Thinking Out Loud: One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

According to Olivia Hawker, One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow came to her very easily. Once she gathered up various elements of her own family history, the plot and the characters fell right into place, and even the actual writing was not that much of a chore. She still says that this 2019 novel is the "easiest" one she has ever written.

I don't know about all of that, but I can tell you that I was almost immediately taken by the setting (two 1876 Wyoming homesteads) and the tragedy/crime that bound two families so close together whether they wanted to be bound that tightly or not. After the two families find themselves both lacking an adult male as winter approaches, they have little choice but to move in together and share what they have. Any other decision will likely result in the deaths of several children and most of the livestock owned by the families.

Really, the Bemises and the Webbers were bound together long before the two women put aside their rage and pride long enough to consider what was best for the children. Ernest Bemis made certain of that when he shot and killed Substance Webber after catching the man and Cora Bemis in a more-than-compromising position. Ernest almost immediately rode the 20 miles into town to turn himself in to the sheriff, and after his trial was sentenced to two years in jail. Suddenly the women are dependent on the seventeen-year-old Clyde Webber and the sixteen-year-old Beulah Bemis to do all of the farm labor their husbands had previously done if either family were to survive the approaching winter.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow is a well written piece of historical fiction, one that gives a clear picture of how precarious life was in that part of the American West in 1876. It features two strong women trying to do what's best for their own families despite what has so recently torn both families apart. It is part western, part love story, and part character study. I give this one four out of five stars.

(I'm reading at a slower pace these days, and I'm finding that slowing myself down has made me look at novels in a slightly different way. I'm catching more details and nuances now, I think, than I have for a while - and I'm enjoying that.)

Fight Night: Thinking Out Loud

 I'm stretched a little thinly these days, but even though this won't be anything like a formal review, I want to "think out loud" a little about a book that I recently enjoyed a whole lot, Fight Night by Miriam Toews. 

The novel is about three generations of very unique women living under the same roof. The grandmother is elderly and not doing very well physically; the mother is pregnant and own her own since her husband walked out on the family; and the nine-year-old granddaughter is pretty much a little genius even though she's currently expelled from school.

For me, what made this book so special is the total bonding between the little girl and her grandmother. The fun comes from the fact that each of them believes she is the guardian and almost-sole caretaker of the other. There's a lot of watchfulness and education going in both directions, and much of it is laugh-out-loud funny - when it's not putting a tear in your eye.

Even the unborn child (called "Gord" by the family due to how big the mother is in her late term pregnancy) becomes a minor character that the little girl speaks to in her head and watches out for. 

That's it. If this little bit of info appeals to you, you really need to get your hands on this one. It's the one book that keeps popping back into my head so far from this year's reading. 

In Which I Get Interviewed on The Big Show

 My life has been marked by two constants over the decades: a love of books and reading, and an appreciation for roots music. I define roots music as that made by the pioneers and first generation singers of a particular genre, be that country music, bluegrass music, the blues, rock and roll, etc. But because music genres can evolve so rapidly over the years - even to the point of becoming mere shadows of the original sound - I've always had a tendency to hold on to the old stuff when I find it. And after 60 years of collecting, that means I have a music library that includes 78s, 45s, LPs, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, and self-recorded video and audio performances along with thousands of digital recordings. 

That's the other side of my life that has occasionally bled over to my posts here at Book Chase. I try to keep that to a minimum, but sometimes I can't help myself. This is one of those times.

I recently sat down with Andy Gallo and Jim Sloan as a guest on their music-related podcast called "The Big Show" to talk about my lifetime love for music of this sort and my meager efforts to help keep the music alive over the years. We get into things like what sparked my regard for the music, the internet radio station I helped run for several years, and all the video recordings I still make and share on the internet.

I finally got the courage to listen to it myself, and I hope one or two of you might find it interesting since I've been neglecting Book Chase so badly. It explains where a lot of my energy is going these days.

August Reading: Quantity Was There, Quality Not So Much

 

While I did manage to read 11 books during August, a good part of my reading seemed to go more sluggishly than usual. I'm not sure if I simply made some poor choices this month or if it's more a problem with my general attitude. Whichever it was, I'm really looking forward to a fresh start in September...although that's the peak of hurricane season in this part of the country, so it could turn out to be an extra-interesting month. Looking at the ones I finished in August, I'm a bit surprised to see that six are novels and five are nonfiction because I don't usually read nonfiction in that kind of ratio to fiction.

