Cherokee America - Margaret Verble

Cherokee America is one of those rare novels that capture a place and a time so well that reading the book feels a little like what time travel must be like. In this instance, the place is the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma, the time is 1875, and the book is about a mixed-race family trying to walk both sides of the line that marked the racial divides of the late nineteenth century. 

Cherokee America and her family are the survivors of a people long accustomed to having the United States government snatch from them anything it has a use for, be it their property or their very lives. By 1875, many on the reservation have grown a little complacent about their situation, but people like Check (as she has come to be called) know better. They understand that little has really changed and that their security is best protected by not giving the local marshal and his deputies any excuse for coming on the reservation in the first place. But the new judge and his men are always looking for a reason to interfere with reservation law enforcement – and if not given a legitimate excuse, they are certainly capable of creating one for themselves.

Cherokee America is long, complicated story about the generational relationships of three reservation families: The Singers (of which Check is the matriarch), the Corderys, and the Bushyheads.  The members and hired help of the three families interact so often and in so many different combinations that the two most important pages in Cherokee America may well be the ones used for the book’s “Cast of Characters,” a family tree of sorts that helps the reader keep all the players straight. I can’t, in fact, imagine anyone enjoyably reading this one without frequent reference to those two pages.

Check is married to Andrew, a white man on his death bed, and for Check, her five sons, and their hired help, life is pretty much on hold until Andrew’s passing. But on hold does not mean that young men are not going to get up to their usual mischief in the meantime – with not unexpected, but serious, repercussions. These people, whether related by blood or not, are family and what is good for one of them is good for all of them. Andrew’s funeral party is a perfect reflection of daily life on the reservation:

            “For after the ground was packed, the son of the most famous Cherokee preacher prayed over his grave, first in the native language and then in English. Ceremonial smoke floated from small fires set by family groups. On a spot southeast of the bare earth, a few men and women danced to a chant. Others in the party included white frontier entrepreneurs, former slaves, and more than one man who’d escaped from the law in the United States. But mostly the mourners were a large group of mixed-blood people who shared a common history. They were neither Indian nor white, but both. And uniquely American.”

Margaret Verble

But how much longer will they be able to protect themselves from outsiders who want what they have and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. After a young Indian girl suddenly disappears, an important member of the Cherokee Nation is murdered, and two white men are thought to be involved, Judge Isaac Parker (who came to be known as “the hanging judge”) is eager to use this excuse to extend his territorial control into the reservation itself. But the Singers, the Corderys, and the Bushyheads just might have something to say about that.

Bottom Line: Margaret Verble, author of Cherokee Nation, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and although the events of the novel are entirely fictional, the novel is loosely based upon members of her own family. Interestingly, one of the book’s more colorful characters is based upon the real-life grandmother of Will Rogers. Verble often uses humor to portray the deep connections between people and those places whose loss they mourn - and the other places they fight to keep. This one takes a little work (remember that “Cast of Characters” previously mentioned) but it’s worth the effort.

How to Stop Time - Matt Haig

I have been a fan of serious time travel fiction (an oxymoron, I know) for a long time, but these days the genre seems to have morphed into some kind of romance novel/time travel novel combination so I’ve tended to read less and less of it. But I figured if I can’t find a time travel novel I want to read right now, why not one about the slowest kind of time travel possible - a book about a man who has lived for more than four centuries and is still going strong. That’s the premise of Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, a novel that mostly works but at heart is really another romance novel. 

As the novel opens, Tom Hazard has moved back to London after a long time away and is interviewing for a history teacher job at a private high school. Tom, though, finds it a bit difficult to concentrate on the interview after the school’s young French teacher catches his eye. That’s not too unusual or surprising a reaction from a healthy 41-year-old man like Tom. But the truth is that Tom is not 41 years old; he is 439 years old, and the London he has been walking through all morning bears little resemblance to the city he left behind so long ago. 

