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White Teeth

by Zadie Smith, 2000

In-depth study of London from the eyes of a diverse caste of characters: 1. Bangladeshi immigrants, Samad Iqbal, his wife Alsana, and their twin sons, Millat and Magid. 2. Archie Jones, and his wife, Clara, who is black and the daughter of Hortense, a Jehovah’s witness born in Jamaica. 3. Archie and Clara’s daughter, Irie, the one I loved the most. 4. The Chalfen family, white, educated: Joyce, the mom, a horticulturist; Marcus, the proud dad scientist working on “FutureMouse,” Josh, the oldest son, who becomes cool when Millat and Irie enter his life.

I learned about this book from the British Classics puzzle. It is extremely well-written, and a deep-dive into the thoughts and feelings and antics of lower and middle class immigrant, minority Brits.

I liked it. It took a while to read it. It is a long book, 448 pages. Irie is my favorite character because she just is the way she is. The one time she tries to be something different, she has her beautiful wavy long 1/2 black, 1/2 white hair straightened, but she didn’t tell the stylist she has washed it and the straightener burnt her scalp and her hair. They had to cut it off and attach fake hair. She learned to love herself the way she was – big and beautiful. She adored the twins, Millat and Magid, loved them both. Samad, the dad of the twins, decided to send one of them back to India (Bangladesh) because he didn’t like them becoming so English. He chose Magid, who was a young budding scientist, and he tricked him into going to the airport and then sending him on his way. Samad’s wife, Alsana, didn’t forgive him until Magid comes back, a young man, very atheist, and very much an Englishman, and a scientist. The Chalfen’s, Marcus and Joyce, have 4 sons of their own but take on Irie and Millat as their project when Irie and Millat and Joshua, their son, get caught smoking pot at school. The punishment is for Irie and Millat to go to the Chalfen’s for study sessions several times a week. Joyce falls in love with Millat and he becomes her special project. He’s a hopeless bad boy – then becomes a member of an Islamic Militant Society – KEVIN – Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, “We are aware that we have an acronym problem.”

The patriarchs, Samad and Archie, were in WWII together, in a tank. Archie was the driver, Samad was the radio operator. They were very, very young. Archie becomes a paper folder (!) in London, Samad becomes a waiter in an Indian restaurant. Samad married a younger woman, Alsana, and tells Archie that is the key to happiness. Archie meets Clara at a New Year’s Eve party, the morning after, and she is much younger than him and black. He’s at the top of the stairs and she is sitting on the bottom step. She looks up and he looks down from the heights. She marries him. Neither marriage is happy, but they stay together. Clara has Irie, and Alsana has the beautiful twins, Magid and Millat. The story is mainly about these three children growing up in London.

Zadie Smith is an incredible writer. She doesn’t mind giving lots of interesting detail. She is laugh out loud funny in spots. She can really create people and places you can see and feel. Alsana has a niece who is a lesbian and Alsana calls her “Niece-of-shame” always and to her face, and Niece-of-shame just loves her back and stays always and forever in her life. Just one example.

(more…) “White Teeth”

Cheap Land Colorado

by Ted Conover, 2022

This is our second book for Old Town Book Club 2024-2025, to be discussed on November 4th. Such a readable book! It’s about the people who live on raw land in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. He is an investigative journalist, grew up in Denver but now lives in New York City. It is after the 2016 election and Trump has been elected. He wants to discover more about the people who live out of the norm, away from it all. He volunteers with La Puente (“the bridge”), which is an organization to help the poor in Alamosa. He meets many, many off-gridders and we get intimate with them. His writing style is so smooth and easy, yet detailed. We learn all about these people. There are sexual predators, alcoholics, meth-heads, unhealthy obese smokers. Many are Trump supporters. Almost all love guns. But he is non-judgmental. He lives in a trailer alongside a family with 4 daughters who own lots of animals. The mom and dad, Stacy and Frank, have had rough lives but are making it on the prairie as best they can. Neither graduated from high school. Stacy is home-schooling the 4 girls. They are happy, active girls. Almost all the people on the prairie grow marijuana and smoke it. There is animosity between the Costilla County code enforcers (Hispanic) and those who live on the flats (mostly poor whites). The code enforcers will give tickets for not having a septic system and give them 2 weeks to get one or they have to leave or face steep fines. A septic system costs $19,000 and it takes a year sometimes to get one. There are some established homesteads but most are derelict trailers running generators or solar powered or wind-powered. The winds and the cold are brutal. The author falls in love the San Luis Valley and buys his own place and builds a fence to keep the cows out.

