Random Sunday Evening Thoughts - Mostly Bookish

This has been one of those weeks that thankfully come around only once in a great while.

• Precisely seven days ago (I am writing this at 9:00 p.m. local time) my wife had just been delivered to a hospital emergency room by ambulance to deal with back pain so severe that she literally almost could not move.  Nine hours later she was transferred to a local rehabilitation hospital for treatment that lasted until noon today when she was released from the facility. (She is much, much better but still in considerable pain.)  Let's just say that I now fully understand what a combined effort it is to keep a household functioning smoothly - even one of only three people - because I've taken up the slack, and let's just say that I am exhausted.

• I did manage to post several book reviews this week, but never did find the energy for anything else.  By the time I squeezed in a few dozen pages of reading, it seemed like the day was over and it was time to start planning for the next one.  I suppose the only bright spot to my change in schedule is that I was on the road so much (trips to the hospital and carting my grandson to and from his summer classes) that I made some great progress on a couple of audiobooks - finishing one completely and getting halfway through Beartown by Fredrik Backman.  Backman is a Swedish author whose books are all being translated and published in the U.S. now, and I'm a big fan.  Beartown has, in fact, turned into a big surprise.  What I thought was going to be a rather ordinary coming-of-age novel about a youth hockey team in Sweden, took such a drastic right angle turn about a third of the way through, that I can't wait to get back to it.  

• For some reason my library holds often all decide to show up within a few days of each other...nothing for a couple of weeks and then five or six show up in the same week.  It's happened again, and now I have so many library books in the house that today I had to resort to creating and printing a special calendar just to keep up with when they all need to be returned.  I already suspect that at least a couple of them are going to have to be returned unread so that I can start them through the cycle again.  Counting Beartown, I now have eleven library books on my desk and another thirteen still on hold.  I'm at the top of the queue for at least three of those thirteen, and with my luck they will all show up next week.  I'm about done with How to Read Literature Like a Professor and Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, and I've started The Man from the Train and The Sympathizer, but the clock is ticking on the other seven.

• Some of the books I have on hold are really intriguing and I know that I'll be tempted to start reading them just as soon as I get my hands on them (partially because they have dozens of people lined up behind me and I will only be able to check them out for two weeks).  Included is the the first book I've seen on the Bill Cosby trial, a book by Nicole Weisensee Egan called Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America's Dad that I'm hoping can explain this man to me.  Among the others is another of my "books on books" titles, The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick and some popular titles like Big Sky (Kate Atkinson), The Lost Girls of Paris (Pam Jenoff), Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Casey Cep), and On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel (Ocean Vuong).

Sometimes it seems that the faster I read, the further behind I get - and when I combine that with a period in which I spot new books that I want to read everywhere I look, this is what happens.  Oh, well.  As far as problems go, this one is kind of fun.

The Good Sister - Gillian McAllister

It is all relative, of course, but in many families there is a “good” sibling, and by comparison, there is a “bad” sibling.  And more often than not, that idea becomes so normalized within the family circle that even the “bad” sibling comes to believe it to be true.  This is the family dynamic explored by Gillian McAlister in her novel The Good Sister, the story of one family being destroyed by what appears to have happened behind closed doors during one tragic night.

Martha Blackwater knows what she wants out of life, and she is well on her way to making it all happen, including the baby she and her husband welcomed into the world right on schedule.  But as it turns out, Martha wants more – and if she is to get it, she is really going to need some help caring for her new baby.  When Becky, Martha’s sister (who seems to be chronically unhappy with her own work) becomes so frustrated by her current job that she desperately wants to quit, the solution to Martha’s problem seems an obvious one: Becky will stay home and care for the baby while Martha devotes herself to her new project.

But then it happens.  Baby Layla is dead, and Becky is charged with her murder.  

Gillian McAllister

Becky insists that she is innocent, and Martha wants desperately to believe her sister even though all the evidence seems to point directly to Becky’s direct involvement in Layla’s death.  If not Becky, who could be responsible for smothering the baby? That’s what Martha wants to find out, and despite her husband’s objections, she begins her own clandestine investigation – one that will have her second guessing everything she thought she knew about those closest to her.

