November, 2020 Readings: "Since golden October declined into sombre November..." T.S. Eliot

DiskuteraLiterary Snobs

Bara medlemmar i LibraryThing kan skriva.

November, 2020 Readings: "Since golden October declined into sombre November..." T.S. Eliot

1CliffBurns
nov 1, 2020, 11:38 am

Gotta up my game in the next two months if I want to read 100 books in 2020.

I'm surrounded by terrific books and have some time on my hands--let's get down to it, Burns.

I have a graphic novel on the "Peterloo Massacre", a pile of excellent sci fi, a mystery or three...

What's on your TBR stack this month?

2guido47
nov 1, 2020, 11:45 am

As I mentioned else ware, All my Jack Vance and all the Culture novels of banks

3mejix
Redigerat: nov 17, 2020, 12:45 am

Finished Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl last night. The book is mostly about Carrie Brownstein's work with the band Sleater Kinney. I only knew her from Portlandia. I didn't expect her to be funny but I thought she would be warmer and have some wit. Maybe she was afraid she was not going to be taken seriously. Sometimes she sounds like a hypersensitive grad student, sometimes like an adolescent very much in love with her pain. She speaks about music with the intensity of the parents in that Portlandia sketch that are questioning the music their children are exposed to in pre-school. Clearly Carrie thinks highly of Sleater Kinney.

She mentions her anorexic mother leaving the family but then avoids the subject. Why bring it up in the first place? Seems like the event explains everything, including the title of the book.

4CliffBurns
Redigerat: nov 4, 2020, 9:16 pm

PETERLOO: WITNESSES TO A MASSACRE by Polyp/Schlunke/Poole.

A writer, historian and artist combine to create a graphic novel devoted to remembering a tragedy back in 1819. Local people gather in a field outside Manchester to protest their lack of political representation and city merchants deputize special constables and enlist a detachment of cavalry to break up the meeting. Nearly 20 people die, run down or slashed with sabers.

The event is lost to the pages of history until very recently when, finally, the massacre is acknowledged.

Well-researched and quite powerful.

Recommended.

5RobertDay
nov 5, 2020, 4:38 pm

>4 CliffBurns: We were taught about Peterloo in school, though that's almost as lost in history now as the event itself. Mike Leigh's 2018 film is worth seeing if you can find it.

6CliffBurns
nov 5, 2020, 5:16 pm

Dying to see the Leigh film (love his work) but it doesn't seem to be available on DVD (for a decent price) this side of the big pond. Maybe I can find some streaming service carrying it, like Kanopy or Criterion.

7CliffBurns
nov 13, 2020, 11:09 am

Matt Haig's HOW TO STOP TIME.

There are a few humans who, unbeknownst to others, live for hundreds of years, existing alongside the rest of us, moving on when people notice they haven't aged.

I would call this a clever, fun read, light fantasy.

Not perfect but enjoyable.

8CliffBurns
nov 14, 2020, 10:35 pm

END ZONE by Don DeLillo.

Dare I say it: this DeLillo offering (from the early 1970s) is actually fairly accessible (compared to other books in his bibliography), the humor as sharp-toothed as the day it was written.

A misanthrope haunts a small West Texas college football team, his droll observations bringing to mind a nihilistic Holden Caulfield.

Recommended.

9BookConcierge
nov 15, 2020, 9:08 pm


Thirteen Moons – Charles Frazier
Audiobook performed by Will Patton
5*****

Frazier’s sophomore effort returns to the rural Carolina landscape, covering nearly a century from the 1820s to the very beginning of the 20th century. The tale is told by Will Cooper, who as a twelve-year-old orphan was sent into the wilderness as a “bound boy” – beholden to a serve as the lone shopkeeper of a remote Indian Trading Post in exchange for a small stipend. He was sent from his uncle’s home with a horse, a key, an old map, and his father’s knife. He is befriended by Bear, a Cherokee chief, and develops a strong relationship with the father figure.

What a marvelous story, and beautifully told. Will’s life is full of adventure and opportunities, as well as peril and mistakes. At the outset of his journey he begins the habit of keeping journals and it is these documents that help record his extraordinary ordinary life. At a tender age, Will falls head-over-heels in love with the enigmatic Claire, who is the powerful Featherstone’s girl. He develops skills as a trader, negotiator, and entrepreneur. He reads voraciously and becomes a lawyer. He meets, and either befriends or makes enemies of, a variety of famous individuals, including Andrew Jackson and Davey Crockett. He finagles and trades and manages to kluge together quite a large parcel of land. He makes and loses and remakes several fortunes. He seeks the counsel of Bear and also of Granny Squirrel, a medicine woman who is said to be over 200 years old, and whose spells cannot be broken.

