Texas Book Festival: Impressions & Thoughts (Part One)

As can only be expected, this year's Texas Book Festival had its share of hits and misses.  Thankfully, however, from my experience, the hits way outnumbered the misses.  

As always, my biggest complaint is being forced to leave a great session early in order to make it on time to a session that runs immediately following the first, or even overlaps it.  Because the tents are a good walk from the Capitol building itself, and because metal detectors are involved upon each entrance of the building, I missed the last fifteen minutes of several presentations in order to make it to the next on time.  Granted, that's the point at which most sessions are thrown open to questions from the audience, but still I felt a little gyped.  On Saturday, for instance, I found myself sneaking out of sessions by James Ellroy, John Dean, and Elizabeth Crook way before I was ready.

On the other hand, the tent "system" did enable me to sample presentations by several authors with whom I was unfamiliar - and, too, the shade offered a welcome break from all that direct sunshine.  So I suppose this is not a "terrible" problem.  It probably seemed worse to me this year because so many of my "can't miss" authors were scheduled for Saturday that the Sunday session had the feel of "after-thought" for me.

Biggest surprise authors to me: Kevin Kwan and Elizabeth Crook.  I was unfamiliar with Kwan's novels (Crazy Rich Asians was his debut novel) even though he grew up in the Houston area after his family moved here from Taiwan when he was twelve.  I did know Crook's wonderful novel about the Charles Whitman murders on the University of Texas campus, Monday Monday, but was still impressed by the insights she offered us about the tower sniping and how the novel was conceived and put together.

Random thought: What do book festivals and bluegrass festivals have in common?  Lots, and lots of gray hair.  Are serious readers dying off at the same pace that bluegrass fans are doing it?  One difference is that book festival crowds always appear to be about 90% female, while bluegrass festivals are more of a 50-50 split.  (I, in fact, noticed that guys were seeking each other out a bit to hold conversations about "guy books.")

Listening to John Dean, Douglas Brinkley, and Luke Nichter discuss the Nixon tapes makes me want to find some of them on line and listen to them.  Having read the transcripts of some of the tapes, I imagine them to be a mixture of sheer boredom, revulsion, and utter fascination with the events of the day.

In Part Two, I have a few thoughts on specific authors to share.  

Photo Tour of William Faulkner Home Place: Rowan Oak, Part One

Oxford Town Square

After an interval of several years, I was lucky enough this summer to be able to stop by Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi.  Rowan Oak, originally built in 1844, was purchased in 1929 and remained in the Faulkner family for over 40 years until sold in 1972 by Jill Faulkner Summers to the University of Mississippi.

Rowan Oak is a fascinating place for fans of Faulkner's writing to spend several hours wandering on their own.  The grounds of the home are well maintained by Ole Miss, and for a small entrance fee to get inside the home, it is possible to get an accurate feel for the life that Faulkner and his family enjoyed here.   Personal items (including clothing, furniture, books, etc.) are still sitting in the separate bedrooms of the house and, perhaps most intriguing of all, the wallpaper on which Faulkner outlined A Fable is still on the wall of his study.

These are some of the exterior photos I took that day, with pictures from inside the house to follow in Part Two:

 Click on individual photos to see full-size, high resolution versions of each.

Malcolm Mitchell, Georgia Bulldogs (Reader of the Month)

Malcolm Mitchell, Georgia Bulldogs

I absolutely love stories like this one about Georgia Bulldog wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell.  It seems that Mitchell, despite how severely injuries have limited his effectiveness during the 2013 and 2014 football seasons, still has his head screwed on straight.  Life is all about priorities and making the most of opportunity, something that young Mitchell already seems to understand.

From the September 12, 2014 edition of the CBS Evening News, comes this great piece on Mitchell's love of reading and willingness to go the extra mile to surround himself with fellow readers:

Fact is, Rackley may have been the only one in Athens who didn't know the name Malcolm Mitchell. Number 26 for the University of Georgia Bulldogs was one of the top recruits in the country a few years ago. He's Georgia royalty. 

And presumably, if Rackley had known that, she wouldn't have stood in that Barnes & Noble talking his ear off about the book club she had just joined. 

"I mean he like stepped back and he said 'You did? You did?' and he said, 'Can I join your book club?'" Rackley recalled. 

"And I said, 'I don't know if you want to join mine. We're all 40-, 50-, and 60-year-old women.'"

But Mitchell was undeterred. So now, one of the top wide-receivers in the country has been meeting monthly with his book club lady friends.

So picture it: one of the most talented college football players in the country surrounded by a bunch of middle-aged women who meet once a month to discuss the book they've just read with their book club.  

That's what Malcolm Mitchell does despite what has to be the tremendous pressure of getting himself back at full speed to take the field for his Georgia Bulldogs.  (Mitchell had the unfortunate experience in the first game of the 2013 season of tearing his ACL during the celebration of another player's touchdown and missed the rest of the season.  Then he suffered a knee injury just as the 2014 season was about to begin.)

And then, there's this:

After everything he's accomplished, what's he most proud of?

