Category Archives: Books

A hardback library copy of M.O. Walsh’s 2015 debut novel “My Sunshine Away” accompanied me on vacation as my husband and I traveled over hill and dale recently through parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec. We were attending a family reunion for a few days and then took a bicycle trip, and luckily the book did not get rain damaged in my bike pannier, though a paperback copy probably would have been easier to lug.

I’ve been surprised to see some readers refer to “My Sunshine Away” as a crime or mystery novel. Although a crime does take place in it that is eventually solved, to me it’s much more a coming-of-age tale set in the South. And I for one, find it hard to resist really good coming-of-age stories — whether it’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “The Catcher in the Rye” or Michael Chabon’s “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” or this one, I feel the need to consume it rather completely.

For those who haven’t heard, “My Sunshine Away” is about an adolescent boy growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, whose life changes when a girl that he has always had a crush on is raped in his quiet suburban neighborhood in the summer of 1989. He’s so obsessed with the girl, Lindy, that he ends up becoming a suspect in her assault. Yet later he and Lindy bond after his family suffers a tragedy. What happens to their relationship collides at the end with an attempt to solve her rape case.

Judging by comments on Goodreads, people had a pretty diverse reaction to this novel, most really liking it, while others did not. I think some readers had problems of being stuck inside the mind of an adolescent boy who’s totally obsessed with the girl next door. His infatuation perhaps gets too much or endless for some. But I think the kid, a young sort of lost teen, is trying to find himself — a bit like Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye” — and find his way in that specific corner of the world in Baton Rouge. He’s going through tough stuff: his parents become divorced, his family suffers a tragedy, he’s desperate for a girl. He narrates as he learns looking back at these years, what it meant, and how the crime of her rape affected him and the whole neighborhood.

I found the story quite immersive and moving, and amusing in places despite it’s dark subject matter. I thought a lot of the writing was wonderful, and two chapters in particular stuck out for me. In one he describes what happens at school the day the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, which is quite a scene. In the other he tells how Baton Rouge differs from New Orleans, and what happens later in life in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The novel’s sense of place and time, specifically for the South in the 1980s, is terrific throughout.

I would highly recommend “My Sunshine Away” for readers who especially like coming-of-age tales, or stories set in the South. Enjoy this quirky heartfelt gem.

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I first came across Beryl Markham’s memoir “West With the Night” in the late 1980s when I was working at an independent bookstore in Colorado. The 1942 book apparently had been collecting dust in an attic when it was re-discovered and re-published to much acclaim in 1983. It became an international bestseller and that’s when I first got my hooks into it.

Many know by now that Beryl Markham was raised in Colonial Kenya in the 1920s. She was an independent woman before her time, becoming a racehorse trainer, a bush pilot, and the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west in 1936. She then became an author, of “West With Night” and also wrote other stories that were posthumously published in “The Splendid Outcast.” She was married three times and apparently had various lovers and affairs during her life, including some say to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

But Markham’s memoir “West With the Night” doesn’t really include any of her juicy personal life; it’s mostly about her adventures in Africa, her love of animals, and her flights as a pilot. Still it’s a terrific read and made quite an impression on me. Right after I read it, I got a copy of Mary S. Lovell’s biography of Markham called “Straight On Till Morning,” which came out in 1987 and is a definitive source on her life. Lovell was able to interview Beryl and her relatives quite extensively before Beryl passed away in 1986, which makes it quite a read. If you’re at all interested in this remarkable adventurer, you should check out this very interesting biography.

Which brings me to the latest book on Beryl’s life: Paula McLain’s novel “Circling the Sun.” At the start I was a bit wary of it since a novelization of a famous person can be a bit dicey, don’t you think? I’ve always been a bit leery of authors who make up words and thoughts for iconic figures. What if they misrepresent them? Who are they to say? But I ended up really liking “Circling the Sun” and thought it had the right tone of Beryl Markham. It sounded like her from her own books. I found “Circling the Sun” to be an addicting read, and I wanted it to keep going, telling her life story well after the book ends in the 1930s. Markham didn’t die until the 1980s so there was much more to be told.

