veteran in the Cold War years. Of course, being a Heinlein hero, he has almost superhuman abilities as a soldier. Now he is faced with either making a life in some soulless suburb or looking for adventure.

While chilling in some unnamed beach town, waiting for developments, he meets "the most stare-able woman" he has ever seen and ends up becoming her professional "hero" for hire. Off they go on what she calls "the glory road." Traveling through space, on a quest against strange foes, they adventure on strange planets and through time warps. Scar's personal quest is to win this woman for his wife.

He does and it turns out to be a mixed blessing. Thus in addition to being a rip-roaring yarn, the novel also becomes a meditation on love and marriage when a man has met more than his match.

Ha! I loved it.

(Glory Road is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE WREATH

The Wreath, Sigrid Undset, Penguin Classic, 2005 (originally published in 1920, translated from the Norwegian by Tina Nunnally, 1997) 291 pp

 

 

The Wreath, written by 1928 Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset, was published in Norway in 1920. It is the first of a trilogy called Kristin Lavransdatter, set in 14th century Norway. I read it for my Tiny Book Club. First translated into English by Charles Archer in 1923, a new translation by Tina Nunnally published in 1997 is now considered a much improved rendering of the book into English.

 

I liked The Wreath but I did not love it. Kristin herself is one of literature's great bad women. She had been betrothed by her father to a man who would bring land, wealth and stability into the family, as was the custom in the 14th century. Before the marriage can take place, Kristin falls passionately in love with a fallen knight, Erlend Nikulausson. They consummate their passion when a young Kristin is spending a year in a convent, supposedly to calm her down before her marriage. By the time she manages to convince her family to release her from the betrothal and allow her to marry Erlend, she is secretly pregnant.

The Wreath introduces the wild and beautiful world of Norway at that time. When the story opens Kristin is seven and goes on her first journey outside the valley where she was born. She adores her father and he her. Lavrans Bjorgulfson and his wife Ragnfrid had lost child after child, leaving Ragnfrid permanently depressed. When Kristin came along and managed to live, Lavrans became besotted with his daughter but Ragnfrid could never dare to give her love to another child she might lose.

Hard as it is to imagine being a daughter in such an almost primitive culture, the author makes sure you experience all of it. I kept thinking of Heidi while I read. Also Hild by Nicola Griffith. Religion plays a huge role with Christianity and ancient pagan beliefs competing daily in the lives of these people.

Despite all of it entrancing elements, I was not wholly won over. Even after discussing the book with my book club members. The Middle Ages comprise 1000 years of not one thing good for women. Compared to then we have indeed come a long way. The only thing easier for a woman then was to become a fallen one and the repercussions were dire in the extreme.

Sigrid Undset certainly brings to life all the subjection but she also has a rather too obvious mission that included ideas such as passion trumps all and women are people too. Kristin suffers unbelievably in this tale though she does finally marry her true love. I was not completely convinced by this character. It is so clear that marriage to Erlend is only going to bring her more suffering that I do not feel at all compelled to read the second book in the trilogy, The Wife.

 

If I had read The Wreath back in the 1980s when I first read The Mists of Avalon, I think I would have loved it and gone on to finish the trilogy. Sometimes, timing is everything. I have to credit Sigrid Undset for taking on a subject that before 1920 had mostly always been written about by men in Western Europe.

 

 

(The Nunnally translation of The Wreath is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MR STONE AND THE KNIGHTS COMPANION

Mr Stone and the Knights Companion, V S Naipaul, Penguin, 1963, 160 pp

 

 

V S Naipaul is one of the authors I am following in My Big Fat Reading Project. His fifth novel marks a change in his life but maintains the themes of his first four novels which were set in Trinidad, where he was born as a descendant of people brought there by the British from India and indentured to fill certain positions. This novel is set in London.

 

What I have liked about Naipaul so far is his incisive, mostly uncomplimentary approach to characters, society, and politics. I will see as I continue to read him, but I suspect it is that quality which garnered him the Nobel Prize. It certainly applies to his 1963 novel.

 

Mr Stone is so very British, so much so that he is almost a caricature. I felt that Naipaul created him out of a foreigner's viewpoint which indeed he was when he came to Oxford for his university education in the early 1950s. I also felt that he was probably trying to imitate some of the more renowned British writers of those times.