Tom has only recently (recently in terms of his true age) learned that there are many others out there like him, people who have lived by their wits for centuries. Tom, a man who sailed with Captain Cook, worked at the Globe Theatre with Shakespeare, and was introduced to the Bloody Mary by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, has had to run for his own life more than once after superstitious locals noticed that he was not aging. Now he has the support of the Albatross Society, a group whose purpose is to keep the secrets of people like Tom. But unfortunately for Tom, the number one rule of the Albatross Society is a simple one: Never, ever, fall in love.

Matt Haig

Matt Haig uses numerous (maybe I should say countless) flashbacks to tell Tom’s story. That is, of course, the most obvious way to approach a story like this one, but it should have worked much better than it did in this case. The problem here is that there are so many flashbacks that they chop the present-day story into such tiny bites that they just barely move the segment along before another, longer flashback begins. And that can – and did – get very frustrating.  

Bottom Line: How to Stop Time is romantic science fiction that touches lightly, very lightly at that, on a few historical eras and events. Even at its climax it is difficult to believe that anything bad will really happen to Tom or those close to him. It’s not that kind of book, and it isn’t intended to be. I do see that How to Stop Time is soon to be a “major motion picture” starring one of my favorite actors, Benedict Cumberbatch, and I suspect that it will make an entertaining film.

Beautiful Signed First Edition of James Lee Burke's "The Glass Rainbow" - $2.99

I can't remember the last time before today that I purchased a book at a Goodwill Store - but today's buy was a doozy. 

I have been reading and collecting James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books since the beginning. How long ago was that, you ask? Well, long enough for Mr. Burke to age rather gracefully from the photo on the back of the very first Robicheaux book (Neon Rain) to the Western cowboy look on the back of the 2010 book (The Glass Rainbow) that I purchased today. (If Mr. Burke's latest books feature recent photos, the man has not aged much since 2010.)

Author Photo on Back of The Neon Rain  (1987)

Author Photo on Back of The Glass Rainbow (2010)

Now for the best part. I already had a pristine first edition copy of The Glass Rainbow and I almost walked away from the store without even picking up the copy they had on the books rack. But curiosity got the best of me, as it usually does, and I decided to take a quick peek at it. And that's when I noticed that this one was a signed copy originally sold by Faulkner House Books of New Orleans on July 10, 2010. Inside the book was a bookmark from the store and the original receipt for $32.49, including $6.50 shipping to Houston. (Faulkner House Books is housed in the one-time home of William Faulkner and was opened on the author's birthday a few years ago.)

Dust Jacket

James Lee Burke Autograph & Store Bookmark

This is the best find I've had in a while but it makes me wonder why and how the book ended up being donated to a charity shop. I suspect it's another case of someone's children disposing of a parent's "junk," something I've run into several times over the years in these shops. The takeaway here is to document those things of value well enough that your children or other heirs do not destroy them or give them away because they appear to have no monetary or sentimental value. Books do not strike everyone as being things of value. We know that they are valuable for a lot of reasons not exclusive to monetary value; nonreaders don't have a clue. 

The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - The Guardian

Britain's The Guardian newspaper has an interesting article titled "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century" that caught my eye this morning. Essentially, of course, it is a list of what the newspaper considers to be the best books of the past two decades, meaning that something like 80% of the books on today's list are likely to be gone by the turn of the 22nd century.

The entire list can be found here. It's beautifully done, so take a look at it.

Of the Top 10, I've only read number 2, Marilynne Robinson's 2004 novel Gilead. That this one is on the list is not much of a surprise because it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. I am a bit surprised that it rates this highly, though. From The Guardian: "Robinson’s meditative, deeply philosophical novel is told through letters written by elderly preacher John Ames in the 1950s to his young son who, when he finally reaches an adulthood his father won’t see, will at least have this posthumous one-sided conversation."

I seem to have done much better with the second ten on the list, having read six of them starting with number 11, My Brilliant Friend by the mysterious Italian author who uses the pen name Elena Ferrante. My Brilliant Friend is part of a four-book series that kept me reading for several weeks and was one of my favorite books of 2012. The other five I read were: Number 12, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America (2004); Number 13, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (2001); Number 17, Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006); Number 19, Mike Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003); and Number 20, Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (2013).

