Drinking with Men

I still have not gotten my head around the fact that Rosie Schaap, as she proclaims in the very first sentence of Drinking with Men, has spent more than 13,000 hours of her life inside bars. Think about that number for a minute. That is the equivalent of more eight-hour workdays than most people work in seven years. It equals almost one and a half years of calendar-days doing nothing else. That means that Schaap, who was born in 1971, has spent almost four percent of her entire life inside a bar. Granted, she was a working bartender during some of those hours, but she was a paying customer way more of the time.

Now, it can be argued (and Schaap does an admirable job of building such a case), that all those hours were not entirely wasted, that the benefits gained were worthy of all the time she spent hanging out with likeminded people. Schaap argues that, because she did not have a home environment conducive to creating a feeling of community and family, she had to create her own substitute family.  And for the last twenty-five years, she has done exactly that by bonding with the regulars in the several bars and pubs (mostly, but not exclusively, in New York City) that she came to consider her second-homes. (Consider, too, that Schaap now writes the New York Times “Drink” column – an additional benefit she gained.)

Rosie Schaap

Schaap was only fifteen when she first drifted into the bar car of a NYC commuter train, but she immediately sensed that she was among her kind of people. These commuters were living the boisterous chain-smoking, booze consuming, dirty-joke-telling lifestyle she instinctively wanted to be a part of. They obviously enjoyed each other’s company and, as she was surprised to learn, they took her more seriously than any adult in her life ever had before. Trading tarot card readings for free, under-the-table beers, Schaap was soon a regular in her very first barroom. She finally felt that she belonged.

Rosie Schaap is a talented writer whose enjoyable prose style makes Drinking with Men an interesting memoir even for readers who might have some difficulty identifying with the lifestyle. I am one of those people, so I appreciate a glimpse into a world I would otherwise have never experienced. I do not doubt that Schaap is a better woman for having experienced the lifestyle firsthand. Having survived her months of following the Grateful Dead from city to city, all the while living on the fly, she finally found the family she needed - and that helped her, finally, to make something of her life before it was too late.

This one will, I think, surprise you.

Best New-to-Me Authors of 2012

It's really hard for me to believe that 2012 so close to being over.  The first half of the year seemed to drag for me but, especially from September onward, the second half is flying by.  Maybe that's because I'm retiring at the end of the year and still have so much to do before I can turn in my office key...or just maybe, it's because 2012 has turned out to be such a great year for discovering new authors.

In no particular order, here are the five the new-to-me writers I'm happiest about finding this year, along with the book that turned me on to them (titles are linked to my review of each title):

Robert Goolrick, author of Heading Out to Wonderful

Lynn Shepherd, author of The Solitary House

Jessica Gregson, author of The Angel Makers

Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of The Detour

Joseph Schuster, author of The Might Have Been

Hey, I just realized something.  Of the five novels, Joe Schuster's baseball book is the only one with a contemporary setting.  One takes place in WWII Italy, one in WWII Hungary, one in barely post-WWII America, and the other in the London-era very familiar to readers of Dickens novels.  I must be getting nostalgic in my old age - even for periods before my own time.  Hmmm.

Invisible Murder

Invisible Murder, co-written by Danish authors Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, features Red Cross nurse Nina Borg, a character the pair introduced in their highly acclaimed 2011 debut novel.  That novel, The Boy in the Suitcase, in addition to being a New York Times bestseller, was named best Danish Thriller of the Year, a New York Times Notable Crime Book, and was nominated for several other literary awards.

In addition to the work she does for the Red Cross at a large refugee camp, Nina is still tied into “the Network,” a group of doctors, nurses, and advocates that provides off-the-grid care and help to those in the country illegally.  Many of the people she sees through her “Network” are Eastern Europe gypsies forced to endure atrocious living conditions as they try to stay under the radar of Copenhagen authorities long enough to scam the city’s citizens out of some of their money.

Nina’s husband, a North Sea geologist, approves of her clandestine services, asking only that she not take that risk while he is away working on an offshore oil rig (the couple have a teen daughter and young son).  Nina, however, because she finds it impossible to ignore the plight of sick children, decides to make one quick visit, despite her husband’s absence, to the neglected Copenhagen garage within which several Hungarian gypsy families have taken shelter.  Bad mistake.

Not only is Nina unable to identify the illness that is causing the children to vomit and dehydrate to the point of delirium, she develops the same symptoms and is hospitalized in critical condition.  In the meantime, Copenhagen security personnel are frantically searching for the young man Nina was originally called about, fearing that he has smuggled the makings of a deadly terrorist weapon into Denmark.

Lene Kaaberbol, Agnete Friis

The plot of Invisible Murder is a complicated one in which the authors give equal weight to what is happening simultaneously in the lives of four very different sets of characters.  The story alternates between Nina’s efforts to help the gypsy children; the frantic attempts of Danish Security to crack what they believe is a terrorist network; a young man’s search for his younger brother, who happens to be the same boy Danish authorities are so desperate to find; and the everyday life of an ailing old man and his younger wife.