Very good book – really takes you into the lives of the people who choose to live out there. I don’t like them at all. They believe bullshit, they support Trump, they are unhealthy and ignorant. But Ted Conover is completely unbiased in his writing – he just gives the details in very smooth and picturesque and flowing words. Good book!

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

by John Fox, Jr., 1908

Sweet, romantic book about an older man, John “Jack” Hale, and a “little girl,” June Tolliver, who meet in the Lonesome Cove up in the hills of Virginia, near the giant pine, the “Lonesome Pine.” They fall in love. Incredibly romantic. Set in the early 1900’s, when the railroad and coal mines were just beginning in the hills of Virginia near Cumberland Gap. John Hale was an engineer and explored the hills and discovered good coal on June’s land. He buys up the land and for a little while, everything is booming. He saves June from her backward, feuding family. He sends her to school in Cumberland Gap, then on to New York City. She learns to be a lady, to speak well, she can sing beautifully, and she is intelligent and beautiful. The coal mining boom ends, though, and the feuding starts again between June’s family, the Tolliver’s, and the Falin’s from Kentucky. Old evil Rufe Tolliver, her step-uncle, returns from out west and shoots and kills a policeman. John Hale, one of the lawmen in Cumberland Gap, helps to get him convicted, but it tears June apart, having to choose between him and her family, her beloved daddy, Old Judd, her little brother, Bud, and her cousin who loves her and wants to marry her, Dave. Eventually, all’s well that ends well. Old Judd takes her and all the Tolliver’s out west. She learns the truth about John “Jack” Hale, whom she has loved since first sight; that he has been supporting her and bought the Lonesome Cove for her, and she returns to find him waiting for her at Lonesome Cove, still in love with her. They get married by sweet Uncle Billy and live happily ever after.

(more…) “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine”

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by J.D. Vance, 2016

I wanted to read this book for a long time. I once had it from a Little Free Library but redistributed it before I read it. Once Trump selected him as his Vice Presidential running mate, I put it on hold at the library.

Fantastic book! True story about his life in Middletown, Ohio, with roots and visits to Jackson, Kentucky. His grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, Mamaw pronounced “Ma’am maw”, moved from Jackson, Kentucky to Ohio in search of a better life. Papaw got a job in the steel mill, Armco. He was a drunk when he wasn’t working and eventually changed his ways and was a good grandpa to J.D., but his unpredictability, addictions, and violence passed on to JD’s mom. She was a good mom at first but then become a drug addict and was a terribly mom. JD was raised by his grandma mostly, Mamaw. She was a smoking, cussing, mean, gun-toting grandma but she loved JD and was always there for him, when no one else was. It’s a story of the culture of poverty and the ignorance, violence, addictions, angers, blaming, abusiveness, hopelessness, laziness goes on and on. He grew up with it, he lived it, he knows it. Somehow, he broke the chain in his family. He had a good older sister, Lindsey, who protected him and cared for him. He had his Mamaw and Papaw, especially his Mamaw who always told him he could do it. He had a few members of his family who showed him there was a different way to live. He joined the Marines and served 4 years, including time in Iraq, right after high school. He could have gone to college but he knew he wasn’t ready for that. He went back to college 4 years later and then on to law school. He applied to Yale and got in and received a scholarship and financial aid that made it affordable. He is only 40 years old, born 8/2/1984, and is the VP candidate for the Republican Party for the 2024 election. He could save us if Trump, please God, NO!, gets elected again.

Lots of firsthand pictures of the poor white people of the Rust Belt. Good look at them. Maybe having J.D. Vance, one of their own, being a voice of reason out there, might pull them out of the muck and mire they live in. I pray so. God bless J.D. Vance.

(more…) “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”

Cold Comfort Farm

by Stella Gibbons, 1932

I ADORED THIS BOOK!!!! I learned about it from my British Classics puzzle. It was one of the classics in that puzzle, and the cover had a little blurb, “Very probably the funniest book ever written.”