A long-time bachelor in a lowly job, nearing retirement, Mr Stone suddenly marries a widow, the former Mrs Springer, whom he met at a party. A year of adjustment follows in which she takes over his household. One night in his study, he is pondering his approaching retirement and another sudden change comes over him. He creates the idea of the Knights Companion, a sort of fraternal organization of which the members will go about visiting and giving aid to retired men.

After a fevered few nights writing up his idea, he presents it to the head of his company as a program to bring goodwill to the business. He is promoted, becomes a department head with his own staff, and the plan is a huge success. Of course there are still bumps in the road; certain upsets and dishonest actions he must smooth out and a public relations man who tries to and in the end does steal his thunder.

I say that Naipaul's themes remain because once again he has created a hapless male, alternately puffed up and failing, insensitive to and troubled by women, who tries to buck an entrenched system. He is still incisive and tragicomic.

Naipaul in later years has suffered from the ravages of public opinion, labeled as racist and misogynist. I don't doubt the charges. I read him because I am female and he is male. He shows me a male viewpoint of a certain stripe and I find it fascinating no matter how off-putting it may be.

THE REVOLUTION OF MARINA M.

The Revolution of Marina M., Janet Fitch, Little Brown and Company, 2017, 800 pp

 

 

Do you love Russian literature? Do you think an American can measure up in writing a book of historical fiction set in Russia? I am here to tell you, she can!!

 

So many things made this one of the best books I read in 2017. It is a story of the Russian Revolution told through the eyes and heart and mind of a budding teenage poetess. I don't think that has been done very often, if ever. It is Janet Fitch's homage to Tolstoy, Pushkin and Russian poets.

Marina M! What a character. She explodes and emotes throughout the novel. It is as though Astrid from White Oleander and Josie from Paint It Black were merely writing exercises to prepare for the creation of Marina. You will either love her to distraction or find her annoying beyond belief. She is Bella from Twilight, Katniss from The Hunger Games, torn between two men but with the intellectual and political soul of the Russian greats. She is a poet, dangerously sensuous, daring, plucky, and ultimately as brave and resourceful as any male hero. She is only 16 at the beginning of the story and 19 at the end.

There is much more to this novel though than romance and heroics. It is a study in revolution with all its counterparts: idealism, too rapid change, violence, suffering, political infighting. The age old conundrum of how to upset a fixed order, how to create a just society, what it actually takes to run a country and a society, freedom, oppression, and all those gray areas where crime takes advantage of disorder to profit. All told from the viewpoint of one of "the people," not the leaders.

Although I suppose I knew better, I realized that all my life I have thought of revolution as an event that takes place over a few days. I realized that, like getting the news from sound bites and twitter posts, revolutions are taught by means of the "definitive event." The Boston Tea Party, The Storming of the Bastille, The Abdication of Czar Nicolas II, etc, etc.

In fact, a revolution takes years. As does a revolution in one's personal life. There is the day you walk out, of a family, a job, a marriage, but the new life you are trying to build takes years to come about and your former life trails you like a ghost or a nightmare.

There were countless women who participated in the changes from the Czarist autocracy of Russia to the Communist regime of the Soviet Union. There were as many female poets in 1917 as there were male. The story we have always gotten though is primarily male, from the leaders to the poets to the writers. Of course! Janet Fitch has elevated herself, in my opinion, to the ranks of those women who tell their own stories and the stories of their female predecessors. Like Svetlana Alexievich (Voices From Chernobyl), Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex), and so many more. With this novel she shows the truth about the personal being the political.

I don't predict that many men will read The Revolution of Marina M, or that those who do will totally get it. I sincerely hope that many women will read it. Even if they find stuff to criticize (and being women they will-:) we all know this is a story for us, that gets to the heart and mind of the second sex, that shows the consequences of freedom for us but also for all of humanity.

I know. It is 800 pages and is only part one of a two volume tale. That's fine. Do yourself a favor. Take a week off and read it. This is an extremely subversive work.

(The Revolution of Marina M is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

RECKLESS DAUGHTER, A PORTRAIT OF JONI MITCHELL

Reckless Daughter, A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, David Yaffe, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2017, 376 pp

 

 

Joni Mitchell's first album was released in March, 1968. I was an off and on student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, dropping out and then enrolling again. I was also singing in various spots around campus, covering songs recorded by Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, already playing Judy Collins' version of "Both Sides Now." So of course, I bought the album the minute it came out and listened to it daily. Eventually a couple friends of mine helped me figure out her open tunings and how to finger the chords.