Of the next twenty (31-40), I've read only three: Number 22, Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013), Number 30, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016), and Number 40, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Dideon (2005). The Whitehead book is one of my all-time favorites and it, of course, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017. I still think about that one sometimes because of the audacious approach Whitehead uses to make his completely serious points about slavery and its aftermath. It is brilliant.

Again, of the next twenty (41-60), I've only managed three of them: Number 41, Ian McEwan's Atonement (2001), Number 42, Moneyball by Michael Lewis (2010), and Number 51, Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn (2009). These three fall right into my wheelhouse because I'm a huge fan of both McEwan and Tóibín and I'm always on the lookout for a good baseball book, especially something like this groundbreaking one from Lewis. Really, what surprises me here is that a baseball book showed up at all on a "Best of" booklist in a British newspaper. That's kind of cool.

I didn't even do that well on the next twenty (61-80), having read only one of them and abandoned one other that only irritated me more with every page I turned. The one I read is: Number 64, Stephen King's wonderful book on writing appropriately titled On Writing (2000). The one that I found unreadable enough to give up on it despite all its hype was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. (That one is my candidate to be the first one to drop off the list next time its updated.)

And then there are the final twenty - and I can add only one of them to my list of ones read. It's The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell   (2000) which came in at Number 94.  I've read all the recent Gladwell books and have enjoyed each of them, but I'm starting to hear rumblings that his star is becoming a bit tarnished these days. Interestingly Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000) comes in at number 97 (well, that surprises me) and I spotted a Jim Crace novel I didn't know about, 2013's Harvest at number 81. That one will be added to my TBR for sure.

So there you have it, a mere 15 out of the top 100 books of the past two decades. I realize that this is a British newspaper's list, but I read a whole lot of British literature and nonfiction so I'm still a little disappointed in myself. Anyway, take a look at the list by clicking on that link up above because you might very well spot something you want to add to your own TBR list. Good stuff here.

A Necessary End (Inspector Banks No. 3) - Peter Robinson

A Necessary End is book number three in Peter Robinson’s twenty-six-book-long Inspector Banks series. By the beginning of this one, Banks has comfortably settled into his Yorkshire surroundings and much prefers his new job to the one he left behind in London. The locals consider him to be a likeable enough guy, and more importantly, an honest cop who doesn’t cross the line. But when Scotland Yard sends a hotshot cop up to Yorkshire to take over a murder investigation, all of that is suddenly in jeopardy because the London cop is the exact opposite of Banks and doesn’t care who might object to his behavior. 

What should have been a small, peaceful demonstration in little Eastvale goes suddenly wrong when a policeman is stabbed to death during a confrontation between 100 demonstrators and the handful of police on hand to keep them under control. CID Superintendent Richard Burgess makes it perfectly clear upon his arrival from London that someone is going to pay for the crime – and the sooner the better because he can’t wait to get back to civilization. Banks, when he figures out that Burgess will build a case against the easiest target he spots, regardless of actual guilt, makes the potentially career-damaging decision to run his own parallel investigation behind the superintendent’s  back.

So, did the policeman die because one of the demonstrators just happened to pull a knife during the fight or is there more to the man’s murder? As it turns out, the young cop had a reputation for taking the opportunity to bash a few heads with his baton every chance he got and particularly enjoyed working demonstrations and protest marches. Had any of the demonstrators had a previous run-in with him - and a whole different motive for pulling that knife? Or not? The murder may just be a whole lot more complicated than Burgess wants to admit – and every bit as complicated as Banks fears it is.

Peter Robinson

The author does not add much to the Banks character in A Necessary End, and his wife and children are still pretty much blank slates in this third book. In fact, the whole family is out of town during the entire novel and their only communication with Banks is via short evening telephone calls. We do learn that Banks sees his job “as a defender of the people, not an attacker” and that he is now thirty-eight-years-old. But Robinson keeps Banks real by making sure that he is a long way from being perfect, as illustrated by what Banks reveals about himself to Burgess during one of their numerous pub-fueled conversations: “I don’t like violence. I’ll use it if I have to, but there are plenty of more subtle and effective ways of getting answers from people. That aside I never said I was any less ruthless than you are.” (Of course, Burgess sees through the bravado and spits beer while trying to stifle his laughter at the claim.)