It was a delight from start to finish. Set in 1930’s England. The main character is a young (19, I think, or early 20’s) and beautiful orphan named Flora Poste. She writes to her relatives seeing which ones will take her in, along with her 100 pounds a year. The only one that accepts her satisfactorily and with a bit of mystery is her Aunt Judith of Cold Comfort Farm. She telegrams her friend Miss Smiling upon arrival at the farm: “‘Worst fears realized darling seth and reuben too send gumboots.’

It’s a dark and brooding farm filled with crazy, unhappy characters, and Flora loves it and them, and wants to fix it – bring order out of chaos. She loves her bedroom but the first thing she does is have her curtains washed. Then she buys old Adam a dish mop to cletter the dishes with, rather than a thorny branch. But he hangs it up in the window because it is so pretty. Then she sets about saving lovely Elfine from marrying crazy Urk. She transforms Elfine into a ravishing beauty and young Richard Hawk-Monitor falls madly in love with her and proposes, just like Flora hoped and orchestrated. Then she saves handsome Seth by introducing him to her American director friend. He whisks him away to become the next film star. Cousin Reuben, she arranges to take over the farm when Amos leaves to be a traveling preacher. Unhappy Aunt Judith she saves by having her sent away ostensibly for treatment and then to become obsessed with old churches. Most difficult is Aunt Ada Doom, who wants no one to be happy and “saw something nasty in the woodshed” and has been cursed, and cursing others, ever since. Flora spends an entire day with her, having special meals brought up at exact times, to the room Aunt Ada Doom has lived in and only left two times a year for decades. Flora had requested from her friend in London, the latest vogue, the Hotel Miramar in Paris prospectus, and ‘photographs fanny ward.’ With these items and a full day with Flora, Aunt Ada Doom is cured. She happily departs Cold Comfort Farm on the day of Elfine’s wedding. The farm has been transformed from a dark and dying place, to the beautiful, happy place it was always meant to be. And Flora made it all happen! She accepted each person as they were, and met them where they were, but then orchestrated the things to happen that each person deep-down wanted to happen. It’s delightful. I loved it!

Flora is so exhausted after the wedding day, and even a little depressed. She gets a ride into town and and calls her cousin Charles, and asks him to come pick her up in Speed Cop II, his airplane. He is SO HAPPY she called him. He picks her up at 8:00 p.m. that night in the field by the farm, and they fly off into the sunset, deeply and madly in love. I almost cried! Such a beautiful book and a beautiful ending.

(more…) “Cold Comfort Farm”

The Mayor of Casterbridge

by Thomas Hardy, 1886

This book was suggested to me as his favorite classic during the FAC at Susan and Doug’s, by the retired cancer doctor from Indiana who lives in the new MCM house on E. Myrtle Street. I think his name is Jim.

This was a soap opera! Main character, Michael Henchard, gets drunk and sells his wife (Susan) and baby girl (Elizabeth-Jane) to the highest bidder, a sailor. He regrets his actions so deeply, he vows to not drink again for 21 years (twice his then age). Skip ahead 18 years and he is the mayor of Casterbridge, successful and prominent. His wife and daughter (who is now 18 years old) come looking for him because the sailor has died. He takes them back but jilts a lover (Lucetta) at the same time. They never tell each other the truth in this book. It turns out this daughter, with the same name, Elizabeth-Jane, is not Henchard’s daughter at all. His daughter died 3 months after he sold them. This Elizabeth-Jane is actually the sailor’s daughter. Oh my! Henchard doesn’t find this out until he convinces Elizabeth-Jane that he is her real father. That very evening, he reads a letter Susan left for him to read when Elizabeth-Jane is to be married, and learns that Elizabeth-Jane is really the sailor’s daughter; that his Elizabeth-Jane died shortly after he sold them. He immediately despises the sweet Elizabeth-Jane he has just convinced she is his daughter. Oh my! He spends the next months being unloving and unkind to her, while she wonders and wonders what is going on.

Then, Lucetta comes back into the scene and wants to marry Henchard now that he is available again, since Susan has died. Unfortunately, they mess this up badly by getting hurt and playing hard to get. While Henchard is playing hard to get, Lucetta falls in love with the young Scot, Donald Farfrae, and things get really messy.

Lucetta and Donald marry. Elizabeth-Jane and Henchard finally get together and are living a somewhat peaceful existence. But then, Lucetta dies after the scummy townspeople find out her indiscretion with Henchard and do a “skimmity-ride” of effigies of her and Henchard down the main street. She is so upset, worried that Donald will find out, she actually dies after a night of anxiety. Wow!