Sometimes Martha is certain that Becky is innocent; at other times the weight of the evidence against Becky has Martha doubting her sister.  What will happen to them even if Becky is found innocent?  Will their lifelong bond allow them to remain close even if the actual truth of what happened that night is never definitively determined? And if the worst happens, and Becky is found guilty, what will that do to Martha’s relationship with her parents and her brother?  

The Good Sister is a courtroom drama told in alternating flashbacks to what happened nine months earlier, but it is really more about the strong bond between two sisters being tested in an unimaginable manner.  Some things are just impossible to forgive.  Or are they?

Copy provided by G. P. Putnam's Sons for review purposes

Book number 3,406

Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship - Bernie Schein

When it came to exposing his personal life in print, Pat Conroy seems to have had little fear despite knowing that numerous members of his family were not going to appreciate his decision to air the family’s dirty laundry in so public a manner.  Conroy was so frank about himself and his upbringing that longtime readers of his work easily could see that the man was still carrying emotional baggage from his childhood, but few outsiders could know just how heavy that burden was. Now, Bernie Schein, Pat’s lifetime best friend despite a fifteen-year interruption to their friendship, takes up where Pat left off.  

Many Pat Conroy fans came to consider him a personal friend over the decades they read him, so for obvious reasons Schein’s Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship is not an easy book to read – it just hurts too much to watch a friend suffer the way Pat suffered.  It is, however, a book that Pat Conroy fans owe it to themselves (and to Pat) to read.

Bernie Schein was a senior in Beaufort High School (South Carolina) when military brat Pat Conroy entered the school as a junior.  It was soon obvious that Conroy was going to be a star athlete despite the resentment of the school’s seniors who would have preferred that he fail.  What was not immediately so obvious is that he was also going to become a huge social star among the school’s freshmen, sophomores, and juniors.  And after Bernie invited Pat to the very first school party of any type he would ever attend, the two became friends for the rest of their lives.

Bernie Schein

Their friendship started in a 1961 Beaufort High School study hall, and it would not end until the two men said their goodbyes at Pat’s deathbed on March 4, 2016.  Along the way, Pat, Bernie, and the rest of their crew managed to avoid the Viet Nam War while Pat and Bernie prepared for careers as school teachers and writers.  The two shared a sense of humor that usually saw them trading one verbal putdown after another any time they were together. Each gave as well as he got, but largely due to his alcoholism and the damage that Santini did to his soul, Pat’s vulnerabilities and insecurities were sometimes expressed in bursts of sudden anger and an uncanny ability to hold a grudge for reasons that were often only imagined.   

Yes, this is a book for Pat Conroy fans, but as one of those fans, I have to warn you that you will come away from it a little saddened by some of the things you learn about Pat’s interactions with those closest to him.  For that reason, this is not always an easy book to read.  But Pat, especially near the end of his life, expressed a desire to be as honest with his fans as he could possibly be. He was willing to talk about anything and everything, and Bernie Schein makes sure here that Pat gets his wish.  Pat would have approved.

More than anything in the world, Pat Conroy wanted to be the hero in his world, and he worked hard to play that role – often to his own detriment. Little did he realize how big a hero he always was to his readers.

Copy provided for review purposes by Arcade Publishing

Book Number 3,405

The Bookshop of Yesterdays - Amy Meyerson

Authors figured out people like me a long time ago – but really, that wasn’t so hard to do.  Just include the word “bookstore” or “bookshop” in your book’s title and feature the image of an old bookstore, book, or stack of books on its dust jacket, and we will practically sprain our wrists snatching your novel off the bookstore or library shelf as soon as we see it.  And best of all, we will read it and we will talk about it – a lot.  