I finally saw her perform live in the very coffeehouse where I met my first husband and where we would get married in April, 1969. She played "Little Green." Nervous and tongue-tied, I went down to the dressing room and asked her if "Little Green" would be on her upcoming album.

I cannot describe how much all of this influenced my life. Reading this account of her life, which has its problems but is the best biography about Joni so far, was such a personal experience for me that I find it hard to fully express all that it meant to me. I finished it a few weeks ago and am still processing all the memories and feelings stirred up.

If I ever get to that part of my own memoir, having read this year by year, album by album account will help immensely. Thank you David Yaffe.

So I will only say that if you were a woman of heart and mind from the late 60s onward and at any point fell in love with Joni, you will want to read this book. Especially if you lived a life of conflict between your dreams for yourself and the demands made on you as a woman, you will find much to ponder. It is all here.

(Reckless Daughter is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE RISE AND FALL OF DODO

The Rise and Fall of DODO, Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland, William Morrow, 2017, 742 pp

 

 

First thing first: DODO is an acronym for the Department of Diachronic Operations, a fictional US government department of the CIA. It uses witches and time travel to discover how magic disappeared from the world and how to bring it back. Its purpose is to influence world affairs and help keep pace with the country's enemies.

 

Second things second: Who is Nicole Galland and why did Neal co-write a novel with her? She is a historical novelist and had worked with Neal and a horde of others on his series, The Mongoliad (I have not read that). When Neal asked her if she would like to write DODO with him she said yes. In an interview with the two authors she said, "I think I said yes while he was still asking the question."

It turned out to be a match made in speculative/historical fiction heaven. Not that Neal has any trouble writing rip-roaring stories, but Nicole came up with some of the best female characters in the book and, in my opinion, added a certain zing to every aspect of the story.

The plot is so intricate, the book is so delightfully long, that I am not going to attempt a summary. None of the ones I have looked at have begun to capture it. All I will say is that if you love Neal Stephenson, witches, magic, humor, adventure and satire, the time it takes to read The Rise and Fall of DODO will be time well spent.

It reads like a fast paced thriller, is only mildly confusing (on purpose, I think), and all is made clear eventually. I read it in five days during my days of reading whatever I wanted in December. Neal will make you feel smart, as he always does, and Nicole will make you fall in love with all the characters, even the bad ones!

(The Rise and Fall of DODO is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GREEN GIRL

Green Girl, Kate Zambreno, Emergency Press, 2011, 250 pp

 

 

I read this novel in the last month of 2017 for two reasons. One is that it had sat, all that year, in a pile of unread books I own; a pile named in my mind Books I Want To Read Soon. The other reason is that in my memoir I am working through my teen years. Oh, what a murky area that is in my mind. Reading novels about teenage girls in the current century helps me recapture those times of confusion, urgency and uncertainty in my own life.

 

Ruth is a girl on the cusp of womanhood, right about where I was in my college years. She is an American who escaped the downward swirl of her first romantic heartbreak by moving to London. She works as a shop girl in "Horrids," as she calls that famous department store. Her job is to offer samples of a perfume called Desire, a marketing device for an American teenage pop star. She has not resurfaced from the downward swirl but she is trying.

Ruth is beautiful, slender, with long blonde hair. She roams the city feeling the eyes upon her, wondering who she really is. She parties, acts out, makes consecutive bad choices. If you were her mother you would be horrified, anxious, protective, maybe controlling. I am not her mother. I was her in Ann Arbor, MI, pretending to be a college student, partying, trying out different versions of myself, making consecutive bad decisions, some of which I still suffer from today.

The writing is evocative and disjointed. The tone is existential. The images are photographic, like stills from a movie. I felt many emotions, all at war with each other, as I read. 

I recalled writers I have read like Clarice Lispector, Sylvia Plath, Lidia Yuknavitch, and many more. Women who explore and express the tangled, grasping, hesitant poetics of desire while creating a self no one in the modern world can give them because she has not existed before.

I am glad I read it.

(Green Girl is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

SONGWRITERS AND THE TRUTH

I don't usually write much about music here, though it is music that has run through my life in so many ways and saved me in so many ways.
Last night I learned that an old friend of mine whom I have not seen in years has died.
Today I learned that Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer and songwriter for The Cranberries, has died at 46. Too young.
On this day, 89 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr was born. Today we observe the only American holiday that honors an African American. A holiday that took over 15 years to be approved by our government. I find it fitting that it is celebrated on or near the day of his birth rather than his death. What is important is that he was born, he lived, he fought for justice and freedom.
 On Twitter last night I found a tweet from Margaret Atwood saying she was taking a time out from Twitter due to all the attacks against her for a piece she wrote in The Guardian. You can look it up.
The world is so harsh with people who fight for freedom, justice and rights for all human beings.