Then, it turns out Elizabeth-Jane’s sailor father is not really dead and he comes looking for Elizabeth-Jane, who happens to be out at the time. Henchard lies to him and tells him Elizabeth-Jane died a few years ago.

Elizabeth-Jane and Donald slowly fall in love and are going to be married. Then, the sailor finds out he was lied to, and returns to bless Elizabeth-Jane and Henchard disappears in shame. He returns the night of the wedding, Elizabeth-Jane tells him how his deceit hurt her deeply and how can she love him, he leaves in sorrow, and dies 3 weeks later!

Such a soap opera!

Henchard is deceitful, rash, pessimistic, and always thinking the worst of what others are thinking of him. This causes so much harm to himself and others! I haven’t told how Donald Farfrae was such a blessing to him but because of Henchard’s jealousy, he turns him out and treats him as an enemy. Donald Farfrae ends up successful and happy while Michael Henchard falls deeper into poverty and wretchedness.

Throughout this, Elizabeth-Jane was an innocent and loving character, always thinking the best of others, always true and honest. Try to be like her, not like her step-father, Henchard!

Wind, Sand and Stars

by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 1939

This is an autobiography of the author of The Little Prince. He was a French pilot in the 1930’s and 1940’s, flying the mail from France to Africa and then in South America over the Andes. He writes about the dangers of flying – mountains, storms, sand, sometimes the planes themselves falling apart in mid-air. He crash-landed, hit a sand-dune in the dark in the Libyan desert. He and his mechanic survived and were rescued by a Bedouin in the nick of time, after about a week of rambling around in the desert with only a liter of water and half of an orange between them.

The last part of the book was about the Spanish Civil War. He was with soldiers and writes about the tragedy that war is. Very philosophical, but I agree with him.

(more…) “Wind, Sand and Stars”

The Secret History

by Donna Tartt, 1992

I read this book because it is by the author of The Goldfinch, which I loved, and which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. This was a page-turner, very dark in personalities and setting and plot. Six college-aged students, most very wealthy, are the sole students in a professor’s Greek class. The college, Hampden College, is located in Hampden, Vermont, where the winters are icy cold and snowy and dark, and all the other seasons, stormy and wet. One of the rich kids, Francis, owns a mansion in the country where the 6 go to drink and frolic on the weekends. One weekend, four of them succeed in going completely berserk – outside of themselves – which they had been trying to do secretly for awhile – and they accidentally murder a farmer – mutilate him. They leave him and drive home still wearing their bloody sheets. Bunny, one of them who wasn’t with them on this night, discovers the truth a few months later, and he is becoming a threat, so Henry arranges to kill him, too, by pushing him off a cliff into a ravine. There is so much angst and psychosis in these rich, godless characters.

I almost didn’t read it because I knew from the very beginning that it was going to be dark, but she is such a good writer, I couldn’t stop. The narrator was one of the six, Richard, from Plano, California, and he is such a likable character, and you are living the story through him. I learned a lot from him – it is okay not to answer people’s questions. It is okay to just be silent sometimes, or change the subject.

In the end, there is not the redemption that The Goldfinch had, but Henry, the main perpetrator, does kill himself, and the rest of them can go on, trying to make the best of their lives.

She is an excellent writer! In Yellowface, the main character mentions that Donna Tartt only writes one book a decade. That intrigued me, and The Goldfinch is on the best books of the century lists, and one of those lists talked about her prior books, so I decided to read this one. She is a very interesting author – no pictures of her on the books, no short bio.

The Little Prince

by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, 1943

This book has been translated from the original French into 505 different languages, second only to the Bible. I was intrigued by it so checked it out from the library. It’s about a “little prince” from a tiny planet who makes his way to earth, where he meets the narrator in the desert. The narrator is a pilot who has crash-landed. The illustrations were also done by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. The Little Prince has traveled from planet to planet. He left his tiny planet where he tended three little volcanoes, kept the baobab trees from growing, and fell in love with a lovely rose. The rose hurt him so he decided to leave. He meets different men on the planets he goes to: a king who rules over no one, a businessman who spends all his days counting his money, and a geographer who never actually goes anywhere, a drunk who drinks to forget the shame of his drinking. When he finally makes it to Earth and meets the pilot, he learns how he loved the rose and should not have taken her vanity and comments to heart. He fell in love with her because he cared for her – watered her, sheltered her from the wind. There’s a passage in the book:

“THE LITTLE PRINCE went to look at the roses again.

