More Books I Don't Want You to Miss (No. 4)

As I try to rekindle (pun intended) my reading enthusiasm, especially my enthusiasm for reading what is turning out to be the highest number of e-books I've ever read in a given year, I've been browsing through lots of bookstore lists and the like to see what's new since last time around (the July 5 list). But, maybe because my enthusiasm is so low right now, I didn't feel like jumping up and down about much of anything I found.

I'm reading a novel right now from my "Books I Don't Want You to Miss" list from mid-June by Gillian McAllister called The Choice, but after almost 80 pages of reading, I'm finding it very difficult to feel the book's rhythm and pace.  And on top of that, I've already abandoned one book this week after only 20 pages, and was disappointed by another that I thought would be so much better than it turned out to be. So the slump is real.

Who knows, maybe one of these that caught my eye in the last couple of weeks will be the very book I need to snap me out of it. I can hope.

It was probably the cover that initially caught my eye, but I've seen quite a few enthusiastic reviews of Mexican Gothic, too. It's set in the 1950s and is about a woman who goes to a family mansion in Mexico after her newlywed cousin begs for someone to save her from what she's gotten herself into. Sounds like a throwback kind of novel. 

Subtitled, The True Story of an American Outlaw, this is the story of half the "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gang" made so famous in a movie decades ago by Paul Newman (who played Butch) and Robert Redford. Robert LeRoy Parker created for himself both the Butch Cassidy name and kind of a Robin Hood image before he and Sundance were reportedly killed in South America.

This is one I've been looking forward to for a while even though I expect it will be a bit of a melancholy read because the 80-year-old Trebek is still fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Trebek, host of one of the most popular quiz shows in television history, is just one of those guys that everyone likes, a very rare commodity these days.  

Even worse than missing out on brand new books, is letting an older book slip through the crack permanently. This 2016 Stephen Harrigan book is narrated by a fictional friend of Lincoln's, and it is one of my favorite historical fiction novels published in the last few years. Harrigan is a jewel of a writer and, in my opinion, he is very underrated. 

So, keep your heads down, my friends. Keep reading, and keep telling the rest of us all about it. Readers like us are the lucky ones right now because we can travel the world, go backward and forward in time, and can teach ourselves new skills without ever having to leave home. Show a little kindness to all those poor nonreaders out there. 

Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemmingway

Today marks the 121^st anniversary of Ernest Hemmingway’s birth, so birthday wishes are in order. Sadly enough, Mr. Hemmingway chose to take his own life on July 2, 1961, just short of his 62^nd birthday, so he has been dead almost as long as he was alive. It is believed that Hemmingway’s suicide may have been brought on by a hereditary disease that causes an excess of iron to accumulate in body tissues. His father, sister Ursula, brother Leicester, and granddaughter Margaux all killed themselves.

 

Every time I think of Hemmingway or read something he wrote, I flashback to the cover of the Life Magazine issue that is dated just a couple of weeks after the author’s suicide. My parents were Life subscribers for decades and much of my world view came from reading those magazines from cover to cover. The idea that so famous and successful a writer as Ernest Hemmingway could, or would, kill himself (especially with a shotgun) just made no sense to me when I was thirteen years old, so this cover is burned deeply in my memory.

 

Hemmingway was known as a “man’s man,” and because of that I wonder how many female readers he had – or has today (is that a sexist question?). His wartime experiences are legendary, especially those relating to the Spanish Civil War, but Hemmingway also witnessed some of the key moments of World War II, including the Allied landings at Normandy and the liberation of Paris, and served as an ambulance driver during World War I. It was as an eighteen-year-old ambulance driver that he was wounded by mortar fire and received the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery for helping Italian soldiers to safety despite his own wounds. Yes, the hard-living Hemmingway was a man’s man.

 

Among my favorite Hemmingway works are his short stories and novels like The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises.

 

Happy birthday, Ernest Hemmingway.

Britt-Marie Was Here - Fredrik Backman

I remember stumbling across a movie trailer on YouTube one day for the Swedish film A Man Called Ove. At the time, Tom Hanks was even said to be in the process of producing an American remake of the film, but I don’t think that ever happened. Well, as often does happen, my interest in the movie led me to the book (of the same title) from which the Swedish movie is adapted. And that’s how I discovered author Fredrik Backman – plus three or four of my favorite books of the last couple of years.  

 

Backman is a Swedish writer whose books center on some of the quirkiest characters a reader will ever encounter. Luckily for the rest of the world, his five novels have now been translated into 25 languages, including, most thankfully, English. His debut novel, the already mentioned A Man Called Ove (2012), has been followed by My Grandmother Asked Me to Say She’s Sorry (2013), Britt-Marie Was Here (2014), Bear Town (2017), and Us Against You (2018). I wholeheartedly vouch for each of these with the exception of the one I’m yet to read, My Grandmother Asked Me to Say She’s Sorry. Oh, and in order to complete the book-to-movie circle I started with Ove and my discovery of Backman, I should mention that Britt-Marie Was Here has also been adapted into movie form.