As for personality quirks, the reader does learn that Banks is a chain-smoker who does not much concern himself with the private spaces of others and will force his habit into almost any situation and location. Too, he may be just a bit of a snob when it comes to his attitude toward American culture and the way that it is relentlessly spreading throughout Great Britain. After one conversation with Burgess, Banks finds himself wondering, for instance, “why so many people came back from America, where Burgess had been to a conference a few years ago, full of strange eating habits and odd turns of phrases – ‘pain in the ass’ indeed!” (The superintendent’s big sins were the way he cut and ate his meat in the American style and his love of donuts for breakfast.) 

But that’s about it as far as new revelations go.

Bottom Line: A Necessary End easily stands on its own merits as a standalone. Readers should definitely not be concerned with having to read the first two books in the series prior to picking up this one. It is based on a solid murder mystery with numerous plausible suspects that will keep the reader guessing right up to the end – and it solidifies the image of Banks as a “good cop” willing to buck superiors to ensure that justice is served. 

The Bookshop - Movies for Readers

We have both Prime and Netflix in this house, and over time I have come to appreciate how unpredictable and surprising the movies on Prime can be compared to those on Netflix. And today, it is one of those Prime movies that has made my day: The Bookshop starring Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, Patricia Clarkson, and Honor Kneafsey. The film is based on the supposedly well received novel of the same name by Penelope Fitzgerald (a novel I am completely unfamiliar with).

The movie had a very limited showing in the U.S in August 2018, and it is worth searching for on Prime or on disc. Just take a look at this trailer, and you will see what I mean:

Number 32 in the series "Movies for Readers"

Tropical Storm Imelda: The 2019 Annual 500-Year Flood - and lots of Books and Reading Time

Here we go again.

People here are jokingly referring to Tropical Storm Imelda as Houston's "2019 Annual 500-Year Flood" because we have had so many of these once-every-500-years floods in recent years. The fact is we are getting kind of used to them now and they don't pack the emotional impact of previous major floods - and that can be dangerous because that's exactly when people die from taking silly risks. We have severe flooding 20 miles north of us, 20 miles east of us, and 20 miles south of us but we seem to have been in some kind of pocket yesterday that only received about six inches of rain during the heaviest downpours. The areas that flooded had somewhere between 25 and 30 inches of rain during that same 24-hour period. And 100 miles southeast of us, something over 40 inches of rain was delivered. So plenty of people suffered flooded homes, business, and cars - and loss of livestock and pets. But we were lucky in my part of Harris County. 

Anyway, I ventured in to the library this morning to return some books and pick up a few others. While there I wandered the stacks just to see what would catch my eye, and this is what I found:

Broadchurch by Erin Kelly

I didn't check this one out but I was really tempted. Broadchurch is a series set in England that I watched on Netflix a few months ago, and this book is based on what, if I remember correctly, was the show's second season. I liked everything about the series and really enjoyed it. But here's the rub: this is a novel "based on the story by series creator Chris Chibnall." Like I said, this is a great story and quite a fine mystery, but I have a distinct prejudice against books based on TV or movies rather than the other way around. I probably don't give the book authors enough credit, but it seems kind of lazy simply to put some flesh on the bones of a screenplay and call it a novel. Maybe it's just me, but I always feel like I'm wasting my time when I read one of these.

Charles Todd Books on the Shelf Today

I always stop when I spot a bunch of books by a single author I've never heard of, and that happened today with this group of Charles Todd novels featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge, a World War I era Scotland Yard detective. When I see this many books from a series, I have to believe that they are popular and selling very well. But this time around, I learned that the Charles Todd writing the books is actually the mother-son team of Caroline and Charles Todd. One of them lives in North Carolina and the other in Delaware (not sure which is in which state). It appears that the series is over twenty books long and that a new one is already scheduled to be released early next year. But that's not all "Charles Todd" is writing. The pair started the eleven-book Bess Crawford series in 2009, and they have also written two standalone novels. Now, this is another of my bookish prejudices. I usually avoid fiction written by multiple authors, especially parent-sibling or married teams. Does anyone out there have any experience with the Charles Todd books?