As I was writing in my journal this morning I felt stunned, sad, beaten down, and words were hard to find. I found the lyrics of a song running through my mind. So I give you those lyrics, written by Stephen Stills when he was in Buffalo Springfield:

For What It Is Worth

Buffalo Springfield

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's s time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Songwriters: Stephen Stills

For What It Is Worth lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

 (How appropriate that our much vaunted technology had to garble my copying and pasting. At least the copyright is there.)

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, 2013, 386 pp

 

 

I read this for my Tiny Book Club. The subtitle is Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. It was a revelation.

 

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a descendant of the Potawatomi Nation, raised on the stories of her tribe. She went to college and trained as a botanist because, as she told her advisor in her freshman intake interview, in answer to his question, "So, why do you want to major in botany?": "I told him that I chose botany because I wanted to learn about why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together."

At that moment came the collision in her life between modern science and indigenous wisdom!

Sweetgrass, called wingaashk in the Potawatomi Nation, is an honored and much used plant. The word means the sweet-smelling hair of Mother Earth. Kimmerer uses it as the metaphor for her book, braiding the stories of her people, the development of herself, and the depredations of the white European settlers whose descendants now rule this land, into a heartfelt plea for more understanding.

I sat down and began to read the book. Within a few pages my mind wandered, I felt bored, I had the urge to turn to social media or play Solitaire. I made it through ten pages. Reading group meeting was only a week away!

This went on for several days. Eventually Ms Kimmerer and I came to an understanding. I would read one chapter a day, she would be granted my attention for that long. It became for me something like the way some people read a devotional piece or Bible excerpt or psalm daily. Amazing changes came over my mind, my perceptions, my world view.

I have seen reviews of this book where readers complain that it is too poetic or even incomprehensible. I get it! This is a voice from another culture attempting to translate a sensibility about the true reciprocative relationship with the natural world that 21st century people will have to adopt if we want to remain living on our very own earth.

Have you ever spent time thinking about life without fossil fuels? I have. How could this world ever give that up? We are addicted to the very practices which are destroying our health and our home.

To read this book, I had to slow down, leave the time stream of my daily life. Eventually I became aware that my perception was changing, that I was observing life differently. I admit I haven't stopped driving my car, but I became aware that due to her way of presenting ideas this is a very subversive book. Exxon, etc, if they knew about it would have it banned. Our current administration would try to have it banned.

Indigenous wisdom is something modern life has lost and buried, but science is not evil. Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent her adult life in efforts to connect the two. Of course, one could not command or force a climate change denier to read it. I think a teacher of biology or botany or social studies could get her class to read it though. A college or university could make it required reading for graduation. 

This morning I saw a video clip on Twitter of a bison crossing a road in a National Park. We could still save ourselves a lot of suffering and this book could well be a how-to manual. Because of reading it I now am aware of and honor the many groups of our indigenous peoples who are doing their utmost to bring back the lost wisdom of the land and plants, who only wish us a long, prosperous, and happy life on Planet Earth.

I recommend, no I urge you, to check out what this book has to offer for the future.

(Braiding Sweetgrass is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ILL WIND

Ill Wind, Nevada Barr, G P Putnam's Sons, 1995, 309 pp

 

 

This was the third mystery by Nevada Barr, all set in United States National Parks. Ranger Anna Pigeon is now posted in Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park located amid the preserved cliff dwellings of the ancient Anasazi native civilization. Those ancestors of the Pueblo Indian vanished in the 12th century BC and left enough mysteries to occupy historians to this day. Barr weaves this into her own mystery.

 

It is summer and week after week park visitors are succumbing to respiratory attacks and having to be rescued by the rangers. One of them dies in the hospital. When Anna's fellow ranger is found dead in one of the cliff dwellings, the FBI arrives in the person of Agent Stanton.

Anna had been forced to work with Stanton in the last book, A Superior Death, where to say that they did not hit it off would be putting it mildly. Now Anna is more haunted than ever by her personal demons and Stanton becomes a good friend to her as they work together to find the killer.