1. The Good Daughters - Joyce Maynard - Two very different families share a huge secret for over 50 years
2. We Came, We Saw, We Left - Charles Wheelan - man travels around the world for 9 months with wife & 3 teens - Nonfiction
3. To Hell with Honor - Larry Sklenar - Brilliant explanation of what happened at The Little Big Horn and who was responsible
4. Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old - Steven Petrow - writer vows to practice what he learned from watching his parents age
5. The Woman in the Library - Sulari Gentill - Disappointing mystery using novel-inside-a-novel structure that is stupefyingly formulaic 
6. Real Tigers - Mick Herron - #4 in the terrific Slough House series 
7. A String of Beads - Thomas Perry - Jane Whitefield #8 - Jane hides he childhood Seneca best friend from cops and killers 
8. Bridge of Spies - Giles Whittell - Account of U-2 pilot Gary Powers, his capture by Russia and exchange for Russian spy
9. Blood Safari - Deon Meyer - Second novel in Meyer's Lemmer series about a South African bodyguard
10. In a Dry Season - Peter Robinson - Inspector Banks #10 - a case going back to World War II; Banks meets DS Annie Cabbot
11. Packing My Library - Alberto Manguel - Argentinian author's 10 essays and 10 "digressions" on packing away his personal library

I think I'm a little disappointed with this lot because even some of my favorite crime writers didn't impress me all that much this month. I read four of my favorites this month: Mick Herron, Deon Meyer, Thomas Perry, and Peter Robinson. Of the four books of theirs, the only one that stands out to me as representative of their best work is Herron's Real Tigers, and based on that one's not-so-promising plot summary I was surprised by how much I liked it. I absolutely loved the first third of Meyer's Blood Safari, but it became a routine thriller after one of the book's two main characters was sent to hospital in a coma - where she stayed for almost the rest of the book. I "liked" Perry's A String of Beads right up until I realized that Jane Whitefield was going to be using the same evasion techniques that she uses in all of the novels featuring her and that she was simply teaching them to a new client. This is only the second Whitefield novel I've read, though, so maybe that criticism is premature. As for Robinson's 10th Inspector Banks novel, it is built around one of the things I like least in fiction: an author "telling" what happened rather than "showing it." In In a Dry Season, Robinson flashes back and forth via an unpublished manuscript that fills in most of the holes from the WWII portion of the novel. And that goes on for about ninety percent of the novel. It became tedious because the "manuscript author" wrote so passionlessly.

And then there were two 2-star books this month: the robotically written The Woman in the Library and the way-over-my-head Packing My Library. I had high hopes for the latter, even to purchasing an e-book copy of it, but it was a real slog for me, and I'm still not sure what I read...or why. The Woman in the Library is so formulaic that it could have been written by a software program. Before that one is over, just about every main character in the novel has been featured in the role of red herring. It just got silly sometimes.

My favorite book of the month turned out to be To Hell with Honor by Larry Sklenar, an in-depth study of exactly what must have happened at the Little Big Horn in 1876 when Custer and most of his 7th Calvary were destroyed. It is very well researched and explains how such a thing could have happened - along with whom was really responsible for the poor decisions made that day by the US Army leadership. It is a real eye-opener, and it's earned a permanent slot on my History bookshelf.

Now that I've come to the end of this month's reading recap, I realize just how "blah" a reading month I really had. Having had only one particularly outstanding book all month long means that September almost has to be better without even trying very hard. 

As August ends, I'm at various stages of reading: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Burgler (a 1954 noir novel by David Goodis, Isaac's Storm (Erik Larson's third book), The Three-Cornered War (a Civil War history by Megan Kate Nelson), and Leave the Grave Green by Deborah Crombie. Already, these seem to be going better than almost everything I finished it August.

Bye for now.

July 2022 Reading Highlights Include New and Old Favorites

I managed to get away for two weeks in mid-July, a road trip through parts of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Iowa that I explored for the first time. All in all, I drove just over 4,400 miles but, thanks largely in part to audiobooks, I still managed to read ten books during the month. I find that I more easily absorb audiobooks of the mystery/spy thriller type, so my July reading largely reflects that: 

1. Devil's Peak - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #1 - South African
2. Blank Pages - Bernard MacLaverty - 12 memorable short stories from an excellent Irish author
3. Thirteen Hours - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel #2 - Two American teens run for their lives in South Africa
4. The Trawlerman - William Shaw - Alex Cupidi #5
5. Back of Beyond - C.J. Box - Standalone set in Yellowstone
6. The Ranger - Ace Atkins - Introduces the Quinn Colson series
7. Seven Days - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #3
8. Cobra - Deon Meyer - Benny Griessel series #4
9. The Splendid and the Vile - Erik Larson - WWII history (1942) focusing on Churchill, Hitler, Goring, and Roosevelt
10. The Bomb Maker - Thomas Perry - crazy bomb-maker tries to wipe out entire LAPD bomb squad

My newest "favorite" writer is South Africa's Deon Meyer, whose books are translated into English from the original Afrikaans. I read the first four books in Meyer's Benny Griessel series, and I highly recommend them to fans of the police procedural genre. The books have a great feel for what life must have been like in South Africa soon after all the big political changes impacted that country - especially what happened inside the big police departments there. 