"I finished the 'Hunger Games' series in about two days," Mitchell said. 

Wait, but what about the touchdowns?

"That came natural," Mitchell said. "That's a gift. I had to work to read."

Malcolm Mitchell may be only 22 years old, but he is wise beyond his years.  He is my "Reader of the Month."

(Be sure to click on this CBS link and watch their broadcast replay of the story; you will be impressed.)

(Hat Tip to JandaAnne Sample of VA for making me aware of Mitchell's story) 

Unbroken: The Movie Trailer

Louis Zamperini (1917-2014)

Because it seems like Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken has been on the New York Times Non-fiction Best Seller list forever, I suspect that many of you already know the Louis Zamperini story.  Zamperini, who died on July 2, 2014 at the age of 97, was the young Californian who placed eighth in the 5000-meter finals of the 1936 Olympics.  That may not sound like all that much, but Zamperini's final lap was so extraordinarily fast that the infamous Adolph Hitler demanded a personal audience with him.  

World War II would, of course, interrupt Zamperini's running career, and it is what happened to him as a Japanese prisoner-of-war that makes his story so very inspiring.  (And it is wonderful that Louis lived long enough to see for himself just how inspiring his life could be to others.)

Following up on the success of Hillenbrand's wonderful book, comes the movie readers hoped for, and it appears from this brief trailer that they got it right.




 I am looking forward to this one.

The Search for Anne Perry: The Hidden Life of a Best Selling Crime Writer

Finally...a book that gets inside the head of author Anne Perry in which Perry herself tries to explain what she was thinking when she, along with another teen girl, brutally beat that girl's mother to death with a stocking-enclosed piece of brick.

Because I've been wondering for years about Perry's rather strange decision to make her living as a murder mystery writer after having been convicted of committing one of the more horrible murders in the entire history of New Zealand, I had high hopes that "The Search for Anne Perry" would answer some of my questions and doubts about Perry. What I did not expect was to come away with much sympathy for Anne Perry, but even that happened - if only a little.

Joanne Drayton managed to get the full cooperation of Anne Perry for this biography despite the fact that Drayton is from New Zealand and that the book would first be published there, a country which Anne Perry is still more than just a little sensitive about (the U.S. edition is new but The Search for Anne Perry was, in fact, published in New Zealand in 2012). For that reason, Search is filled with Anne Perry quotes that help explain how such a terrible murder ever happened, how Perry survived five years in harsh prisons, how her newly acquired Mormon faith allowed her to move on with the rest of her life, and why she believes today that she should be forgiven of her crime. Drayton offers her own analysis, too, often by quoting characters from Perry's books in which it seems that Perry is explaining herself through those fictional characters.

My only complaint - and I did find this irritating - is that Drayton, in the process of quoting those characters often insists on going through much more plot detail than is necessary to make her points about Perry. She sometimes even includes spoilers (for no need) that Anne Perry readers probably will rather not learn. But that's a minor quibble. This book ultimately delivered the goods for me, and for that reason, I am recommending it to others who might still be wondering about Anne Perry's murder conviction and how she kept her past hidden (even from her agents and publishers) for as long as she managed.

See below for a previous post on the Anne Perry murder conviction:

Anne Perry / Juliet Hulme (Revisited)

The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

As someone who has been working in the energy sector for more than 40 years, I am probably more familiar with the subject of drilling and fracking than the average citizen, but I still learned some things from Russell Gold's "The Boom." It is always healthy to look at an issue as sensitive as fracking from both points of view, and this is something that Gold does an admirable job of via this book.

The new fracking technology was originally intended to tap into the huge natural gas reserves that were until the last decade or so pretty much beyond the ability of contemporary drilling methods to recover economically. That technology has proven to be just as effective in the recovery of the shale oil that had previously been way too expensive to recover and bring to market.

The question now is one of safety and environmental impact of the fracking techniques being used in so many thousands of new wells each year. Economically, there is no doubt that fracking has had a huge beneficial impact on the country. Environmentally, the final judgement is yet to be reached because, while it is true that some water wells have been contaminated by natural gas leaking into the neighboring water systems, this has happened so few times that there is no great impact involved - so far. On the other hand, those who lease their property to drilling companies do often find their personal lives shattered and changed forever by all the drilling activity that suddenly springs up around their homes, farms, and ranches. Of course, they can always take the big money and run - and lots of them do - but that's not a welcome option for everyone.

Too, as Gold points out, substituting natural gas in place of coal in the electricity-generating process cannot help but have an immediate, and positive, impact on the environment. The U.S., in fact, is one of the few countries in the world (despite never having signed the Kyoto Agreement) that has significantly cleaned up its air in during the past two decades. Many environmentalist have reluctantly come to the conclusion that natural gas is a "bridge fuel" that buys the world more time to develop alternative fuels that we can actually afford, ones that will ultimately provide ALL of the energy we need in this country and not just a tiny fraction of it.

So, love fracking or hate fracking. It's your choice - and "The Boom" might help you decide which side of the issue you come down on.