Another of the park personnel is a woman who holds strong beliefs in New Age theories about the Anasazi. A strange phenomenon of mist and winds has been appearing on a weekly basis all summer. This woman is convinced it is being caused by spirits who deplore mankind's depredations around the park, as construction is being done to upgrade some of the park's crumbling infrastructure.

Once again the author combines the internal problems of the National Park's administration as well as the quirks of the Mesa Verde crew and visitors with Anna's prickly personality to create a complex mystery. I have been to the New Mexico section of the cliff dwelling ruins and could picture the locations, the weather and the skies in and under which Anna finds herself.

The book gets off to a jagged start as we meet the characters, not one of which is admirable. We also learn why Anna is there and how her situation has become less stable than ever. The cast of characters seemed larger than in the two earlier books. All of that made for quite a few confusing chapters. I was worried Ill Wind would be one of the duds that mystery series writers sometimes have.

 

Once the murder has been committed though, the story takes off and comes to a stunning conclusion. All the clues were there and I had to admire how she did it. All I will say is that ill wind was man made and justice was done. 

(Ill Wind is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE COLORS OF SPACE

The Colors of Space, Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1963, 190 pp

 

 

This is one of MZB's early books (she began publishing in 1958.) It is a stand alone, not part of any series. Sometimes considered to be a young adult novel, it features a young man just graduated from college.

 

Bart Steele, the recent graduate of the Space Academy on Earth, learns that his father has been murdered but has sent him a message: "Bart, I send money and instructions by my friend. Do as he says. Don't go home, Dad."

The time is far future, space travel is common, but the secret of travel faster than the speed of light is jealously guarded by a non-human race, the Lhari. The pace is relentless and Bart becomes the young man who must wrest the secret from the Lhari by going undercover as one of them.

Though the writing is a bit lame, the story is a fun read with interesting twists. Bart learns that the Lhari are non-violent and peace loving but color blind. His mission is to avert war while learning the big secret without being discovered. What he discovers is the "eighth color." 

If college graduates these days had chances to grow up as fast as Bart had to, who knows what our future would be.

(The Colors of Space is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

JANUARY READING GROUP UPDATE

I did not post a reading group update in December because mostly my reading groups just partied, voted on our favorite reading group book for the year, and did a book exchange. It was fun!

But now it is a New Year and we are all hunkering down to read and discuss. It is a good variety. The Wreath is by an Nobel Prize Winner. Believe it or not, I have never read Dune and I am excited! Miss Burma was on my list of books I wanted to read last year. The Fifth Season was one of my Top 25 Books of 2017 and I convinced The Bookie Babes to try it, though not many of them have ever read fantasy. I hope they don't hate it.


Tiny Book Club:

Molly's Group:

One Book At A Time:

Bookie Babes:

 

What are your groups reading in January?

Tomorrow I will return to reviews of books I read in December.

BOOKS READ IN DECEMBER

Here in the Los Angeles area it is not as cold and shivery as the image above looks nor was it in December, but it seems appropriate for some of the areas where family and friends live. It has been in the mid-70s and sunny lately and I can't remember the last time we had any precipitation.

I had fun with my reading last month, allowing myself plenty of reading time and an almost complete freedom of choice. In the books I traveled in time, across the country and around the world. I enjoyed every book!

Stats: 11 books read. 8 fiction. 7 written by women. 5 written by authors new to me. 3 historical fiction. 3 speculative fiction. 1 mystery. 1 non-fiction. 1 biography. 3 for My Big Fat Reading Project.

Favorites: Manhattan Beach, The Bedlam Stacks, The Rise and Fall of DODO, and The Revolution of Marina M.

I sincerely hope you ended your reading year as happily. With so many wonderful books in the world I am sure 2018 will be a fabulous reading year for all who read books.

TOP BOOKS READ IN 2017

The image above, "borrowed" from Google images and huge thanks to its creator, spoke to me because it is called The Sleepless Reader. I have become someone who can nap any time of the afternoon but cannot always sleep at night. This year I finally faced it and just got up and read on the futon bed in my office until my eyes began to droop.

I had one of the worst years of my life, physically and emotionally, but it was reading that saved me, brought me back to some semblance of wisdom and best of all, informed and educated me. I tried, I really tried, to keep up with the news but that left me feeling powerless and often manipulated. Reading about the past, the present, and the future in books was how I found some kind of ground I could stand on. 

I read 119 books. Three less than last year but almost 2000 more pages because 11 of the books I read were well over 500 pages.