The old favorites I revisited this month were Ace Atkins (finally read the first Quinn Colson novel), William Shaw, and Erik Larson (finally read the remarkable The Splendid and the Vile). In addition, I read the relatively disappointing Back of Beyond by C.J. Box and the wonderful The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry, an author I'm appreciating more every time I read something of his. 

I'm not sure where my reading will lead me next month, but I find myself wanting to spend some time reading books on 19th century American history, along with revisiting some of the classics from the likes of Austen and the Brontes. I've purchased four books in the six-book set by Andrews McMeel Publishing that includes beautiful new editions of Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women. Each of the books is illustrated by Marjolein Bastin and include realistic facsimile inserts true to the period and story. Bottom line is that the books are all so beautiful that I consider them to be individual pieces of art. 

Let's see what happens.

June Reading Highlights and One Disappointment

June worked out pretty well for me as I continued to explore Mick Herron's work, read the latest from one of my all-time favorite authors, and read what I think is the definitive biography of my favorite singer, Merle Haggard. 

It's kind of hard for me to believe that I only so recently discovered Mick Herron's "Slough House" series of novels and short stories because I've now read three of the books. The series is a rather cynical look at international espionage and those who spy for a living, and I've enjoyed reading all three books - and I'm looking forward to reading the series all the way through. 

Merle Haggard is unfamiliar to lots of people who don't believe they have anything in common with real country music (not that watered down stuff called country today...that's not even close to being music, much less authentic country music). But if a person were forced to listen to only one singer for the rest of his life, Haggard would be a good choice. The man was a musical genius who combined his wonderful voice and songwriting skills with his life experience to create some of the most beautiful, and meaningful, music ever recorded. Haggard's life story is so unusual that Marc Eliot's Merle Haggard bio, The Hag, reads like a novel at times.

It was nice to catch up, too, with Anne Tyler again via her latest novel French Braid. This, like most of Tyler's work is an understated look at a Baltimore family over several generations. It's impact begins to hit the reader about three-quarters of the way through, and by the novel's end I found myself truly caring what would happen to these people.

So, these are the ten books I completed in June:

1. Dolphin Junction - Mick Herron - collection of short stories & novellas featuring his series characters - uneven, but fun
2. The Hag - Marc Eliot - maybe the definitive Merle Haggard bio
3. Dead Lions - Mick Herron - "Slough House" #2 - excellent story about Soviet sleeper agents who "wake up" after two decades
4. Trunk Music - Michael Connelly - Harry Bosch #5 in which Harry reconnects with ex-FBI agent Eleanor Wish and they marry
5. Death Be Not Proud - John Gunther - memoir of a father who watched his son fight a brain tumor for 15 months (1947 death)
6. Hidden Depths - Ann Cleeves - Vera Stanhope #3 (2007)
7. The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery - Amanda Cox - heavy-handed Christian novel with boring final third
8. The List - Mick Herron - Novella, "Slough House" #2.5 
9. French Braid - Anne Tyler - Gradual changes in family-tightness over four generations of a Baltimore family 
10. Nightfall - David Goodis - New York noir classic from 1946

I have to say that I was disappointed and bored by The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery but that was more my fault than the author's because I didn't do my homework before getting well into the novel. If I had, I wouldn't have begun it at all because it is part of a genre I try to avoid: "Christian novels." My distaste for these novels has nothing to do with personal faith; I simply find the vast majority of them to be very heavy-handed and predictable. And, as a result, boring.

Nightfall is a 1946 novel that could serve as the blueprint for the entire noir crime genre with its very dark, almost surreal, setting and the way that all of the main characters (cops and crooks, alike) seemed to be doomed in one way or the other. I've been a fan of David Goodis novels ever since reading Dark Passage a while back, and this one is even better than Dark Passage in my estimation.

I spent the last couple of days in June immersed in Deon Meyer's Devil's Peak but didn't finish it up until today, so it will go down as a July read. I only discovered Meyer a couple of weeks ago when I saw that he was featured on the cover of the current issue of Mystery Scene magazine. Meyer is a South African novelist who is translated into English from Afrikaans, and he is brutally honest about the culture in which he lives and writes. I'll try to add something more about him later as time allows.

I hope you are all doing well these days and that things, tough as they can be, are at least slowly returning to the life we so used to take for granted. Still busy here as always, but hoping to speak with you guys soon.

Sam