 

Britt-Marie is obsessed with order, a place for everything, and of course, everything in its place. She even judges the character of new acquaintances by the way they organize – or don’t organize – their cutlery drawers. Knives, forks, and spoons all have their assigned place, and Britt-Marie doesn’t really trust people who don’t strictly adhere to that rule. In fact, she even extends the “everything in its place rule” to her husband, and when Britt-Marie learns that he has been cheating on her, she decides that her place is no longer at his side.

 

That’s how Britt-Marie ends up, all on her own, working as caretaker of the recreation center in Borg, one of Sweden’s most isolated little towns. Borg is so small – and its economy so depressed – that its dwindling population depends on a general store of sorts that stocks a little of just about everything the closed businesses used to sell. It helps not to be too choosy when shopping in Borg. And unbeknownst to Britt-Marie, the recreation center she is responsible for is already scheduled for demolishment. Until that happens, though, Britt-Marie is going to make sure that it’s the cleanest and most efficiently run recreation center in all of Sweden.

 

Fredrik Backman

Britt-Marie is not what you would call a “people-person.” Her pickiness, combined with an inability to hold her tongue, makes it near impossible for her to make new friends or for her to keep any friends around long enough for them ever to reach the status of old friends. But something strange and unexpected begins to happen when Britt-Marie meets the locals. Strange as they at first seem to her, she starts to like them, and even more surprisingly, they start to like her. But the biggest surprises of all come when Britt-Marie, a woman who knows absolutely nothing about soccer, or any other sport for that matter, agrees to coach the local youth soccer team in their quest to show the neighboring town snobs they can compete with them – even if they do have to practice in a paved parking lot.

 

I experienced Britt-Marie Was Here in audiobook format as read by Joan Walker. If there is a more perfect reader to capture the character, spirit, and inner thoughts of a woman like Britt-Marie, I can’t imagine who that might be. Even better, Walker uses her voice and variable speech patterns to create several other characters who are all immediately recognizable by the individual vocal patterns and voices she assigns to them. The way that Walker reads some of their conversations is laugh-out-loud funny.

 

Bottom Line: Britt-Marie Was Here is one of those stories that can make you laugh as easily as it breaks your heart, and it often does both in quick succession. The joy of watching Britt-Marie blossom into the person she was always capable of being is equaled by the townspeople’s reluctant realization that they have come to love the strange little woman who suddenly bursts into their lives. Fredrik Backman has done it again, and in fact, Britt-Marie Was Here just may be my favorite of the four novels of his I’ve now read. (And that is saying a lot.)   

Sometimes, walking around inside an old cemetery is exactly what you need.

The Monument Added to Sam Houston's Grave in 1911

(Clicking on an image will open a much larger version of it.)

I woke up this morning and knew that if I didn't get out of the house to do something different the top of my head was going to blow right off. To keep that from happening, I decided to drive 50 miles north to visit the Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas. Because Oakwood is the cemetery in which Sam Houston is buried, I've been there several times before without seeing anyone else around, so it seemed like the perfect spot to take a break during this endless pandemic. And I did end up having the place pretty much to myself for the entire two hours I wandered around, so it was a very peaceful way to recharge a little.

 

A typical family plot inside the cemetery 

I've mentioned Sam Houston here many times, but so much has changed since the last time I brought up the man's name, I feel that I should say something about him again. Keep in mind that he led the army that gained Texas its independence from Mexico, that he was president of the Republic of Texas, that he was twice a U.S. Senator after the new state joined the Union, and that he is the only American ever to have been governor of two different states (Texas and Tennessee). In the day, he was both an Indian fighter and such an admirer of the Indian culture that one Indian chief adopted him as a son. 

Explanation for high percentage of headstones dated 1867

And yes, he owned a handful of slaves for part of his life. But I refuse to let the "cancel culture" vultures out there convince me to write off the rest of the man's life and accomplishments because he did something that, terrible as it was, was the norm for his time. I am one who continues to believe that context is important when considering different periods of history, and that history should not be so carelessly rewritten by those so ignorant they would destroy statues of Booker T. Washington and prominent abolitionists in their mob-induced frenzy. Well, enough said...probably too much said, actually.

The 1867 epidemic played no favorites. Several clergymen and doctors were also claimed.

I'll let the cemetery speak for itself via a few of the pictures I took there today. Over the past few years, the cemetery does not seem to be getting the upkeep it received in prior years, so parts of it are a little rough. Many of the headstones date from the early 1800s, and in addition to Houston, there are a few other fairly prominent Texans buried in Oakwood. But I have to admit that because the more neglected version of the grounds somehow makes it all seem so much older than it even is, I kind of like it this way. 

There were way too many headstones telling stories similar to this one.

