Tutoring Is an Education - Especially for This Tutor

Just time for a quick note this afternoon to let everyone know I'm still alive - but pretty tired. I've been tied up working with construction people and other really smart people to fix a couple of problems that have popped up around the house all of a sudden...an electrical problem, a small roofing problem, and a gutter problem that led directly to the problem with the roof.

Add to that that I already spend several hours a day working with my high-school-senior grandson on his online schooling (100% online), and you can see my problem. I have, though, purchased a few books this week, including my first Folio Society book that I want to talk about in the next couple of days. In the meantime, as my grandson's tutor I have to stay one step ahead of him on these subjects:

• Environmental Science
• Aquatic Science
• English 4
• Pre-Cal
• Government/Civics
• Art History
• Old Testament
• New Testament

 Needless to say, I'm getting quite an education myself these days, but I'm really pleased that the resources he's studying play everything straight down the line - no politics or brainwashing at all, even the government and environmental science classes. There are five weeks left in this first semester, and we are trying to get at least 60% of the year's work done in the first half so that he (we) can coast a little bit in the second semester. I'm doing a lot of reading right now that doesn't show up on Book Chase.

My reading/reviewing/commenting is suffering...but it's all for a good cause. Oh, and I'm in the middle of selling my father's house, and that's eating up way more time than I ever believed it would even though we are fast approaching the formal closing on the sale right now (just got back from the bank to have even more papers notarized).

As Arnold says..."I'll be back." Very soon.

A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux #23)

James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books have always seemed darker and more violent to me than most of the other popular detective series of the day. Considering what Dave Robicheaux and his blood brother Clete Purcel have endured over the first twenty-two books of the series, they are lucky to still be standing, much less breathing. I have been reading the Robicheaux books as each of them is published all the way back to the third book in the series, Black Cherry Blues, so I thought I knew pretty much what to expect from A Private Cathedral when it comes to violence, mysticism, visions, and the like. Boy, was I wrong, because A Private Cathedral reaches a whole new level of darkness and evil brutality.

As the novel opens, Dave Robicheaux is a lonely man living with several cats and Tripod, his pet raccoon. The twice-married Robicheaux has by now been twice-widowed, and he is still grieving the loss of both women. Alafair, his daughter, is in school a long way from New Iberia, Louisiana, and Robicheaux misses her terribly, too. He’s lost his badge, and is waiting on investigators to decide if deserves to get it back (not that that much slows a man like Dave Robicheaux down). And now, things are going to get much, much worse for the “Bobbsey Twins,” Dave Robicheaux and Cletus Purcel. 

There are two major crime families in the New Iberia area, the Shondells and the Balangies, and they hate each other’s guts. However, in order to avoid a bloodbath, it’s important that the two families figure out a way to keep the balance of power from being tipped too heavily in favor of one or the other of them. When Isolde Balangie, the teen-aged step-daughter of the Balangie kingpin, tells Dave one day that she is being delivered to Mark Shondell, head of the Shondell family, he understands that some kind of deal has been struck between the two families. But it all smells too much like human-trafficking for Dave to ignore what he’s been told and what he already knows about Mark Shondell.

In a Romeo and Juliet kind of twist, Isolde Balangie soon disappears along with Mark Shondell’s nephew Johnny. Dave knows that can’t be part of the families’ masterplan, so he wants to find them before anyone else does. Not only won’t that be easy, it will result in Dave and Clete having to run and hide from what appears to be a time-traveling hitman from the bowels of hell, a “man” who travels on a ghost ship, can induce traumatizing hallucinations, and strike directly at the weak spots of his prey. Oh…and he doesn’t have a nose, does have beady little eyes, and from the color of his skin may just be more reptile than human. 

So, yes, A Private Cathedral requires a huge leap of suspended disbelief by the reader if it is to be taken seriously. But I don’t read Dave Robicheaux novels just for the plot; I read them to get inside Dave’s head - and sometimes inside Clete’s - in order to understand better what makes him tick. They are both “White Knights” despite their personal habits and their willingness to bend the law however much it takes to make sure that the good guys win in the end. They are both alcoholics, but only Dave seems to ever be on the wagon. They are both scarred by their mutual experiences in Vietnam. They are both Cajuns who believe in spirits, ghosts, and visions in a way that others will never understand. And, somehow, they are now two old men covered in battle scars from the past who have survived way longer than either ever expected to survive.