Although Invisible Murder might require a little patience on the part of the reader, it will reward those who do not become frustrated enough to stop reading.  Admittedly, because it can be difficult to keep track of some of the Scandinavian character and place names (a common problem encountered by readers of translated novels), keeping a descriptive list of characters as they are introduced will make it easier to keep up with the novel’s many interrelated plot twists.  You will be happy that you stayed with Invisible Murder to the end.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

I Wonder What I Missed

I was hoping to read and review about 130 books this year, a modest increase of just three over last year's total, and it appears that I will probably come in just slightly higher than that number.  Considering everything that's been going on in my 2012 world, I am a bit surprised that I will reach my original goal at all, much less exceed it.  But, as I look back over my 2012 choices, I'm already wondering what I missed.

But here are a few that I do hope to get to in early 2013:

I "discovered" Sebastian Faulks in the late nineties while living in London, and I have enjoyed everything the man has written since.  I'm fairly certain that I've only missed A Fool's Alphabet and The Fatal Englishman, two of his earlier books, so the odds are good that I will get my hands on this one, too.  I'm told that A Possible Life is actually a series of five loosely connected novellas that include stories about a British schoolteacher who becomes a prisoner in World War II Poland, a seven-year-old boy sent to the workhouse in 1859 England, a French peasant girl in 1822, and one about a folk singer in 1970s New York City.  The connector-story in the book, third one to come up, is the story of an Italian scientist in 2029.  A Possible Life sounds quite different from what I've come to expect from Mr. Faulks, and I'm looking forward to it.

Esi Edugyan is a new author to me but I am so intrigued by the plot of Half-Blood Blues that I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.  This one is set in 1939 Berlin and features Hieronymus Falk, a young American jazz musician who manages to escape Berlin after Hitler forbids jazz bands to play live there - only to be arrested later in Paris, and never heard from again.  Flash forward to 1992, by which time Falk has become a jazz band legend, and a documentary about his life is being premiered in Berlin.  Two of his original bandmates are in Berlin for the premier and it looks as if they will finally break their five-decade silence about what really happened to Falk.  Half-Blood Blues was originally published in London in 2011 but did not make it to North America until this year.

Mark Binelli (Detroit native, novelist, and Rolling Stone contributing editor) writes about his city, a city that has taken what is probably the biggest economic fall in American history, a city that has little left to lose and is willing to try just about anything to get back on its feet.  That kind of desperation is a magnet for dreamers of all kinds and, as the book jacket puts it, Detroit has become "a laboratory for the future," one that is attracting "urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists."  With so little still to lose, anything is worth trying at this point, so some good may still come from all the pain suffered by the city's citizens.  I have not been to Detroit since it crashed, but the pictures I've seen of the deserted streets and factories is mind-numbingly hard to believe.  Binelli's message is, believe it or not, a hopeful one.

My love of Joyce Carol Oates books is obvious to anyone who has visited Book Chase even fairly regularly.  This year alone I've read and reviewed five of her novels or short story collections, so it is probably a good thing that The Accursed will not be published until March 2013.  Another good thing (for me) is that I already have my hands on an Uncorrected Proof copy of this massive, 667-page genre-bending book.  It sounds like a fine piece of historical fiction (set in early twentieth century Princeton, New Jersey) with supernatural undertones, not something I have experienced in a JCO novel before.  The cast of characters includes three American presidents, including Princeton resident Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, the President-elect who was also a president of Princeton University.  Throw in a "cunningly disguised demon," and this one has all the makings of a fun read.

And, finally, there is this new Abraham Lincoln study by Stephen Mansfield.  Lincoln's Battle with God detail's the assassinated president's struggle to find a "life-changing" faith despite all the personal sorrows he endured.  Think about it: his mother died when he was still nine years old, his abusive father was seldom around, he lost one son at three and another at eleven, and his political and military decisions sent thousands of young men to early deaths during America's Civil War.  It is little wonder that his depression had him considering suicide on several occasions or that he would look to religion for comfort.  Whether he ever became a true believer was debated even while he was alive, and the author presents a case here that, when he died so tragically, Lincoln was neither atheist nor passionate Christian.  His search was still a work-in-progress.

Black Dahlia & White Rose

I have been reading Joyce Carol Oates for decades and I still do not know how she does it.  Now in her mid-seventies, Oates is producing some of the best, and darkest, fiction of her career – and she does it at a pace that would shame most writers half her age.  The quality and impact of her latest short story collection, Black Dahlia & White Rose, makes me believe that Ms. Oates will continue to write memorable fiction for a long time to come.  Thankfully.