The Deborah Crombie Novels on the Shelf

Deborah Crombie novels are not new to me, and I have in fact read three of the novels pictured here, but seeing several of them clumped together today reminds me that as much as I've enjoyed the four of hers I've already read I really need to read the others. But I really, really don't need to add another fifteen books to my TBR list...but you know I just did.

The rains are falling again as I finish this up, hard and steady, so it looks like we will get another inch or two this afternoon and into the night. I hope the folks already underwater are not experiencing the same because they really don't need that to happen to them after yesterday.

Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan

Machines Like Me is Ian McEwan’s cautionary tale about a future that we just may not be ready for when it finally arrives. Synthetic humans (robots) are coming and they may be far smarter than we are when they get here. That may not sound like much of a problem, but what happens when the robots figure that out and become bored with us and our human limitations. Will they have the patience to put up with us or will they decide to take over for our own good?  

McEwan ventures into the alternate history genre here to explore some of the what-ifs of the accelerating pace at which we are introducing artificial intelligence and robotics into our everyday world. The novel is set in a 1980s version of the world very different from the one recorded by the history books. Margaret Thatcher is driven from office in disgrace after badly losing the Falklands War; John Lennon is alive and well and the Beatles are still a band; and the Brighton hotel bombing this time does manage to kill a British prime minister (Thatcher’s successor). Oh, and Jimmy Carter wins a second term, John Kennedy survives his trip to Dallas, and novelist Joseph Heller finds fame with a book he titles Catch-18. You get the idea.

Charlie Friend, thirty-two years old and single, takes great pride in the fact that he doesn’t have to answer to any boss. Charlie lives alone in a London apartment where he sits in front of his computer all day long buying and selling stocks, earning just enough to cover his day-to-day needs. He is not the most ambitious guy in the world, and when he learns that what he earns from day-trading stocks is just below the wage of the average Londoner, Charlie is proud that he is doing that well without having to answer to anyone. He is not the type to worry much about his future. Now, though, Charlie is falling in love with Miranda, the student who lives in the flat above his - even though she does not seem to feel the same way about him. But after blowing all the money his recently deceased mother left him on one of the world’s first synthetic humans, Charlie may have just stumbled onto a way of binding Miranda to him. He lets her help him design the personality of Adam, the near-perfect physical specimen who will now be sharing Charlie’s flat. 

Ian McEwan

Miranda, as it turns out, has secrets of her own, secrets that she can’t hide from someone like Adam who never sleeps and spends all of his spare time researching and learning about the world into which he has so suddenly been thrust. And after Adam warns Charlie that Miranda is not really who she seems to be, things begin to get tricky – especially after Adam declares his own love for Miranda.

Machines Like Me explores whether or not artificial intelligence can ever understand human emotions, motivations, and reasoning. Will it be possible for such a created consciousness to grow beyond the black and white rules it has initially been designed to follow? And if not, how will the inevitable conflict be resolved? What is to be done when our synthetic humans decide that they know what’s good for us better than we do. Which of us crosses the line first?

This quote (page 370 of the Large Print edition) should give all of us, researchers included, something to think about: “They couldn’t understand us, because we couldn’t understand ourselves. Their learning programs couldn’t accommodate us. If we didn’t know our own minds, how could we design theirs and expect them to be happy alongside us?”

Bottom Line: Machines Like Me is a bit frustrating at times because of the long, detailed digressions that McEwan strays into that do not always do much to advance the “discussion” of the potential conflict between artificial intelligence and human intelligence - but the patient reader will be well rewarded for his patience. I suppose that Machines Like Me will be most easily appreciated by science fiction and alternate reality fans, but it is a thought provoking philosophical novel as well.

There's Still Something in the Water

I wonder what everyone is looking at.