Stats:

Books read: 119. Pages read: 41080. Average pages per day: 113. Average books per week: 2.3.

Fiction: 103

Nonfiction: 16

Written by women: 68

Mystery/thriller: 13

Historical fiction: 19

Fantasy: 5

Speculative/sci-fi: 9

Translated: 5

Biography/memoir: 9

Essays: 3

My Big Fat Reading Project: 43

 

 

My top 25 are my favorite books and as usual I had trouble narrowing the list down to 25, but isn't that just the nature of things? I think I gave less than 3 stars to only a handful of what I read this year. The books were published over a wide range of years, not just in 2017. All of the books on the list have been or will soon be reviewed here on the blog.

 

The List (in the order I read them): 

 

The Nix, Nathan Hill

Version Control, Dexter Palmer

All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders

The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda

The Gods of Tango, Carolina De Robertis

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien

To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey

A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates

White Tears, Hari Kunzru

Grace, Natashia Deon

Little Nothing, Marisa Silver

The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova

The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Sister Golden Hair, Darcey Steinke

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy

The Plague Diaries, Ronlyn Domingue

The Fifth Season, N K Jemison

Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn West

Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan

Occasion For Loving, Nadine Gordimer

The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley

The Rise and Fall of DODO, Neal Stephenson

The Revolution of Marina M, Janet Fitch

 

If I follow your blog, I have read your lists for the year's most loved books. If I don't follow you or you don't have a blog, feel free to let me know of great reads I may have missed in the comments. Thanks to everyone who visits here!  

 

Happy New Year! Let's read our way to a better year.

HOLIDAY GREETINGS

Wishing all my followers, visitors, and those who comment here a wonderful holiday week!

My Christmas cactus bloomed for Thanksgiving this year. It is a new one, only two years old and though I forgot to take a picture, it looked somewhat like this one. 

I am taking a blogging vacation in favor of reading as many more books as I can before the year ends. I will be back in the New Year with my list of what were my Top 25 best books read this year. Then probably daily reviews to catch up on what I read in December.

I am also taking a break from the news, social media, and all things horrible and upsetting. It will all still be there when I return, I am sure. I feel chagrined at the growing tones of hatred and conflict and wish to spend my energy thinking about how most people are basically good and remembering that politics, war, and arguing has never solved much of anything.

Random acts of kindness and understanding will be my operating basis and my New Year's Resolution.

May creativity and clear thinking be what brings us through these times!

THE BEDLAM STACKS

The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley, Bloomsbury, 2017, 328 pp

 

 

A wondrous and fun read! What is it about British women who write fantasy-type novels? Something special, that is for sure.

 

Merrick Treymayne has been an intrepid agent for the East India Company but now he is laid up in the family home with a bum leg. (Thanks to Shadow of the Moon I was grooved in on the circumstances of that august company in 1859.) His former boss at the India Office recalls him for an expedition to fetch quinine from the Amazonian region of Peru.

Clem Markham, based on a historical figure, and Merrick's best friend, is to lead the expedition. He is one of those gung-ho types and convinces his friend that he can make it in the jungle despite the leg. Merrick does but his leg hurts the whole time and he is forever grousing about it.

The best character in this story full of amazing characters, is Rafael, a Peruvian Catholic priest. He is also the preserver of Andean spiritual traditions and cares for the markayuq: wooden statues which are considered to be actual people turned to stone, can move around in mysterious ways, and are guardians of sacred spaces.

(OK, so in the two volumes I've read so far of N K Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy, The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate, there are creatures called Stone Eaters, humans who turn to stone! Is this a thing? I have not come across this in any book before.)

 

Raphael is himself afflicted with a degenerative condition that gives him bouts of unconsciousness lasting anywhere from hours to months, is very old, very wise, has known two ancestors of Merrick's who also made expeditions to Peru, and becomes Merrick's best friend ever.

 

Bedlam is a village, also called New Bethlehem. The author's imagination and world-building skills make it one the most astonishing creations I have ever found in fantasy.

The novel is also historical fiction because the East India Company did send expeditions to Peru to obtain quinine from the bark of cinchona trees, desperately needed to treat its workers in the East who suffered from malaria. So there is another whole plot concerning the dastardly practices of people trying to bring cuttings of the tree out of Peru and the natives who seek to prevent this First World rip-off of their natural resources.