“You’re not at all like my rose. You’re nothing at all yet,” he told them. “No one has tamed you and you haven’t tamed anyone. You’re the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I’ve made him my friend, and now he’s the only fox in all the world.”

‘And the roses were humbled.

“You’re lovely, but you’re empty,” he went on. “One couldn’t die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she’s the one I’ve watered. Since she’s the one I put under glass. Since she’s the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three for butterflies). Since she’s the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she’s my rose.”

‘AND HE WENT back to the fox.

“Good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said the fox. “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”

The way the book ends, the Little Prince was told by a snake that whenever he wanted to go home, to come find him and he would make it so he could go home. The pilot and the little prince find their way through the desert to water and the little prince decides he wants to go home. The snake bites him, he falls to the ground, and the next day, his body is nowhere to be found. Here are the last paragraphs of the book, written next to a page with a single star drawn above a plain hill:

“For me, this is the loveliest and the saddest landscape in the world. It’s the same landscape as the one on the preceding page, but I’ve drawn it one more time in order to be sure you see it clearly. It’s here that the little prince appeared on Earth, then disappeared.

“Look at this landscape carefully to be sure of recognizing it, if you should travel to Africa someday, in the desert. And if you happen to pass by here, I beg you not to hurry past. Wait a little, just under the star! Then if a child comes to you, if he laughs, if he has golden hair, if he doesn’t answer your questions, you’ll know who he is. If this should happen, be kind! Don’t let me go on being so sad: Send word immediately that he’s come back….”

Wayne read this book while we were camping and he can’t figure out what the big deal is about it, either.

Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson, 2004

Found this book in the Little Free Library on Locust Street. It is on several best books lists. It’s about a sweet, old pastor (77 years old) who is going to die soon, writing a very long letter to his 7 year-old son. He married (for the 2nd time) late in life; he fell in love with a young lady who happened into his church on Pentecost Sunday and who asked him to marry her after a few months. He married young the first time, but lost his first wife and child in child-birth, a loss that he lived with and hurt over for most of his life. They were Louisa and a baby girl, Angeline, which he was going to name Rebecca, but his best friend who baptized her as she died, did not know that.

The old pastor is named John Ames. He was born in 1880, and he is the son and grandson of preachers. He starts writing to his beloved son when he is 76 years old, so the time period is 1956. The setting is Gilead, Iowa, where he has lived since he was 3 years old, except for the time he was in college and seminary. His best friend is Boughton, with whom he grew up, and who lives down the street, and also happens to be a preacher. Boughton is failing and one of his daughter’s, Glory, and then his youngest son, Jack, come home to Gilead to help him out. Jack is young (40’s), handsome, and has a bad history, but he is beloved. This is the story within the story. At first, John Ames is a little wary and maybe jealous of young Jack. Jack is his name-sake – Boughton named him John Ames Boughton after him, his best friend in all the world, John Ames, as sort of a kindness since he lost his wife and child. Young Jack has been gone a long time, and Boughton is so happy he has returned home, although he knows there is something going on, and he’s sad that Jack won’t tell him.

When Jack was in high school, he got a very young, very poor girl pregnant and rather than marry her and take care of her and the baby, he abandoned her. Jack’s father, Boughton, and Jack’s mother and sisters would visit the baby once a week and, even though the poor family would never welcome them, they left gifts and money for the little girl. The little girl died when she was 3 years old because she stepped on a tin can and the infection killed her. John Ames has never really forgiven young Jack for being so mean and callous, abandoning this young girl and their child.

Young Jack wants badly to talk to John Ames and, finally, they do have a heart-to-heart talk. It turns out young Jack has fallen in love with a black woman and they have a child together. They were having difficulty living in the current times with laws against white and black marrying and general racial prejudice in St. Louis where they lived. This talk happens towards the end of the book. Before that, young Jack would come around and play catch with the little boy (John Ames’ son), sat at church with John Ames’ son and his wife, while John Ames is preaching; and visit in the evening, sitting on the porch with the family. In the end, after the heart-to-heart talk, John Ames forgives young Jack. Young Jack leaves town and, though it breaks Boughton’s heart, John Ames understands, his heart is at peace, he can pray easily again, and sleep well again. He can die.