I got to chatting with the guy working the Target book section this afternoon about all the similar book covers I've been noticing and was surprised at how quickly he agreed. Well, after I told him that I had posted a few pictures of the books last week, he got this great idea to display them together. As I was leaving the store, I saw him begin the process of moving all the tags so that they would match the new Mystery & Suspense display he had created. 

And there are more like this...many, many more.

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

Justice Gone - N. Lombardi Jr.

We seem to be living in a world in which few of us really trust anyone in authority anymore – we are all cynics. Elected officials, law enforcement officers, news media employees, and federal and state bureaucrats have all been accused of pushing personal agendas with little fear of being held accountable for their unethical actions. Those of who grew up in what we want to believe were simpler times are probably more upset by this noxious atmosphere than those born into it during the last couple of decades. They have, after all, known no other world. 

Nick Lombardi has been around long enough to see the world for what it is – and having spent half of his life living outside the United States, he has seen it at its worst and at its best. Lombardi’s Justice Gonetakes a questioning look at what we call justicethese days, a concept that is not nearly as black and white as we naively used to believe that it was. The novel tackles several front-page issues that trouble this country: homelessness, the huge number of broken men and women being produced by America’s endless wars, the perception of racially motivated police brutality, government cover-ups, and out-of-control and unethical government prosecutors and investigators. But don’t let that scare you away because Justice Gone manages to do all of that within the framework of an intriguing legal thriller.

Justice Gone is book one in what Lombardi plans as a series featuring Dr. Tessa Thorpe, a veteran’s counselor in charge of a clinic specializing in helping damaged veterans put their lives back together before it is too late. Tragedy strikes when cops decide to arrest one of Tessa’s patients on the streets for a crime he knows nothing about. Not recognizing the veteran’s confusion and panic for what it really is, the cops viciously beat him to death right in front of a bus station surveillance camera. And when that tape is leaked to YouTube all hell breaks loose. 

Another of Tessa’s patients, Iraqi war veteran Donald Darfield, was the dead man’s best friend and because of something that happened in Iraq, he feels responsible for his friend’s life. Donald, though, has plenty of war-related problems of his own, and after viewing the YouTube video he disappears. When three of the policemen responsible for beating his friend to death are themselves murdered, it is inevitable that Donald be charged with the crimes. And this is when Justice Gone becomes a legal thriller.

Nicholas Lombardi Jr.

Lombardi takes his readers through the whole legal process, all the way from jury selection, to evidence and witness gathering, to the legal strategies of both sides. In the process, he creates one of the most interesting defense teams that I’ve run across in a while: a colorful father-daughter team that manages to turn Nathanial Bodine’s physical handicap into a distinct advantage. Mr. Bodine is blind but that doesn’t mean the man can’t see. He has developed his other senses so acutely that he always knows exactly where he is in the courtroom – unless he wants to pretend otherwise for his own reasons. He and Emily have been working together long enough to have their routine so perfectly choreographed that it appears spontaneous to jurors. And it works every time. Any prosecutor underestimating the skills of Nathanial and Emily Bodine is making the mistake of his life.

Bottom Line: Justice Gone is a beautifully set-up legal thriller, and fans of the genre are certain to be entertained by the efforts of the Bodine legal team. While I am curious about what the second Tessa Thorpe novel will offer, I am just as caught up by a wish to see the Bodines in action again. My only quibble with this one is that the book’s “big reveal” seems a little sudden in appearance and resolution considering the length of its buildup. 

Review Copy provided by publisher

Book Number 3,439

The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour - Peter Asher

No doubt about it. Peter Asher’s The Beatles from A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour is a wonderfully comprehensive reminder of what made the Beatles such a unique and influential band, a book to be appreciated by younger and older fans alike. But this is a very special book for those fans who were there to buy the singles and albums as they were being delivered in what we then believed would be a string of never-ending hits. As it turned out, “never-ending” would only last from 1964 to 1970, but that doesn’t mean that the Beatles have ever been in any danger of being forgotten or surpassed by any of the bands that followed them. 