They are both rather brilliant, introspective men, although Clete hides it better than Dave. Dave describes Clete as “a closet bibliophile” who has “stored hundreds of paperback books he bought in secondhand stores and yard sales, most of them about American history and the War Between the States.” He reads and re-reads them. Dave, on the other hand, often speaks like a man with both a classical education and an education in the classics. He can’t hide his true character the way that Clete hides his own.

What worries me a little about A Private Cathedral is what seems to be a personal message from Dave to his admiring audience of readers. On the novel’s last page, Dave says:

“I didn’t want to hear any more of the story. I had already put aside the unhappiness of the past and no longer wanted to probe the shadows of the heart or the evil that men do. It was time to lay down my sword and shield and study war no more.”

It remains to be seen whether or not Dave is talking only about the Balangies and the Shondells or not. After all, James Lee Burke is 83 years old now, and one day we will have read the final chapter in the story of the Bobbsey Twins. And, honestly, Dave and Clete haven’t been acting their ages for a long time - Vietnam veterans must all be at least 70 years old now, and our heroes have hardly lost a step - but then again, neither has Burke. They are all still indestructible in the long run.

James Lee Burke

Bob: The Right Hand of God - Pat Bertram

When I read the back cover of Pat Bertram’s Bob: The Right Hand of God, I figured it was going to be a lot of fun, a light-hearted story that would get my mind off all the negative things that have been happening in 2020. And, thankfully enough, it turns out that I was right. I was able to lose myself for several hours in Bertram’s tale about what might happen if God decided that Earth and all of His Earthly creations were only a pretty good first-effort badly in need of a do-over. 

Chet is a rather sensitive young man who runs a Denver pet store very fittingly called “Used Pets.” All of the animals that Bob works to place with just the right new owner have been abused or abandoned by previous owners. Some are elderly, some have crippling injuries, and others have outgrown even their usefulness as zoo animals. Used Pets defines Chet and the way he sees the world. His biggest problem, however, is driving him nuts. Chet has an overbearing mother who insists on micro-managing his life, and nothing he does to discourage her efforts does the least bit of good.

Finally, things do start to change for Chet, but only after a little guy called Bob makes an April Fool’s Day appearance on television to announce that God has decided to recreate Earth in the form of a theme park for visitors from around the Galaxy. Soon, despite having laughed off Bob as just another April Fool’s prank, Chet has to admit that everything around him is steadily being “deleted,” including his mother and millions of other people. Chet sees it happening, but he refuses to play Bob’s game. He refuses to enter any of the gates set up to gather those who have not been deleted. Chet is simply not a walk-toward-the-light kind of guy; he never has been and he never will be. But maybe that’s why Bob has taken such a shine to Chet and seems to be cutting him a little slack.

Now, as the world around him slowly disappears, only to be replaced with one oddity after another, Chet has some big decisions to make. Does he even have a chance of surviving on his own or will he eventually have to give up and enter one of the camps set-up for people like him? According to Bob, the camps are mini-paradises, but can Bob really be trusted? What is life really like inside one of the compounds? Well, there’s only one way to find out. So what’s a guy like Chet to do?

Bottom Line: Bob: The Right Hand of God is funny and it’s clever, but deep down, it has a message about the important things in life. Pat Bertram has written several books on grief and grieving and she brings that kind of emotional sensitivity even to a farcical tale like this one. If you are looking for something fun to read, this is one you should consider. 

Pat Bertram

Review Copy provided by Publisher

First Visit to a B&N Bookstore Since Early March Was Depressing

 I've been very cautious about going places I really don't need to go during this whole COVID-19 disaster, but I decided to poke my head inside the door of a couple of local bookstores last week for the first time since early March. I figured I could judge by their parking lots whether or not very many people were inside before I ventured through the door myself. In both cases, the stores had maybe 10% of the number of browsers and shoppers I consistently found there in the pre-pandemic days.