Which brings us to The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson. This one was first published in mid-2018 but I didn’t stumble upon it until a few days ago when it was released in a paperback edition.  Believe me, if I had seen it in 2018, it would have been read in 2018.  It was even named one of the Best Books of Summer 2018 by both the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Library Journal, so I’m not sure how I missed it.

On the surface, this one seems to have a lot going for it.  It’s about a young Philadelphia teacher who returns to Los Angeles to attend the funeral of an uncle she has not seen since she was a little girl.  Sixteen years earlier her uncle had a mysterious falling out with Miranda’s parents, one so severe that she never saw him, or heard her parents speak of him again (they even refused to attend the man’s funeral).  Now, Miranda is shocked to learn that upon his death her Uncle Billy left to her the old neighborhood bookstore she has such fond memories of visiting as a child. But why would he do something like that – and more importantly, what is she going to do with the floundering bookstore? 

Beginning with the mysterious clue she received in Philadelphia before she learned of her uncle’s death, Miranda is soon involved in a complicated scavenger hunt inside his bookstore.  When she was a little girl, Billy always had a bookshop scavenger hunt prepared for Miranda’s amusement whenever she visited Prospero Books, but she is not at all prepared for where this final hunt might lead her.  Ready or not, though, Miranda is determined to learn what it is that Billy seems so badly to want to tell her - even after she figures out that each clue in the chain is leading her closer and closer to a truth that could destroy her family and everything she believes about herself.

Amy Meyerson

The Bookshop of Yesterdays, with all of its references to books both classic and modern, is definitely a booklover’s mystery, one that is enjoyable as such.  But something about the plot nags at me a bit and makes me wonder if I missed a plot element somewhere along the line that would explain away my doubt.  Why did Billy use a scavenger hunt, one that had a relatively high chance of failure or not even being undertaken by Miranda at all, to pass along something of such great importance to her?  Why did he not simply write her a detailed letter, including all the necessary references to the people who would fill in the details for her, and attach that to his will?  (I know that book, of course,would not have been nearly as much fun as The Bookshop of Yesterdays– so is this just an instance of me not being able quite to reach the level of suspended disbelief that the author is asking me to reach?)

Bottom Line:  If you are one of those people I described up above – and you know if you are – grab this one and read it quick.  And then come back and tell me what I missed that explains Billy’s willingness to gamble that Miranda would be able, or even want, to solve one last Prospero Books scavenger hunt.  

Book Number 3,404

Lonesome Dove, A Prayer for Owen Meany, & Spooner - First Paragraphs Sell a Book

I got to thinking this morning about some of my favorite books and how vivid they still are in my mind despite the fact that it has been decades, in some cases, since I've read them.  That made me curious as to exactly what would pop into my head by reading the first pages of a few of them.  And that in turn made me realize just how brilliant some of those first few sentences are.

A book right up at the top of my "Favorites" list is Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.  I love everything about that book: the relationship between Augustus McCrae and W.F. Call; the book's contrasting laugh-out-loud humorous episodes and tear-jerking tragedies; the numerous supporting characters who are so important to the story; and the inclusion of one of the darkest literary villains I've ever encountered, the infamous Blue Duck. But I didn't know any of that would happen to me until I had turned the last of the 843 pages following this short-but-truly-sweet opening paragraph:

"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - and not a very big one.  It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs.  They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over.  The sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the tail."

Another favorite author of mine is John Irving, and one of my favorite John Irving books is A Prayer for Owen Meany.  And now that I think about it, this one shares a lot of the characteristics I love so much in Lonesome Dove, primarily of course, the remarkable friendship between the book's two main characters.  Irving's opening Owen Meany paragraph sets the stage well for what is to come:

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.  I make no claims to have a life in Christ, or with Christ - and certainly not for Christ, which I've heard some zealots claim.  I'm not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I've not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days, except for those passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church.  I'm somewhat more familiar with the passages from the Bible that appear in The Book of Common Prayer.  I read my prayer book often, and my Bible only on holy days - the prayer book is so much more orderly."