(more…) “Gilead”

Yellowface

by R. F. Kuang, 2023

A page-turner! What an original tale! Spellbinding! This is the Fort Collins Reads book for 2024. The author comes Sunday, October 27th at 2 p.m. to the Fort Collins Marriott. It is also our first selection for the 2024-2025 season of the Old Town Library’s Book Club.

An unsuccessful author, June Hayward, is jealous of her super-star friend, an Asian author, Athena Liu. Everything Athena writes is successful. One night, they are celebrating Athena’s Netflix deal and Athena chokes on a pancake and dies. June steals Athena’s latest typewritten manuscript and makes it her own. All of June’s success is haunted, though, and there are a few people out there who know the truth. I was in distress at times reading this story. I felt June’s fear, shame, guilt. What an incredible writer. But the world June lived in was so empty and shallow – all she wanted was fame and fortune; being the best, the most popular, and having all the attention. Her life is ruled by social media, Twitter and Instagram, for hours upon hours. (Facebook is never mentioned, not once.) She could live with herself as long as she didn’t get found out, and she is constantly checking social media. At only one point in the book does she regret what she did and think about coming clean, giving all the profits to Athena’s mother and charities. But that is only a fleeting thought. She quickly goes back to spinning her messy web of lies and deceit. There is also an insider’s look at the publishing world. June’s experience makes it seem like success has nothing to do with the talent of the writer, but everything to do with slick marketing.

Excellent book! I almost stopped reading it at the beginning because she starts out describing how June feels about Athena so well, and it was ugly, spiteful, jealousy. I didn’t want to be immersed in that world. But I didn’t stop reading and was soon immersed in the horror of it all – how could June do this and now, how is this going to end!

It ends with a vengeful author getting June to admit on hidden camera that she stole the manuscript, and then going public with the story, getting a 7- figure advance for her tell-all memoir. June considers suicide but then she decides to write. Her writer’s block disappears. She is going to write her own memoir, spinning the tale in her favor. The madness goes on and on.

I remember Crime and Punishment and the feelings I had while reading that. This book evoked similar feelings – fear, guilt, shame. Excellent writer, but what a sad, ugly world!

Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times

by D.L. Mayfield, 2022

I learned about this book from the library’s monthly biographies email. It’s a short, very well-written, and easy to read biography of Dorothy Day, the woman who started the Catholic Worker newspaper and Hospitality Houses for the poor. I had never heard of her, but Pope Francis in 2015 said to Congress that she was one of the 4 most influential Americans, along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Merton.

She was born in 1897. She loved God from an early age, walking around thanking Him for things. Her parents were not church-goers. At the age of 30, she converted to Catholicism because she wanted to help the poor. She wanted to help the poor because she believed, as the Scriptures say, that when you help the poor, you are helping Jesus.

(more…) “Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times”

Firekeeper’s Daughter

by Angeline Boulley, 2021

Engrossing mystery recommended to me by Cousin Gretchen. It’s YA, but well-written and a page-turner. I loved the setting (Ojibwe community of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians and Sault Ste. Marie, in upper Michigan). I loved the main character (Daunis, 1/2 Indian, 1/2 rich white girl). It’s modern day times and Daunis has to mesh her Indian traditions and culture with modern day American culture. Unfortunately, meth has taken over the lives of some of her best friends. A friend (Travis) who has become hopelessly addicted to it shoots and kills Daunis’s best friend, Lily. Daunis becomes a CI (Confidential Informant) for the FBI, who have come to town and are hoping to find the main meth dealers. It’s a love story and a mystery and I learned a lot about ancient Indian traditions intertwined with modern-day lives. The Elders of the Indian community, whom Daunis visits with almost every day, end up saving the day, saving her life.

Beautiful love story, too, between Daunis and Jamie Johnson, one of the FBI undercover agents posing as a high school senior and a hockey player.

(more…) “Firekeeper’s Daughter”

Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds, 2017

A very unusual book. Written in verse style so, although it is 306 pages long, I read it in just an hour or so. A 15 year-old black child, Will, is following the rules after his beloved brother, Shawn, is murdered. The rules are: Don’t cry, Don’t Snitch, Get revenge. He has taken Shawn’s gun out of the middle drawer and stuck it in the back of his pants, and has walked out of the apartment where his Mom has fallen asleep after crying all night at the kitchen table. Will gets into the elevator and pushes the L button, for Lobby (or Loser). As the elevator goes down 7 floors, it stops at each floor and a person gets on. It ends up that each person except for one is a beloved family member or friend of Will’s, who has been murdered because someone was following the rules. The last person to get on is Will’s beloved brother, Shawn. These people (ghosts) show him powerfully how one evil leads to another and another and another.