Interestingly, one of the stores, Half-Price Books, looked exactly the way I remembered it looking last March. But the other one, a large one-floor Barnes & Noble, looked like someone had walked away with about 25-30 percent of the books they used to stock. Shelves had been moved around, there were empty wide-open spaces all over the place, and customers seemed to be doing nothing but browsing. I didn't see a single book actually being sold for the entire 30 minutes I was there.

This is what I mean. Look at the astounding amount of floor space being wasted. Back in March, space like this was utilized by rows and rows of shelving used to display books. The shelving, at least as I recall it, ran perpendicular to this pathetic little island sitting out there all alone. 

This is what's left of what was a substantial Fiction section in the store. It appears that more than half the old shelves are gone from this area. I did find a few remnants of the old shelves in other spots, but the number of books being carried by this B&N location is now pretty embarrassing. If you are looking for anything not brand new or on the bestseller list, forget it. That is unless it's the back catalog of such literary masters as Stephen King, James Patterson, Danielle Steele, or the like. 

This is a spot in one of the back corners of the store. This area used to house the store's nonfiction books, but it has suffered a fate similar to that of the fiction section I mentioned earlier. The one lone table, featuring a single book, highlights the emptiness and deterioration of the section. The history section is still pretty good, but not all of the nonfiction sections appear to have been so lucky. Lots of missing shelves, translates to lots of missing books from which to choose.

I put this photo here only to show that the store has decided to remove the benches that were on the green rugs before the pandemic changes. I do sort of understand that removing the seating in the store is probably a smart move until Texas gets its infection rate under control. The few remaining chairs in another corner of the store have also all been removed.

This just made me sad. Barnes & Noble has been struggling for years to survive the Amazon onslaught. B&N managed to help drive all the other bookstore chains out of business years ago, and then Amazon decided to do the same to them. But up until now at least, my local store still served as a place I could go into and come out of with some book I didn't even know existed until I spotted it on a shelf. And then, if I wanted to read something else by that surprise author, there was a chance that the store had at least another book or two by them.

Those days are gone now. Chances of finding something new and interesting at this B&N location are only slightly better than trying to wade through the Amazon dreck-haystack looking for something worth reading. In the Amazon case, it's a haystack so filled with utter garbage that good books get buried by the trash. In the B&N case, the haystack is now so small that the interesting stuff gets buried by the dreck written by the Kings, Pattersons, Steeles, and ghost writers of political books. 

These changes give me the impression that Barnes and Noble is hanging on by the skin of its teeth now. I certainly didn't enjoy my visit to this location, and I walked away empty-handed. Can't remember the last time that's happened. I entered all prepared to spend a lot of money on my first visit to a bookstore in over six months. I left without spending a dime - and that's B&N's fault, not mine.

I asked the store manager what was behind all the changes, and her explanation was that they were told to get rid of everything that "doesn't sell." For that reason, bestsellers and hack-authors now dominate the shelves. I even asked her if the "island spacing" had something to do with keeping customers more spread out during the pandemic. She looked at me as if I had just given her an idea of how to answer the question next time she was asked about all the missing books. But, no, she said this was the store's permanent new look.

And that depresses the hell out of me.

As did this book I found on display. How could Anne Perry, of all the people in the world, write a book with this particular title? This is the same woman who helped beat her mother's best friend to death with half a brick stuffed in a sock - the young mother who took the author into her home and included her on the very outing during which Perry helped murder her. The lack of personal awareness on exhibit here is astounding.

Good Eggs - Rebecca Hardiman

There are indeed a few “good eggs” in Rebecca Hardiman’s debut novel Good Eggs, but the truly good ones are not easily identifiable at first glance. Some of the “eggs” are better than others, some are not as good as they first seem to be, and others turn out to be a whole lot better than we thought they were. And, Dublin’s Gogarty family fills almost a whole carton of “eggs” all by itself.

Kevin Gogarty, father of twin teenaged daughters, a younger daughter, and a small son, has found himself relegated to the role of house-husband in recent months. His wife has necessarily taken on a more time-consuming job in order to support the family at least until Kevin manages to find a new job for himself. It doesn’t help, however, that all of Kevin’s experience is in a dying industry whose job-base is rapidly shrinking. In the meantime, Kevin is doing a passable job as house-husband while rather halfheartedly looking for a job and keeping tabs on his 82-year-old mother. 