Pete Dexter (another longtime favorite) has written some truly wonderful novels, and sometimes I think that Spooner is as underrated as it is because everyone prefers to talk about others of his like Paris Trout, Deadwood, or maybe The Paperboy.  But next to Deadwood, this one from 2009 is my favorite, probably because I find it so funny and just so damned clever.  Note again, that this is another book about a lifelong relationship between two very different people (this time, a boy and his step-father). It starts like this:

"Spooner was born a few minutes previous to daybreak in the historic honeysuckle little town of Milledgeville, Georgia, in a makeshift delivery room put together in the waiting area of the medical offices of Dr. Emil Woods, across the street from and approximately in the crosshairs of a cluster of Confederate artillery pieces guarding the dog-spotted front lawn of the Greene Street Sons of the Confederacy Retirement Home.  It was the first Saturday of December 1956, and the old folks' home was on fire." 

 A good first paragraph is one of the most important tools an author has available to grab my book-browsing attention - usually quickly and in less than 100 words.  I can learn more about the style and readability of an author from an opening paragraph than I will ever gather from a canned dust jacket summary or some blurb from a fellow author of the writer's that I wouldn't believe in a million years anyway.  That old you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours trick doesn't fool me anymore.

The three I've reproduced above worked perfectly for/on me.  I would likely have ended up with all three of the books on my shelves anyway because I was already a fan of these three authors before first setting eyes on these three particular novels - but even if I had been a reader being exposed to McMurtry, Irving, or Dexter for the first time, I'm pretty sure that the books would have come home with me.

Sam Houston Memorial Museum (With Excerpts from Exiled by Ron Rozelle)

Sam Houston portrait (museum)

The Sam Houston Memorial Museum located in Huntsville, Texas, very near the campus of the university named after Houston, is a remarkable place.  I spent much of the day there Saturday taking photographs of the various buildings and stunning Sam Houston artifacts located there.  The rented home in which the Texas hero died in 1863 was moved to its present location there in 1936, and the home in which Houston lived for most of the years he spent in the United States senate and in which his children were raised sits right there where it has always been.

Upstairs room in which funeral was held

Non-Texans will not know how big a hero Sam Houston is to me and my fellow Texans.  Houston was in charge of the Texas army at the time it claimed its independence from Mexico by defeating General Santa Ana's Mexican army in the Battle of San Jacinto, forever changing both Texas and United States history.  Seeing the Mexican general's saddle (taken from him at the battle as a war prize) was almost as thrilling to me as seeing Houston's famous leopard-skin vest, a gift from the Cherokee Indian tribe). 

Below is an excerpt from Exiled: The Last Days of Sam Houston  by Ron Rozelle (published by Texas A&M University Press in 2017) that sets the scene for the attached photos:

His funeral was a small event, held the next day directly above the little room in which he died, in the parlor of the Steamboat House.  Every straight-back chair in the house was placed facing the casket that had been built recently in the prison by the ship's carpenter of the Harriet Lane.  The Baptist preacher was out of town, so Margaret had to make do with the pastor of the Presbyterians, Reverend James Cochran.  

[...]

The death room

After the final prayer the coffin was maneuvered down the steep steps by pallbearers who were Houston's fellow Masons and carried in a steadily falling summer rain across the muddy road to the cemetery.  He was buried at the far end, in a place he had chosen himself just a few feet from the grave of his friend Henderson Yoakam.  

Neither ceremony was attended by many people, possibly because of the small room in which the funeral had been held and the rain that fell on the burial.  But it is unlikely that many more would have shown up in a big church on a sunny day.  In the midst of the war, and given the low regard in which so many held him, many papers wouldn't have wasted space needed for war news and casualty lists on even a tiny notice of his death.

 These last two photos are meant to give some perspective as to the physical proximity of the two rooms pictured above.  This is The Steamboat House that the Houstons were forced to rent after they sold their nearby home to pay off debts incurred during one of Houston's political campaigns.

View directly up the stairs to the funeral room

View of the home showing the death room at ground level and the funeral room above