Thanks in large part to the Beatles Channel on SiriusXM radio, Beatlemania is still alive and well. Some Beatle fans (and perhaps especially non-fans) may have wondered how long a 24-7 radio station devoted to nothing but the music of one group could possibly remain fresh – even if it was the music of the Beatles. If so, they underestimated both the Beatles and those, like Peter Asher, who contribute their own knowledge and memories of that era to the channel’s programming. It is Asher’s Beatle’s Channel program “From Me to You” that in fact serves as the basis for The Beatles from A to Zed (this is more obvious in some of the book’s 26 chapters than in others). 

Asher’s approach is to devote a separate chapter to each letter of the alphabet in which he discusses whatever aspect of the Beatles work the letter suggests to him (he did struggle a bit with the “X” and “Z” chapters but managed somewhat creatively to tie in both letters). Asher goes wherever each letter leads him, be it a discussion of Beatles-related songs beginning with that particular letter or instruments, friends, locations, cowriters, producers, studios, etc. beginning with that letter. It is almost like sitting across the table from Asher and hearing him reminisce about his old friends and the decades of friendship that he shared with them. The man has stories to tell and he tells them well.

Peter Asher

Peter Asher was there from the relatively early days of the Beatles. He was particularly close to Paul McCartney who lived for a time in the Asher family home and composed some of his most famous songs there, meaning that Asher and his family were often the first to hear the songs that would later become classic Beatles recordings (Lennon and McCartney sometimes worked on songs together in the Asher home). Asher, of course, would find his own fame both as a member of the popular recording duo Peter and Gordon and as producer for some of the most famous recording artists of his day. 

The best way to read The Beatles from A to Zed is to read it while listening to the songs being discussed. Asher has a way of dissecting a song that only a world-class musician is capable of, and better yet, he explains it all in a way that it makes sense even to less musically inclined readers. Listening to a song while having an expert like Asher explain in some detail how (and why) it was all put together the way it was is a unique experience. I didn’t think there was anything that could make me love and appreciate the songs of the Beatles any more than I already did. I was wrong; The Beatles from A to Zed did exactly that.

Review Copy provided by Henry Holt and Co. 

(Book number 3,438)

There Must Be Something in the Water

There must be something in the water.

I keep stumbling upon books featuring the World War II experiences of women: books about Jewish women trying to escape occupied Europe, books about female resistance fighters, books about female spies who worked behind enemy lines, etc. There is even one slightly different book about the inspiration a female Afghanistan War veteran finds by reading about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to fight for the Union during the American Civil War. The plots are so similar that it's becoming harder and harder to keep track of which title goes with which plot.

But publishers aren't satisfied just to flood the market with plots I can barely keep straight. Take a look at the covers of these same books. Does anyone really believe that it's a coincidence that even the covers are hard to keep straight? My theory is that publishers realize there is probably a good market for two or three of these books at the same time at most so they are counting on the confusion to sell a few thousand copies of the also-rans at the same time.

And these are only the ones I've seen in the past couple of weeks; I spotted four of them at Target just this afternoon, in fact - and Target has a very limited number of books on their store shelves. The problem is that I find the plot lines generally appealing but  only have time to work one or two of them into my reading schedule. How do I choose? Any recommendations? 

(The only one of these I've already read and reviewed is The Lost Girls of Paris and I found that one somewhat disappointing.)

Smoky the Cow Horse (Scribner's Illustrated Classics Edition) - Will James

Smoky the Cow Horse (1929)

Will James intended Smokey the Cow Horse to be a book for adults, so imagine the man's pleasant surprise when the book won the 1927 Newbery Medal as the year's best addition to American literature for children.

James, whose real name was Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault, was born in Quebec in 1892 to French-speaking parents but he left home as a fourteen-year-old to move west and turn himself into a cowboy. By all accounts, he became a top hand who was particularly adept at turning wild horses into dependable cow horses. James, however, also had a couple of hidden talents not so common in the cowboy population: he was good at drawing animals and he could write. Those talents would not be enough to keep him from spending time in the Nevada State Prison in 1916 for cattle rustling, but the prison sentence seems to have been a wake-up call for James because it was while incarcerated that he vowed to turn his artistic talents into a profession. 

