Happy Bookish Mother's Day to All

 Happy Mother's Day, everyone.  Enjoy the day! Here's hoping you add a few books to your "emotional support pile" today. (I think I'm going to start using "ESP stack" in place of "TBR stack" from now on).

Hombre - Elmore Leonard

1961 First Edition Cover

Rightfully so, Elmore Leonard is best known for his crime fiction, but Leonard was not always a mystery writer. He began his career, in fact, as a writer of western novels and short stories, and he made significant contributions to that genre. And, just as with his crime novels, several of Leonard’s westerns were chosen by Hollywood producers to become major movies of the day. Hombre, written in 1961, was one of those so chosen, and in 1967 it became a feature film starring Paul Newman as “Hombre,” a white man who had been raised by his Apache kidnappers. 

“Maybe he let us think a lot of things about him that weren’t true. But as Russell would say, that was up to us. He let people do or think what they wanted while he smoked a cigarette and thought it out calmly, without his feelings getting mixed up in it. Russell never changed the whole time, though I think everyone else did in some way. He did what he felt had to be done. Even if it meant dying. So maybe you don’t have to understand him. You just know him.”

As a boy, John Russell was taken from his family by Apaches who made him one of their own. Now, Russell so easily passes for Apache that the light color of his eyes is the only startling thing about his physical appearance. Russell continued to live with the tribe even when it was eventually forced onto the reservation, so for all practical purposes he considers himself to be Apache - not white. But now, John Russell, sporting a fresh haircut and dressed as a white man, is on a personal mission of his own, and he finds himself on a small stagecoach making its final run across that part of Arizona. 

When the other passengers realize who John Russell really is, they want nothing to do with him — even to forcing him to ride atop the coach with its driver. The passengers include a young woman who has just been recaptured from the Apaches who had held and abused her for several weeks, another woman and her Indian Agent husband who has a secret of his own, and an intimidating cowboy who bullied his way into the stage at the last minute. Russell, who has little other choice, tolerates the abuse, but he’s listening to their words — and he’s taking notes. 

But then everything changes. 

Suddenly, the passengers are begrudgingly depending on John Russell to keep them alive. And John Russell is probably just as surprised as they are to find himself defending a bunch of people who hate him so much. 

Bottom Line: Hombre is significant in the degree to which it exposes the exploitation and deadly abuse suffered by the Indian tribes at the hands of those who continually invaded their lands, and it is highly sympathetic to that point of view. It is also a novel about the foolishness and hypocrisy of any kind of racism that happens to have been written in the midst of America’s civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties — and the timing was no accident. This is a reminder of just how good and impactful a western novel can be, and I highly recommend it.

Elmore Leonard in the Sixties

Lost - and Found - in My Kindle

I've been more dependent these past few weeks than ever on Kindle books because I've gradually developed eye problems again, and I'm finding it a little difficult to read the print in physical books right now. The good news is that I finally got into my retina doctor yesterday and, after a long and thorough examination, she assures me that the macular degeneration in both eyes is as stable as ever, so that's not the problem. Thankfully, that condition has not worsened in over five years now. 

Turns out that the problem is related to the cataract surgery that I had two summers ago, especially in my right eye. The problem is not related to the surgery itself or to the replacement lenses; it's only that the eye-capsule that holds the lens in place in my right eye is clouding up. Unfortunately, that is almost as bad as having cataracts themselves, but it's relatively easily fixed. So late this afternoon I'm going to have my eye doctor take a look, and I'm hoping for a simple, quick bit of laser surgery to get me back to reading "real books."

And, that leads me to the point of this post....finally:

I've discovered all kinds of lost gems hiding deep inside my Kindle, books I have never read and have forgotten all about. I barely recognize some of the titles, and couldn't begin to tell you when I acquired them or why. This morning I started one from 2014 by Catherine Ryan Hyde called Take Me with You that I'm completely charmed by after reading only its first twelve pages. The writing is perfect, the four characters I've encountered so far are all likable as heck, and the story is already setting up nicely.

This is the book's synopsis from Amazon:

"August Shroeder, a burned-out teacher, has been sober since his nineteen-year-old son died. Every year he’s spent the summer on the road, but making it to Yellowstone this year means everything. The plan had been to travel there with his son, but now August is making the trip with Philip’s ashes instead. An unexpected twist of fate lands August with two extra passengers for his journey, two half-orphans with nowhere else to go.

What none of them could have known was how transformative both the trip—and the bonds that develop between them—would prove, driving each to create a new destiny together."

This may be exactly the kind of feel-good story I need right now for so many reasons. August Shroeder, a man who spends his summers on the road, is definitely a guy I can identify with, so here's hoping.