I read this book because of Isabel’s page of drawings (see below). She said they were from Long Way Down, Anastasia, and Fahrenheit 451. We didn’t talk about the book at all, in fact, she couldn’t remember the title of it until Anza reminded her of it. I didn’t know what to expect. I just wanted to know what kind of books 8th grade teachers were having their students read. This was okay. No graphic violence, foul language, or anything like that. It might be a little disturbing for a young, innocent suburban child, but all-in-all, it is good for us to know how a young, urban black child can get roped into a life of violence. Here is Isabel’s artwork:

In the hardcover book, the quote Isabel wrote above is on page 19, rather than page 28. The gun, the EKG lines, the cigarettes, and the Do Not Cross are all part of the book. Great job, Isabel! I’m glad I read this book.

By the time Will gets to the Lobby (Loser), he has spent time with Buck, Dani, Uncle Mark, Pop, Frick, and Shawn. All dead because someone was following the rules. It is so sad that these people are dead. Such a sad, sad waste. So much needless violence and heartache and loss. The rules are bad and should not be followed. Stop the chain.

The way the book ends is Shawn, Will’s beloved brother, saying “You coming?” I thought he was in the elevator when he says that, but I guess all the ghosts get off the elevator and Shawn looks back to Will and asks, “You coming?” Hopefully, Will decides not to murder Riggs, because he may not have been the person who murdered Shawn, and because he realizes he must stop the cycle of violence.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

by David Grann, 2023

Good, fast read by the author of Killers of the Flower Moon. Tells the true story of the ship, the Wager, a British warship that took off in 1740 for an ill-fated voyage with 4 other ships, to go around Cape Horn (the tip of South America) and capture a Spanish treasure ship on the west coast of South America during the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

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American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Mesmerizing, enthralling book. I read it because the movie, Oppenheimer, was based on this book. The book is 591 pages long. It took me almost 6 weeks to read it. The movie follows the book closely, but the book is so much more detailed (of course) and helps to explain much of what was going on in the movie.

Without J. Robert Oppenheimer, I don’t think the Atomic Bomb would have been built. He organized the building of it from start to finish, even picking the location of Los Alamos, the place in New Mexico where he managed 1000 people and got it done, from inception to use, in 2 years (1943 to 1945). He was an amazing man. This book covers his entire life. From privileged youth to painful death from throat cancer. He was born April 22, 1904, to Jewish immigrant father and artist mother, in New York, NY. He died at the age of 62 on February 18, 1967, in Princeton, NJ.

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Abroad in Japan

by Chris Broad, 2023

I LOVED this book! It’s funny and informative! Written by a young British man who went to Japan in 2012 at the age of 22 to teach English through the JET program. He ended up spending 10 years there (and maybe is still there), becoming a YouTube sensation, and loving Japan. He takes you with him on his journey and it is a pleasure. When he first arrives, he doesn’t know the language or the culture. He gets assigned to Sakata, a small town and growing smaller, on the northwestern coast of the main island of Japan. His apartment is tiny but he grows to love it. He spends three years in Sakata and during those three years, learns the very difficult language, and learns to love the people and the food. He starts to get fat. He also smokes and drinks a lot! That is what the first three years seemed to be about after the school day; eating, drinking, and smoking. The smoking part changes from being acceptable to unacceptable after about 5 years of being there – he describes how every bar, and there are a lot of bars, were full of cigarette smoke the first few years he lived there. Then, around 2018, it was forbidden to smoke in all but a few Izakaya’s. I think because of the Olympics.

After teaching for 3 years, he had to make a decision on whether to continue teaching or do something else. He had been dabbling with filming and had filmed a few touristy things about Japan that had been pretty successful, like McDonald’s chocolate fries. He decided to become a professional YouTuber. His channel, Abroad in Japan, is very, very successful. He has done documentaries: A week with Japan’s biggest rock star (Hyde); An in-depth look at Fukushima, the nuclear disaster; Why Kyoto’s traditional homes (machiya) are going extinct. He also did one on Ken Watanabe, the actor, and how he transformed a city (Kessenuma) devastated by the tsunami.