By now, I hope you are dying to read the book and I hope you do. I must warn you that as thrilling as it is, it does not move at a thriller pace. The opening section at Merrick's home is confusing in the extreme. You just have to go with it because all becomes, mostly, clear by the end. The bits that remain mysterious are lost in the mists of time and explain why world travelers always put Machu Picchu on their bucket lists.

(The Bedlam Stacks is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MISS JANE

Miss Jane, Brad Watson, W W Norton & Company, 2016, 279 pp

 

 

I recommended this fine novel to one of my reading groups and all but one member in a mixed group of men and women found it to be great. I don't remember how I heard of it but it was an exciting find.

 

A new genre, possibly named by Nicola Griffith, is called Crip Lit. The name makes me cringe but it is a genre that brings awareness of what it is like to be physically compromised. Brad Watson's story is based on his great-aunt who was born in rural, early 20th century Mississippi with a genital birth defect.

Jane is a late-life child of an impoverished farming couple. Brought into the world by a midwife who then called in the local doctor, the infant is an abomination in the eyes of her mother. Though the mother follows the doctor's instructions in how to care for the baby she can never give her heart to the girl. Jane gets whatever love she has from her older sister, her father and the doctor. 

The story of her long life is sad but she grows into a woman who overcomes her inability to have children or a husband by finding connections to the natural world. In some ways it is tough to read about her condition and what it put her through but the writing is so beautiful, evoking life in the South and moving along at such a soothing pace that I was captivated.

If not for her father, her sister and the intelligent and caring doctor, Jane would have led a horrible existence, possibly even died as a baby. One could say that might have been a blessing. The story shows however, that there are many ways to live, even find love, joy and strength despite unspeakable suffering and adversity.

Earlier this year I read Little Nothing by Marisa Silver, a novel with a similar theme about a girl who was a dwarf. From both books I was able to find empathy for people with major physical imperfections. I must admit that I am no better than most people and have always had an aversion to individuals with disabilities, whether physical or mental.

The truth is that no human being is perfect. I thank the authors who have given me insight into human beings who have been shunned by most of the rest of us for all of mankind's existence.

(Miss Jane is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

OCCASION FOR LOVING

Occasion For Loving, Nadine Gordimer, The Viking Press, 1963, 308 pp

 

 

I wasn't sure I was in the mood for a Nadine Gordimer novel but it was up next on the 1963 list of My Big Fat Reading Project. I opened the book and was immediately swept away by this story of an interracial love affair set deep in the days of Apartheid in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

Jessie and Tom Stillwell are white liberals who do not countenance the "color bar." In fact, they claim not to see color. They live in a somewhat ramshackle fashion with four children, he a professor and she rather a job hopper but always working to support causes. When they agree to take in a young couple as house guests all of their views are challenged.

Boaz Davis is a frustrated composer turned musicologist, returning from Europe with his new wife Ann, to conduct research on Native South African music. He is an old friend of Tom Stillwell's so there seems to be no reason not to take him in. However, Ann is a young, free spirited woman who lives for pleasure and excitement with little regard for consequences.

Before too long, Ann engages in an affair with the well-known African artist Gideon Shibalo. The danger and upset she brings upon her husband and the Stillwell family is the plot. It is illegal for whites and Blacks to have a sexual relationship and the centuries of taboo behind the law make it necessary that the couple only meet in certain fringe areas of the city where the law is unlikely to find them.

Nadine Gordimer's writing is crystalline. I always have to readjust my reading for her. It is as though she chooses every word, constructs every sentence, in a deliberate attempt to pinpoint exactly what she wants to convey. As a reader, I cannot just cruise along on story but am pulled into her worldview and mannerisms. So I surrender and it is pure pleasure for me.

Having read much in the past two years about the Civil Rights movement in America, I found reading about the South African conflict fascinating. In America we brought slaves from Africa to help build our nation. In South Africa, the British and Dutch colonized a nation and enslaved the natives. So the insanity and inhumanity of racism, the laws and taboos, the economic justifications while similar, include subtle differences between the two countries.

If you saw the 2016 movie, Loving, you have an idea of the havoc that ensued when an interracial couple tried to live in the pre-Civil Rights times of mid 20th century America. In Occasion For Loving, Nadine Gordimer depicts not only the struggles of her lovers but also the effects on the whites who attempt to practice their liberal views. This is not so much a political novel as a personal look at the demands of one's moral precepts.