But now I can't help but wonder what else is in that little electronic gizmo, good stuff I hoarded and intended to read at some point. That's the main problem with e-books; it's just way too easy to acquire books that almost immediately disappear, seldom if ever to be seen again. According to Kindle, I have 366 books, 5 book samples, and 60 periodicals, either already downloaded or up in the magic cloud in the sky, just waiting for me to open them up and read. But if Kindle can be believed, 235 of those books remain unread (I'm not yet convinced that's really true). 

I'm determined now to start reading from this stash on a regular basis...and I'm betting I'm not the only one sitting on this kind of book "gold mine." Do you guys have similar stashes of your own?

Earthlings: A Novel - Sayaka Murata

Where do you even begin when you want to describe the experience of reading a book like Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings? I’m a reader who, over a lifetime of reading that spans decades, has read thousands of novels, but Earthlings may just be the most stunningly horrifying one I’ve ever read. Think of the most universal cultural taboos there are, the ones shared across the globe, and it is likely that Murata has made them part of the story she tells in Earthlings about a little Japanese girl who fights so hard not to become part of her country’s “baby factory.” This is a coming-of-age novel like none you have ever read — or will want to read again.

Eleven-year-old Natsuki is a misfit whose mother reminds her every day that she is inferior to her sister in all the ways that count. That’s bad enough but, unfortunately, it is not the only kind of abuse that Natsuki suffers. Things gets even worse for her after a handsome young teacher at her school begins to give her private lessons outside normal school hours. So it is little wonder that Natsuki’s best friend, the only one she can confide in, is a plush hedgehog-looking toy she’s named Piyyut who tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia to help her save the Earth. As her mother will make very clear to her, no one else will help Natsuki.

Thoroughly traumatized by her childhood experiences, Natsuki grows into exactly the damaged and disturbed young woman she was destined to become. But members of her family, and her few friends, have no idea just how disturbed she really is. Nor do they realize that Natsuki has attracted two kindred souls who are every bit as disturbed as she is — two young men who are as determined as Natsuki not to give in to Japan’s cultural restrictions or the government’s pressure to reproduce for the good of the nation. 

Bottom Line: That is the gist of the plot of Earthlings, but it is not what makes the novel so horrifying or difficult to read. The real horror, instead, comes from Murata’s detailed and explicit descriptions of the abuses suffered by Natsuki and the ways that she responds to the abuses she suffers. The author uses the same calm, straightforward prose style, almost a clinical approach, throughout the novel no matter what situation she is describing. And, somehow, that makes it all even more horrifying than it already is. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that reading Earthlings requires a strong stomach. Almost despite myself, I had to keep reading this one long enough to see how it would end — and what an ending it turns out to be. 

Sayaka Murata 

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

I have now re-read Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove two times since first discovering it in a Houston B. Dalton bookstore shortly after it was first published in 1985. In both instances, because I always fear that a book will not hold up to my earlier reads of it, I waited more than fifteen years between my re-readings of Lonesome Dove. A novel itself, of course, will not change, but readers, their perspectives, and their perceptions of the world do change — especially during this period in our history when we’ve allowed a loud group of political and social-media bullies to decide what new books should be published and which ones from the past should be erased from public consciousness. Thankfully, the mob has not yet come for Lonesome Dove or its readers.

I am happy to report that even after three reads, Lonesome Dove is as fresh as ever. It is still one of the funniest and one of the saddest books I’ve ever read; it is still home to some of my favorite fictional characters; and it still keeps me entertained throughout its (depending on which edition you read) near-1,000 pages. McMurtry’s story is a long and complicated one that explores the long relationships of a core group of Texans, men and women, who define the world and themselves based largely upon their mutual experiences and what they have learned from each other. 

“When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake — 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 it’s rattling days were over.”

These opening sentences give a sense of Lonesome Dove, the little south Texas border town that former Texas Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call now call home. Gus and Call, along with a couple of other ex-Rangers, run a little outfit there they call the Hat Creek Cattle Company. Gus, Call, Pea Eye, and Deets have been on the southern border ever since the governor sent them south to watch the state’s border during the Civil War. Now, all these years later, the only real action along the state’s border with Mexico comes from the raiding parties that cross in both directions to steal cattle and horses from each other. And the retired Rangers enjoy doing that as much as anyone. 

Call, though, is feeling his age now…and he’s fast becoming bored with this life. Gus, on the other hand, spends much of his time drinking whisky wherever he can find shade, or at the Dry Bean saloon where he spends time with the town’s one and only whore, and he’s happy enough to go on doing so. Call yearns for one more big adventure in his life, and he wants it now, so when another ex-Ranger, Jake Spoon, rides into Lonesome Dove with stories about the unspoiled grazing paradise to be found in Montana, Call decides that the Hat Creek Cattle Company is going to be the first outfit to drive cattle north of the Yellowstone River. 