Kevin’s world, though, is about to get interesting. Millie, his mother, seems greatly to be enjoying some of the freedoms that come with advanced age: speaking her mind, dressing comfortably at all times, eating whatever she wants to eat at all hours of the day and night, and — in her mind, at least — even a little bit of recreational shoplifting. It’s that last bit that gives Kevin the opportunity to finally insist that his mother accept a home-visiting caretaker into her life, a development that Millie sees as placing her giant step closer to the nursing home life she so dreads. In the meantime, Aideen, one of Kevin’s twins, has become so rebellious and unhappy with her life, that Kevin and his wife decide to send her away to boarding school. 

Rebecca Hardiman

Now, Kevin thinks, life will settle down into the calm routine he needs if he is to get on seriously with his job search. Let’s just say that Kevin could not have been more wrong about that if he had tried. 

Bottom Line: Good Eggs is a very funny novel with a heart. At times, the humor is almost slapstick in nature, but the reader is always aware that Millie Gogarty is really just an old woman trying to make the most of what time she has left. She is a memorable character, one with whom many readers will easily identify as they prepare (and hope) to age with a bang rather than with a whimper themselves. It is impossible not to cheer on Millie and Aideen as they enjoy together the adventure of their lifetimes. This one is fun.

Review Copy provided by Publisher - Novel to be published in March 2021

A Rule Against Murder - Louise Penny

A Rule Against Murder (2008) is the fourth book in Louise Penny’s popular 16-book Inspector Gamache  series. Because I’ve now read thirteen of the novels, including the first four and the last seven, I’m trying to get my ahead around what this one must have been like for its readers in 2008. How much did it newly reveal about Gamache (who is now in his fifties), his wife, his children, and his evolving relationship with Jean-Guy Beauvoir, for instance? Was the little village of Three Pines beginning to take centerstage in readers’ minds despite it not being much featured in A Rule Against Murder? I began reading the series in such a random order that I can’t comfortably draw any conclusions for myself.

A Rule Against Murder reminds me a little of what my perception of an Agatha Christie plot was often like: someone is murdered in a setting that greatly limits the number of potential suspects and no one will be going far before the murderer is identified by investigators. In this case that setting is a small, luxury hotel called Manoir Bellechasse built deep in the Canadian woods almost a century earlier. 

As it turns out, Manoir Bellechasse is very special to Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache. They have been coming to the old hotel every summer for the past thirty years. In addition to housing the small room in which the married couple first slept together, the hotel serves as a retreat from the world in which the Gamaches can prepare themselves to deal with the life of a high-ranking policeman for another year. This year, however, they learn that the hotel has been booked by a single wealthy family for its annual reunion, and that they will be apologetically relegated to a small room at the back of the hotel. 

The Finney family is an extraordinary family in many ways, including the wealth that has already been partially distributed between the family’s adult children. Perhaps even more extraordinary, however, is the utter dislike and contempt the siblings share for one another, their mother, and even at times for their dead father. That they actually show up for the reunions — and one of them is here for the first time in several years — makes Gamache wonder what they may be  hiding from the world, and for that matter, from each other. When a body is discovered in the aftermath of a violent storm, it will be up to Gamache, Beauvoir, and the rest of the team to figure exactly that out.

Bottom Line: A Rule Against Murder is a fine addition to the Gamache series. Seldom has a murder been committed in so unusual, seemingly impossible, a way as the one presented here. I have to doubt that anyone will figure out the physics involved in this case until Penny reveals them near the end of the novel. Too, there is a memorable child in the Finney family who has inexplicably been named Bean, a child who tugs at the emotions of the reader more and more as the story plays itself out. Fans of Three Pines only get a glimpse of the village and its residents at the beginning and end of this one.

(I “read” the audiobook version of A Rule Against Murder. The audiobook is narrated by Ralph Cosham who also narrated Penny’s Gamache novel Still Life. I find him to be a solid narrator, the type that I can forget thinking about after just a few pages. For me, that kind of smoothness and unobtrusiveness works best.)

Louise Penny