Frazier paints this time and place so vividly, I felt transported to that time. I could smell the pines, hear bacon fat sizzling in a pan, feel the chill of a winter morning or the warmth of a welcome fire, taste the delicious stews and French wines. Here are a couple of memorable passages:
I slept on the open ground and watched the enormous sky off and on between brief bouts of sleep. It was a dark night, without any moon at all and utterly cloudless. The air was dry and the stars were sharp points in the dark and there seemed to be a great many more of them than I ever remembered seeing before. And then it came to my attention that it was a night of meteor showers. Spouts and shoots of light, both thin and broad, arced overhead.

The cool damp air smelled of wet growing leaves and rotted dead leaves. A redtail hawk sat in a Fraser fir. It stared my way and shook water out of its feathers. It spread its wings and its tail, and it bowed toward me – or lunged, perhaps. I thought there was recognition in the look it gave me, and I put an arm straight into the air as a salute, for I guessed the hawk to be a representative of the mountains themselves, an ambassador charged with greeting me upon my return.

She had beautiful soft hair the color of a dove’s breast and green eyes and creamy long legs that turned under into unfortunately long narrow feet, but she had a behind with curves to break your heart. At least, they broke mine.

Will Cooper’s America is long gone but vividly brought to mind by Frazier’s skill. On finishing, I find that I want to start over again at the beginning, savoring every word.

Will Patton is fast becoming one of my favorite audiobook narrators. He does a marvelous job with Frazier’s text, bringing the many characters to life.

10CliffBurns
Redigerat: nov 16, 2020, 1:29 pm

Peter Gent's memoir, THE LAST MAGIC SUMMER.

Gent authored NORTH DALLAS FORTY and THE FRANCHISE (an even better book, in my view).

In the summer of 1993 Gent coaches his son's high school age baseball team. Baseball is how father and son bonded after Gent split with his wife in a nasty divorce. The book features some drama, a few touching moments, but it's nowhere near as good as his fictional efforts.

11mejix
nov 17, 2020, 12:44 am

Year of the Monkey by Patty Smith. 2016 was a rough year for Patty and she dealt with it by traveling. The book was ok. Kind of rambling, kind of experimental. More successful than M Train in my estimation. It was nice to listen to her in the audiobook version while working. Patti Smith is good company.

12BookConcierge
nov 18, 2020, 5:15 pm

The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead
Audiobook performed by J D Jackson, and the author
5*****

In the 1960s Jim Crow South, a young man on his way to college makes a life-changing mistake and winds up in the notoriously draconian Nickel Academy reform school.

Elwood is a marvelous character. Abandoned by his parents, and raised by his grandmother, he’s developed a strong moral compass. He studies hard, has a mentor / champion in one of his teachers, works at local business, and listens to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches for inspiration. He can hold his own against bullies and believes that it is his duty to cry out and try to stop injustice.

But this strength of character goes against everything the leaders of Nickel Academy want in the boys under their control. And they will break Elwood if it’s the last thing they (or he) do.

I was completely engrossed in this story. I loved how the relationships between the boys at Nickel developed, how they helped one another even when they could not understand one another. Turner is a particular friend, despite their different viewpoints and philosophies on how to succeed and “graduate” from Nickel. Turner is a schemer, a cynic, and a realist; he KNOWS “the man” will get him at the first opportunity and is determined to stay out of anything that can get him into trouble. Elwood, on the other hand, believes that doing the right thing (like stopping a fight among other boys, or reporting corruption and mistreatment) will be the ticket to release. Turner cannot believe that Elwood can be so naïve as to think that anything he says will make a difference. Elwood cannot understand how Turner can turn his back on injustice.

The last part of the novel moves forward in time when one of the boys has grown up and is living in New York. But while he has achieved a measure of success, he is still haunted by what happened in his youth. Whitehead’s use of this structure made the pivotal scene all the more impactful. I literally gasped.

J.D. Jackson does a stupendous job narrating the audiobook. He is a skilled voice artist and became Elwood and Turner.

13RobertDay
nov 18, 2020, 5:28 pm

>12 BookConcierge: This is currently being serialised on BBC Radio 4. It is not a broadcast of the audiobook, but a feature created for the BBC, read by Rashan Stone.