When he experienced his first real earthquake, in March of 2022, he was filled with so much fear and anxiety, he thought he would have to leave Japan, but he decided to stay. He ends the book with an epilogue that is poignant. He was always anxious and going to Japan caused him to have horrible panic attacks. He is so glad he didn’t let the fear and anxiety keep him from going to Japan. He’s gone from being fearful and anxious to asking himself, “If I walk way, will I live to regret this?”

He has come to treasure the quiet, beautiful moments of living in Japan – snow falling outside the windows while he eats his yakitori with his best friend, Natsuki; watching the sea after a long days work.

He climbed Mt. Fuji with a British friend, who was wearing shorts, and they almost froze to death, but they did it – once was enough.

He biked across Japan and decided to do all the writing and editing and promised to upload a video a day, not realizing that was impossible. He got lots of negative comments when he didn’t post every day and it really bothered him. He ended up taking a year to edit and post all the videos, but guess what, then the pandemic hit and they were such a hit because people were all stuck at home and with Chris’s videos, they were able to get out and see Japan. It ended up being a blessing, and a good thing that he didn’t give up.

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Band of Sisters

by Lauren Willig, 2021

Pat loaned this book to me. It was about the Smith College Relief Unit, a group of American women, graduates of Smith College, who volunteered in WWI to help French villagers devastated by the Germans (1917 – 1919, in villages near the Somme). They had no idea what they were getting into, but they made a difference. They were as close to the front lines as you could get. They came and lived among the villagers, coaxing them out, getting them fed, clean water, teaching the children how to play again, doctoring them, getting them into better shelters, helping them to farm again, chickens, cows, goats. On and on. There were personality clashes and misunderstandings and class differences. There were near death experiences. But through it all, they worked their tales off and helped these French villagers. Then, when all was going well and they had made it through the winter and were busy with the villagers, planting fields, the Germans pushed through and the entire region, every single village, was evacuated and bombed to pieces. But, they helped evacuate every single village and then they worked in Paris at the hospitals and the canteens, helping the wounded soldiers. When the war was finally over, they went back to their original village, Grecourt, and started rebuilding again. The author based almost every occurrence in the book on real-life occurrences she read from letters written by the girls back to loved ones in the States. Good book. Amazing women. Working so hard just to help others. Makes me think of what we could do if we really put our minds to helping the poor. They helped them to help themselves. They gave them hope and a future. We wouldn’t have to worry about bombing raids either. Oh Lord, forgive us. We turn a blind eye to your hurting people. Forgive us, Lord Jesus. Teach us how to help, how to really help. I pray in your name, Amen.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

by Shelby Van Pelt, 2022

A very fun novel! This book is the last book selected for the 2023-2024 Old Town Library Book Club. I loved the characters: Tova, an elderly Swedish lady who cleans the aquarium; Marcellus, a remarkably bright Giant Pacific Octopus who lives in the aquarium and knows what happened to Erik, Tova’s son who disappeared into the sea 18 years ago and was never found; Cameron, a handsome young man looking for his father, abandoned by his druggie mother; Ethan, a Scottish grocery store owner in love with Tova; Avery, young and beautiful single mom, becoming Cameron’s love. I also loved the setting: the Pacific Northwest in a town called Sowell Bay near the Puget Sound. I loved the ending, too. Tova finds out that Cameron is her grandson. She discovers this because of the clues Marcellus leaves her. He escapes his tank at night and puts things in places where only Tova will find them, Cameron’s driver’s license, and the class ring of her deceased son, Erik.

It was a wonderful diversion, reading this book while working on the clean-out of Mom’s home. A very good escape. Thank you, Shelby Van Pelt. You are an excellent writer! Wonderful first novel!

Returning: A Spiritual Journey

by Dan Wakefield, 1984, 1985, 1988

Learned about this book from the New York Times Morning Report (I think) talking about Dan Wakefield and his books on the day he died in March 2024 at age 91. He was born in Indianapolis in 1932 and grew up an only child, to unhappily married parents. His mother often cried. But, they took him to church and he grew up a Protestant and a boy scout and he had a very beautiful experience of Jesus as a child. He loved his Sunday School teacher and loved praying and saying the 23rd Psalm in his mind. He was close to God.

At the age of 48, he wakes up screaming in pain in Hollywood.

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