Front End Papers (not sure of the term)

James wrote and illustrated Smoky the Cow Horse, his most famous and most successful book, in 1926, and it was immediately so popular that it was reprinted ten more times between its September release and Christmas. The cowboy-author had twenty-seven of his self-illustrated books published during the Great Depression and almost all of them became bestsellers. Will James died in 1942. (1)

Smoky the Cow Horse is the only one of his books that I've read, and I still remember how intrigued I was that the story is told largely from the horse's point of view. The copy I purchased last Sunday for ten dollars is the Illustrated Classics Edition published by Scribner's in October, 1929, and all the photos attached here are from that book (explaining why they are so poorly cropped). I find it interesting that Smoky was published in the very month of the greatest Stock Market crash in American history, the crash said to have signaled the twelve-year-long Great Depression. Despite the economic hardships of the times, James enjoyed his greatest sales during the 1930s. 

Will James illustration between pages 100 and 101

Will James illustration between pages 16 and 17

Will James illustration between pages 72 and 73

(1) source: onlinenevada.org 

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style - Benjamin Dreyer

As copy chief of Random House, Benjamin Dreyer has pretty much seen it all – over and over again. A substantial portion of Dreyer’s new writing guide, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, even reads like a “Greatest Hits” list of the writing errors he has seen repeated most often during his two decades with the publisher. Anyone who writes, and with today’s technology all of us write all day long whether or not we realize it, will learn something from Dreyer’s English. That’s the good news; the bad news is that I can’t imagine a book more difficult to review than “An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.” If that chore doesn’t bring all your grammatical insecurities to the forefront, nothing will.

I knew I still had a lot to learn when the book’s first chapter, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Prose),” began with a challenge not to use for a week what turned out to be five of my favorite words: “very,” “rather,” “really,” “quite,” and “in fact.” And my apprehension only increased when Dreyer went on to add “just,” “pretty,” “surely,” “of course,” “so,” “that said,” and “actually” to the list. Dreyer is not saying never to use these words, only that they should be used sparingly if they are to have much of an impact on the reader.

Dreyer, though, is not as strict as this may make him sound because the second chapter of Dreyer’s English is an explanation of why we should ignore some of the written (and unwritten) writing rules we grew up with. (God bless him). Among other things, Dreyer gives us his blessing to:

·     Begin a sentence with “And” or “But,”

·     Split an Infinitive,

·     End a Sentence with a Preposition (see the first sentence of this paragraph),

·     Use Contractions in Formal Writing,

·     Actively Use the Passive Voice, and

·     Use Sentence Fragments (for effect).

Benjamin Dreyer

Dreyer’s English is broken into two distinct parts, “The Stuff in the Front” and “The Stuff at the Back,” with the second part being largely a series of lists (with explanations and tips) of things such as easily misspelled words, the author’s pet peeves, words easily confused by the writer (or spell check) with other words, notes on confusing proper names, and words that should never be used in connection with other words. Part One focuses as much on grammar as it does on style but proves to be as much fun to read as it is instructive because Dreyer so often uses his keen sense of humor to make his points. This section includes my favorite part of the book, a chapter entitled “67 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) with Punctuation.” Somehow, the chapter managed to clarify some of my longtime uncertainties about punctuation at the same time it was making me feel that my grammar might not be as hopeless as I had feared. (So, of course, it is my favorite part of the book.)

Bottom Line: Dreyer’s English is an excellent style and grammar guide, and it is written in such humorous fashion that it is fun to read – what may be a first in the history of books on English grammar. My one quibble with the book, and it is a big one, is the author’s insistence on so often using President Trump in disparaging or negative terms to illustrate poor grammar or his simple dislike of the man and his policies. It was kind of funny the first two or three times, but the first third of Dreyer’s English is so heavily littered with the remarks and examples that they soon become little more than an irritating distraction. Why turn a book on grammar and style into a personal political statement? Thankfully, there are far fewer of these little throwaways in the final two-thirds of the book.