14CliffBurns
nov 18, 2020, 9:58 pm

NICKEL BOYS is good but it doesn't hold a candle to UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.

Colson Whitehead is a wonder.

15BookConcierge
nov 20, 2020, 8:37 am


Presumed Innocent – Scott Turow
Book on CD performed by Edward Herrmann
4****

From the book jacket: Rusty Sabich, Kindle County’s longtime chief deputy prosecutor, has been asked to investigate the rape and murder of one of his colleagues. Carolyn Polhemus was strong, sensuous, and magnetic; she was also clearly ambitious and quite possibly unscrupulous. Her murder has been an embarrassment to Rusty’s boss, Raymond Horgan, who is facing a serious challenge in the upcoming election and who looks to Rusty for a fast solution to the case that will help save him politically. What Horgan doesn’t know is that, only a few months before she was murdered, Carolyn Polhemus and Rusty Sabich were lovers.

My reactions
This is book # 1 in the Kindle County Legal Thriller series. It’s a fast-paced story with several twists and turns and lots of political and personal intrigue to keep the reader guessing and turning pages. I don’t go to many movies, but I did see this one, starring Harrison Ford as Rusty. So, I knew where things were headed going into the novel. Still, Turow’s tight writing gave me the sense of suspense and intrigue and impending doom that I expect from a mystery/thriller like this. final reveal is a bit of a stunner.

Edward Hermann did a marvelous job of narrating the audio. He set a good pace and kept the story moving.

16BookConcierge
nov 20, 2020, 8:38 am

>14 CliffBurns: Good to know. Haven't read The Underground Railroad .. yet.

17mejix
Redigerat: nov 23, 2020, 10:44 pm

I'm about to finish Educated: A Memoir by Tamara Westover. With all the news about people living in alternate realities I wasn't sure if this was the right moment to read about growing up in a survivalist family in Idaho. The book got darker and more violent than I expected so there's been a lot of cringing while reading. It really is an incredible story though, and it is very very well written. The book has provoked a lotta thinking so maybe it was the right time to read this after all.

18CliffBurns
nov 24, 2020, 11:28 pm

#17--My wife and mother-in-law read that book and thoroughly enjoyed it (though it was harrowing).

Just wrapped up BEAUTIFUL YOU by Chuck Palahniuk.

How did I put it in my "Book Journal"?

Typical Palahniuk--an ugly, ultra-dystopic view of our species, offensive and over-the-top.

Not entirely successful but thoroughly obnoxious.

That about sums it up.

19mejix
nov 25, 2020, 12:04 am

>18 CliffBurns: Harrowing is right. But yeah, a very good book.

20BookConcierge
nov 25, 2020, 9:22 am


Doña Barbara – Rómulo Gallegos
3.5***

This classic of South American literature was first published in 1929 and virtually forgotten by US readers. It first came to my attention through Public Broadcasting System’s Great American Read program in 2019.

It is an epic tale of two cousins who are fighting for control of a vast estate / ranch in Venezuela. Doña Barbara is beautiful and powerful. At her core she hates men for the way she was used and abused as a young girl. She has earned a reputation as a witch and is widely known for using, abusing and tossing aside her lovers as whim and her needs dictate. She fits perfectly into the wild, untamed landscape of the llano (prairie) and the surrounding swamps, bogs and jungles.

In contrast, we have Santos Luzardo, who, while born on the plains has long left for an education in the city. Now he returns to reclaim his inheritance – land and cattle. But he retains the manners and customs of his city education. Their battle is both cerebral (who can outwit the other?), and physical, involving seduction, chicanery, violence, gamesmanship, cunning and some magic as well.

The novel is an early example of magical realism and Gallegos weaves together adventure, fantasy, and romance. He uses vivid description and outlandish storytelling (I loved the one-eyed monster alligator!) to bring this era to life. The various outdoor scenes were particularly exciting – I could practically taste the grit, feel the dust in my nostrils, hear the roar of stampeding herd, and smell the smoke of an uncontrolled wildfire.

If there was an element that made me downgrade my rating it was the story of Marisela, and the way that Doña Barbara came to terms with that character. It was rather melodramatic and very soap-opera-ish.

In the introduction, Larry McMurtry writes: “Doña Barbara is, in her way, a tragic heroine, seeking to attract a decent lover, while giving herself day and night to very coarse lovers indeed. She is, however very vividly drawn, a Bovary of the llano.”