I can't recommend the book enough. It is Nadine Gordimer's third novel. I have read her two earlier ones and in Occasion For Loving she took a giant leap into the subject about which she would write for the rest of her life and for which she won the Nobel Prize.

MANHATTAN BEACH

Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan, Scribner, 2017, 433 pp

 

 

I have long been a fan of Jennifer Egan. She always does something different. This time she has written historical fiction with a noir/crime slant. Still her concerns remain intact. Those are crime and redemption as well as the consequences of decisions made and actions taken. Hovering over those concerns are her clear-eyed view of the way historical changes impact the lives of individuals.

 

Manhattan Beach opens with a scene featuring the three main characters of the book, Anna Kerrigan, her father Eddie, and nightclub owner Dexter Styles. It is some time after the stock market crash of 1929. Anna is eleven and worships her father, who often takes her with him when he makes his "business" calls. This time they call on the very rich Dexter Styles and Anna perceives a new nervousness in Eddie.

It is a startling opening chapter in which the reader is given only glimpses into what is going on because we see it primarily through her eleven-year-old eyes. Though she is intelligent, perceptive, and feisty, there is plenty she doesn't know about her father and about life.

Most of the rest of the novel is Anna's story with Eddie's and Dexter's woven in. We learn how Anna felt when her father disappeared and how she carved out a life for herself, away from her long suffering mother and her crippled sister, both of whom she also loves deeply. 

By the time WWII begins she is working in the Brooklyn Naval Yard and still bucking anything that could hold her back. Against all odds she becomes a diver, working to maintain and repair ships for the war effort. She also becomes involved with Dexter Styles again and the stories of these three characters circle around each other.

I have read my share of historical fiction but Egan puts a new twist on the genre. The historical bits are woven in like the faintest thread in this tapestry of lives. In fact that thread is so faint that I sometimes felt adrift, but it did not matter because it is the characters and the ways their lives connect that make the novel.

Underlying all that happens to Anna, Eddie and Mr Styles is the world of organized crime, whether it is playing the stock market, doing the dirty work for union bosses, or marrying into a banking family. Anna is a shining beacon of a female. Not a moll, not a floozy, and not a basically nice but defeated woman like her mother, but the kind of female any self-respecting woman would like to be.

Everyone in this novel has secrets, including Anna, and all are crippled in some way because of them. As Anna finds her way back to the dad she had convinced herself she did not love anymore, all those secrets are revealed. Somehow Jennifer Egan makes the novel deeply sad and joyfully alive at the same time.

(Manhattan Beach is currently available in hardcover on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE OBELISK GATE

The Obelisk Gate, N K Jemisin, Orbit, 2016, 391 pp

 

 

In the second book of her Broken Earth trilogy, for which N K Jemisin won the Hugo Award for the second year in a row, we continue to follow the characters from the first book, The Fifth Season. A minor character from the first book becomes a major one.

 

Essun and her daughter Nassun, who were cruelly separated in the earlier book, alternate chapters. If you have ever had a child taken from you, this story will rebreak your heart. The determination of both to find each other in the aftermath of the chaos which began in The Fifth Season, is the emotional heart of the story.

In addition, more of the background to the world of The Stillness is made known to the point where it became crystal clear that this is one of the farthest-into-the-future worlds I have come across in any kind of fiction, ever! Positively chilling to imagine that the forces which are, whether we believe it or not, destroying our earth could lead to what the author posits in these books.

I had a little trouble with the voices. The mother Essun's story is told in second person, her daughter Nassun's in third person, and then there is another third person voice who is not identified. For many pages, this was freaking me out but finally I just went with it. I am hoping it all becomes clear in the final volume. As in the first book, more and more is revealed about what is going on, what happened in the past, and which characters are working for good, which for evil.

I admire N K Jemisin for being so out there with this series. I imagine she wondered if what she was writing would be read by anyone at all, yet still she went ahead and told the story she had to tell. I think one could read these books on a couple different levels, either for the adventure of the tale and/or for its parallels to the world today. In any case, her bravery as a writer paid off. Two Hugo Awards, almost 2000 reviews on Goodreads, and an overall rating of 4.36 stars. 

She also violated every taboo against mixing fantasy, science fiction, and magic in one story. I find that exhilarating. If you love any of those genres, you will love The Broken Earth trilogy. I can't wait to read the final volume, The Stone Sky. Then I will have to decide whether I should read all three books again or read her earlier books.

(The Obelisk Gate is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)