Off by itself, shaded by a nice cluster of trees, is the Powell Sanctuary. The Powells were a prominent Huntsville family who opened this place of meditation inside the cemetery in 1934.

And finally, a few representative headstones:

All in all, this has been a good day, exactly the kind of break from all this COVID-19 talk that I needed. Now it's back to the real world.

Quodophiles, One and All

Apparently, I am what is called a quodophile - although I would not recommend that you waste your time looking for the word in any dictionary because you won't be finding it there. And, I’m betting that just about every other book blogger is probably a quodophile, too, because the word simply means that you are a collector of quotes. In our case, that would most often be quotes from authors or books that we read. I’m not sure if writing the quotes down in a little notebook or storing your collection somewhere in the cloud is required for quodophile qualification, but I suspect that it probably is. (Note to self: the only reason your Word dictionary does not flag “quodophile” is that you’ve added it to the dictionary yourself.)

 

Here, for example, are a few favorites I’ve logged in the last few months:

"Words. He might as well have picked them at random. They could have escaped from a thesauris in a poorly coordinated jailbreak, emerging into the light as absolute strangers, blinking at each other in total incomprehension." (Describing Poke Rafferty's attempt to write about the birth of his son)

"How often we made our worst fears come true by behaving as though they already were."

(Inspector Gamache's observation during a Three Pines murder investigation)

"Where was the religion for a man who believed that good and bad must coexist, even within the individual? Where was the religion for a man who believed in God, but not in God's religion?" (Inspector John Rebus reflecting on his relationship to God and to organized religion)

"It's 3:12 a.m., October 1, 2016. I have turned seventy. Daylight will bring slices of cake and cheerful goodwill. It will be like celebrating a hernia."

(Tim O'Brien's thoughts upon concluding his seventh decade on the planet)

"Every book in every bookstore is a fresh beginning. Every book is the next iteration of a very old story. Every bookstore, therefore, is like a safe-deposit box for civilization."

Two quotes from this one: "Death is the price we pay for life." And, "Real aging starts when your oldest child is fifty. You are in your seventies, you call your children 'kids,' and realize how young you were in your fifties."

Not all of the quotes are the most pleasant thoughts to contemplate...but each of them will make you think.

The End of October - Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright’s pandemic novel The End of October was published on April 28, 2020, meaning that it was probably pretty much written, edited, and in the hands of his publisher by the time our own real-world COVID-19 pandemic was really hitting its stride. If that assumption is true, the first half of Wright’s novel rather uncannily tracks what we’ve gone through with COVID-19, including even our silly arguments about the effectiveness, or non-effectiveness, of face masks. But that should not really be as surprising as it may at first glance seem to be because Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for The New Yorker who, beginning with 1979’s City Children, Country Summer, has produced a string of ten carefully researched nonfiction books. In the process, Wright won a Pulitzer for 2007’s The Looming Tower and a National Book Critics Circle Award for 2013’s Going Clear. Wright used those same research skills in preparation of The End of October, and it shows.

 

            “Disease was more powerful than armies. Disease was more arbitrary than terrorism. Disease was crueler than the human imagination.”  (Page 22)

 

Dr. Henry Parsons first hears of the Kongoli virus at a “parliament of health officials” in Geneva, Switzerland. The next-to-last presentation of the last day of the conference focuses on an unusual cluster of forty-seven bloody deaths in a West Java refugee camp (although it turns out that the camp is actually a prison for Muslim homosexuals). Parsons does not believe the official Indonesian government explanation of the deaths, so he agrees to collect samples from the camp for further study before heading home to Atlanta. But as it turns out, he will not see Atlanta, his wife, or his two children again for a long, long time.

 

Within hours of his arrival in the squalid camp, Parsons is convinced that an unidentified virus is responsible for the horrendous deaths – and that he has made a terrible, perhaps fatal, mistake by not quarantining his driver before the man could drive away on his own. By the time the driver could be tracked down, he was on the hajj to Mecca along with millions of other devout Muslims. And now everything that can possibly go wrong, is about to. A highly contagious flu virus with a death rate of close to 50% is about to be unleashed on the world.

 

Lawrence Wright

The second half of The End of October (which is a reference to the expected timing of the second wave of the virus) is more dystopian than the first half of the book. Just about the time that the virus seems to have passed its peak (the old flattening of the curve theory we are all so familiar with by now), “the lights go out” in the United States because the dictators in Russia, Iran, and North Korea (and perhaps others) decide that this is the perfect time to launch an all-out cyber-war against America. But as catastrophic as this second scenario is, it all feels a little rushed and somehow fails to pack the punch provided by the earlier part of Wright’s story.

 

Bottom Line: The End of October is one of those thrillers (cliché warning) pulled from today’s headlines and, as such, it can be nerve-rackingly scary to read this one at times. Wright’s story also includes concise accounts of the major pandemics that have plagued the world in the past and how those were either dealt with or played themselves out. It’s impossible to put a happy face on this one.