Black Dahlia & White Rose is a collection of eleven short stories recently published in magazines such as Playboy, Harper’s, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.  The book, comprised of four separate theme-related sections, opens with its tone-setting title story.  The story is based on the infamous 1947 Los Angeles murder-mutilation of Elizabeth Short (who was dubbed the “Black Dahlia”) that, to this day, remains unsolved.  It is especially striking because Oates allows the victim to speak retrospectively from beyond the grave and portrays her as having been the lone roommate of aspiring starlet Marilyn Monroe at the time of her murder. 

Real Life Murder Victim Elizabeth Short

Believe it or not, the stories get even darker from there.  Oates uses the remaining ten to expose the hidden inner lives of ordinary human beings simply trying to make their way from one day to the next without getting into any more trouble than they are in already.  Her characters, be they academics or befuddled middle-school students, San Quentin lifers or innocent young children, wives trapped in doomed marriages or abandoned husbands wondering what happened, all have something in common: they are miserable and they are looking for a way out.  But, because the choices they make often place these troubled souls into more precarious circumstances than the ones they yearn to escape, their moves usually just make things worse  

A poor college student learns the hard way that returning a found wallet does not always work out well for “The Good Samaritan.”  A respected college professor finds out how unprepared she is to do voluntary teaching inside the walls of a maximum-security prison.  A young middle-school student faces a life-changing trauma no child should ever be asked to confront alone.  A woman contacts a man to whom she was attracted when she was one of his graduate students – almost twenty years earlier.  These are just some of the sinister stories readers will experience in this collection.

Black Dahlia & White Rose is a collection via which the author reminds us again that we are all more vulnerable to evil and sudden loss than we dare admit to ourselves.  With approximately twenty short story collections already under her belt, Joyce Carol Oates has already accomplished more than most writers would dare dream of accomplishing in an entire career.  

And that is just her short fiction.  

Open Letter to Writers, Publishers, and PR Folks

I am rapidly approaching a major milestone in my personal life and a rather minor one in my book-blogging life.  I officially retire from the workplace at the end of December but, because I still have enough vacation days in the bank to cover the entire month, I could pack it in any day (it all depends on how much training time my replacement needs from me before I go).  Then, on January 20, Book Chase turns six.  But, frankly, one of the milestones scares the hell out of me, and I'm beginning to feel a little guilty about the other one.

First, what scares me.  I'm retiring into the teeth of the worst economy of my lifetime, and I have absolutely no confidence that anyone in Washington, of either party, has the ability to fix things, including the fellow we have just re-elected for another four, long years.  I've also been hit with unexpected news that the insurance I was counting on for most of 2013 is more than doubling in price, from the roughly $900 per month I expected to pay for my wife and myself, to $1807 per month.  Happy retirement!  Good luck, little nest egg.  But, enough of that, this is a book blog.

Now, what I'm feeling guilty about.  Book Chase is accomplishing more than I could have reasonably expected it ever to accomplish when I made that very first post on January 20, 2007.  My initial goal was simply to find people who shared a love of books and reading to the degree that I love reading.  That wasn't happening for me locally and, when I finally stumbled onto a couple of groundbreaking book blogs, I saw the light.  There really are people like me out there - thousands of them - and the Internet is where they live.

The first year was spent making friends, sharing links, and developing a book review style that did not reveal too much plot but still managed to tempt people into at least giving my favorites a shot at their own To Be Read lists.  I was reviewing books I purchased or got from the library, with an occasional request from an indie author thrown into the mix every so often.

Then, things started to get wild.  I started hearing directly from indie authors and publishers every week...then every day...then maybe twice a day...and now 15-20 times a day.  And the books I was offered got better and better.  They started coming from some of my favorite major publishers, giving me access to review copies of books from some of the writers I had been reading for years, if not decades.  I prided myself on answering every email solicitation I got, even if it was only to pass on a book being offered for review.  Then, I started deleting a few without taking time to respond because there were just too many of them.  Now I can only respond to those solicitations I want to accept, and I know that I am missing out on some very good books - and that my silence is probably offending a few people.

What I want to say publicly is that I know it's happening.  I enjoy nothing more than spreading the word about the books that might just slip through the crack if a bunch of people like me don't take the time to talk about them amongst ourselves.  But there's just me...one-man shop and all that.  I'm running as fast as I can, but I doubt that, even in retirement, I'll ever review much more than 130 books a year (I have similar interests in live music and post videos of performances I attend to YouTube as SamHouston23 - and that involves time and travel).

So bear with me indie writers, indie publishers, major publishers, fellow reviewers, and those of you who read here on occasion.  I do it because I love it, and I'm not about to give up on all the fun I have doing it...just not going to happen.  I still want to hear from anyone with a good book to push; I live for that.  It's exciting, and opening the mail still feels like Christmas.  I can't believe things are working out so well for me as I move into retirement - at least, I won't have to worry about how I'm going to support my reading habit.

Keep those emails coming - let's see what's next.