What happens next is epic. 

Bottom Line: It is impossible even to hint at everything that happens in Lonesome Dove, so I’ll quote McMurtry’s preface to the edition I read instead. The author addresses the novel’s theme this way: “…if one cuts more deeply, the lonesome dove is Newt, a lonely teenager who is the unacknowledged son of Captain Call and a kindly whore named Maggie, who is now dead. So the central theme of the novel is not the stocking of Montana but unacknowledged paternity. All of the Hat Creek Outfit, including particularly Augustus McCrae, want Call to accept the boy as his son.”  

Lonesome Dove is a not-to-be-missed masterpiece. 

Larry McMurtry

The Book Chase May 2021 Reading Plan

May caught me by surprise - I suppose because every day and every month has been pretty much like the one that preceded it for more than a year now. For that reason, I'm more or less organizing the month's reading plan on the fly, and my actual May reading may end up bearing little resemblance to what I see ahead of me right now:

Lonesome Dove, despite the fact that I've been slowly enjoying it for weeks, will end up being called a May book because I'm now down to about 25 pages to go in this 946-page masterpiece. I'll almost certainly finish it today. This is my third time reading Larry McMurtry's most famous book, and I am thrilled that it has held up so well again. Since I only read it every decade or so, it has remained as fresh - and as moving - as it was my first time through. Now, I can't wait to re-read the other novels featuring Gus and Call.

Sayaka Murata's Earthlings is another of the books I was already reading coming into this new month. I am about two-thirds of the way through the audiobook version, and although I'm growing a little weary of the book's reader, I'm still intrigued about where this one seems to be heading. I haven't reached the climax yet, but I'm hoping that it's headed where I think it is. Some of the characters in Earthlings resemble the main characters from Murata's Convenience Store Woman enough that I'm starting to wonder if Murata herself is not a bit obsessed by the theme of the two novels. 

Even though Paul Theroux is a writer whose work I've often enjoyed in the past, I'm finding it difficult to get into his latest novel. Under the Wave at Waimea is about an over-the-hill surfer who is now struggling to win against his much younger competition. That's a world I can't identify with, but I think I'll eventually lock into the book's rhythm because it's really, I think and hope, a mystery about what happens after the old surfer runs over someone while driving home from the bar one night. Theroux is just too good a writer for me not to give this one another try.

The Real Cool Killers is a 1959 novel from Chester Himes's Harlem Detective series featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones (just those names make me want to read the book). Himes is a black writer who started publishing short stories while serving time in prison for armed robbery convictions. His work is still seen as having been quite influential in the genre, and after leaving prison and moving to Europe for the rest of his life, his books were popular there as well. I've never read Himes, so I don't know know what to expect.

Hard to believe, but Not Dark Yet is book number twenty-seven in Peter Robinson's DCI Banks series. Banks is a Yorkshire cop I've not completely warmed up to despite now having read the first five and the last two books in the series. I do have to say that I've enjoyed the last two more than I did those at the beginning of the series, so I'm hoping that this one works well for me. I think my problem with the books has been that so little of Banks's personal life is shared with the reader. The novels are, however, excellent police procedurals. 

I've read and enjoyed several of Mike Bond's books in the past, and I've just recently received a review copy of his new one, America: Volume 1. The novel is the first book in a seven-book series via which Bond plans to explore life in America decade-by-decade beginning here with the 1960s. It focuses on two couples who come of age during that decade and how such a volatile time changed and influenced them for the rest of their lives. This was my own coming-of-age decade, so I'm curious to see what Bond has to say about it.

The infamous Blake Bailey biography of Philip Roth arrived yesterday as Amazon promised, and I've already taken a quick look at it. I'm impressed with the physical quality of the book, including its approximately 100 photos, and its organization. But Philip Roth: The Biography is over 800 pages long, so it is unlikely that I will finish it during May. It will most likely instead turn into a multi-month read much like Lonesome Dove has done. Yes, Blake Bailey may very well turn out to be the criminal he is accused of being...not his book. 

I really dislike this cover of Elmore Leonard's Hombre, but don't let it put you off the book itself. Leonard started his career as a western writer, and had great success in that genre in print and movie versions of his stories. Hombre (1961) is one of the best of them, and it may even have been a little ahead of its time because it's the story of a man who, because he was raised by Apaches, is held in contempt by the white settlers around him right up until he's the only thing standing between them and death. Considered by many to be one of the best westerns ever written, it was also adapted into what became one of Paul Newman's best-remembered movies.

Of course, I expect at least three or four other books to demand immediate attention - some I already have on board, and some I don't even know about yet - so things will change. It's only a question of by how much.