21BookConcierge
nov 26, 2020, 10:35 am


The War of the Worlds – H G Wells
Digital audiobook performed by Christopher Hurt
4****

Classic science-fiction horror. Residents of a small community outside London are puzzled and curious about the “meteor” that has landed in a nearby field. But it’s clearly a manufactured rather than a natural object. And they notice that there is an effort – from the inside – to open the vessel. Thus begins the horror that becomes an invasion from Mars.

I knew the basic premise going in. I knew about the Orson Welles’ radio broadcast that caused panic (despite an introduction advising that this was a dramatic reading of a work of fiction). But I’d never read the original.

The first-person narrative lends a sense of urgency and immediacy to the narrative. The reader feels completely immersed in the story. Wells includes significant tension; while there are a few moments of respite, I found it a very anxiety-producing read. I like that he leaves much to the reader’s imagination, which heightens the suspense.

Christopher Hurt did a fine job narrating the audio book. There’s something about that clipped British accent that just draws me in.

22CliffBurns
nov 27, 2020, 2:08 pm

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PECULIAR PROTOCOLS by Nicholas Meyer.

Meyer has now written four Sherlock Holmes-related novels. THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION, which he adapted into a film starring Alan Arkin and Nicol Williamson, is still the best. He is a sincere fan of the Holmes canon and for that I'm grateful (there are far too many bad knock-offs).

In this instance, Holmes and Watson are trying to discover the source of the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" before that historic fraud inflames the world against the Jewish people.

The book has its moments but I found Holmes' love interest unconvincing and Watson more than a trifle dull.

Three * * * out of 5.

23BookConcierge
nov 29, 2020, 10:41 am


Caroline: Little House Revisited – Sarah Miller
Book on CD performed by Elizabeth Marvel
3.5***

Readers familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, will find this very familiar. Miller chooses to retell Wilder’s stories for an adult audience, focusing on Laura’s mother, Caroline.

I really enjoyed this work of historical fiction. Miller does not gloss over the very real challenges of pioneer life – the lack of supplies, or routine comforts we take for granted. There were many elements in this part of their lives to produce anxiety and fear, and I can understand Caroline’s perspective, given her limited knowledge, though I cringed at the her attitudes towards the Native American population. I think Miller does a reasonable job of balancing Caroline’s prejudice with Charles’s stead non-judgmental approach (and Laura’s excitement about a new experience).

Caroline is a strong women, with a certain confidence and a practical approach. She is certain her husband will see them through, but sometimes fails to see her own strength – physically, mentally and emotionally. Also, she is fiercely protective of her young girls (when they set out, Mary is five and Laura only three years old). She reminds herself that she must protect and shield her children, refusing to show her own fear lest she further frighten them. Miller does not gloss over the very real challenges of pioneer life – the lack of supplies, or routine comforts we take for granted.

Elizabeth Marvel does a fine job narrating the audiobook. I really felt as if I were listening to Caroline relate her own reminiscences of that time.

24CliffBurns
nov 29, 2020, 8:20 pm

Last book of November, Jonathan Lethem's THE ARREST.

Like Emily St. John Mandel's STATION ELEVEN, Lethem's novel posits a future where technology has failed, replaced by a pre-modern society where humans are forced to fall back on ancient methods and practices to survive.

I liked STATION ELEVEN more but Lethem is no slouch when it comes to dystopia.

Recommended.

25BookConcierge
nov 30, 2020, 9:39 pm


Fraternity – Diane Brady
3***

Not sure this is really a subtitle, but printed on the cover is this statement: In 1968, a visionary priest recruited 20 black men to the College of the Holy Cross and changed their lives and the course of history.

This was a very interesting look at how their experience at Holy Cross influenced these young men. Their time in college coincided with my own years at Marquette University (another Jesuit institution). The historical events depicted were familiar to me and really took me back to those days.

Brady focuses on seven of the recruits: Stanley Grayson, Gilbert Hardy, Eddie Jenkins, Edward P Jones, Arthur Martin, Clarence Thomas and Theodore Wells. All but one of these men went on to law school and had distinguished careers. Clarence Thomas, of course, is now a U.S. Supreme Court justice. The lone non-lawyer is Edward P Jones, who penned the Pulitzer-prize-winning The Known World and is a professor at Georgetown University (yet another Jesuit institution).

But the person who really stands out in this tale is Rev. John Brooks, the priest who recruited the students, fought for funds, mentored them, championed their causes, and kept them engaged and focused on the goal – a sterling education that would give them the boost they needed to succeed.