But McLain focuses on Beryl’s early years, what made her like she was, from a kid into her thirties. She delves into her personal life, how she grew up without a mother, and how she became linked with the men she would marry and others she would love. Particularly Denys Finch Hatton! The same man that Karen Blixen (i.e. Isak Dinesen) lived with and loved. The book explores their love triangle and the tragedy that ended it for good. Though surprisingly, “Circling the Sun” doesn’t delve hardly at all on Beryl’s piloting days, only at the very end. I thought more time could have been spent on her days as a bush pilot, which are quite amazing in “West With the Night.”

But on the whole, I found McLain’s book included many beautiful passages and writing. It was evocative of the time, and poignant in places; she told Beryl’s story well. But I guess not everyone’s been so keen on “Circling the Sun.” First off, biographer Mary Lovell wasn’t too pleased that McLain used the material or information that Lovell had researched for her biography and turned it into a novel without initially giving her her due. But McLain has since put Lovell in her book’s acknowledgements apparently.

Secondly in a New York Times review of “Circling the Sun,” Alexandra Fuller called McLain’s writing “insipid,” “sentimental,” and “exasperating,” which I didn’t find it to be. Fuller’s angry, too, at the “settlers who used Kenya as their hapless playground at catastrophic expense to those who called Kenya home long before the whites arrived.”

But to Beryl, Africa and Africans seemed the world to her. She was close to them; she trained with tribesmen in her youth. It didn’t appear to be a playground, it was her home for the majority of her life until her death in 1986. I stick by my impressions of “Circling the Sun” and think others — who are interested in Africa or this time period, or this remarkable woman — would like it as well.

Thank you to the publisher who supplied me with a copy to review via NetGalley of Paula McLain’s “Circling the Sun.”

What about you — have you read Paula McLain’s new novel, or any of the books about Beryl Markham — and if so, what did you think?

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I’ve always been a monogamous reader. I read one book at a time while giving it all my attention. I know it sounds pretty boring, right? But I thought it helped with my focus and speed of the book at hand. However just this week while I was slowed in the middle of a nonfiction book, I picked up both a novel and an audiobook. And voila, I became a multi-book reader. Not only was I breezing through a couple newspapers a day, but I was also dabbling in three books at once. Ohh it was nice! How did I not do this before?! My focus seemed undeterred, and even felt heightened, and my speed had me moving through three books at a good pace instead of languishing in one. I was able to finish the nonfiction that had dropped off for me, which was a relief. I plan to continue on with reading one nonfiction book, one novel, and listening to one audiobook at a time. I think it might be the right mix to keep things moving. How about you — are you a monogamous or polygamous reader? And how has it worked for you?

This week I finished Kathleen Winter’s 2014 nonfiction book “Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage.” I had liked Winter’s last book, a 2010 novel called “Annabel,” about an intersex child that is raised in a remote coastal town in Labrador, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. She’s an English-Canadian author who signed a copy of “Boundless” for me at our city’s book festival last fall.

The book is about a two-week summer journey Kathleen Winter took in 2010 through the storied Northwest Passage. She went aboard a ship with many others including marine scientists, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. With them, she visits Greenland, Baffin Island, and all along the passage, noting what it’s like in the far North and the changes going on there. It’s a travelogue of what she sees and what she learns from other passengers, a couple of whom she bonds with have Inuit backgrounds. Her book also delves a bit into her personal life and journey: emigrating from England to Canada as a child, becoming a widow with a child from her first marriage, and having another daughter in her second marriage.

“Boundless” had all the ingredients I thought I would love: part travelogue of an intriguing place, and part memoir of a successful author. Are you kidding? How many Arctic and Antarctic explorers’ books had I read over the years? A handful on Shackleton alone and a number of others as well. Gosh I was envious of Kathleen Winter going on a voyage like that. Darn her, I don’t think it even cost her much because she was the writer-in-residence onboard, but normally it’d have cost a sizable chunk of money to go. I’d need to win the lottery.

Till then it’d be Kathleen Winter’s book. And while I liked “Boundless,” it wasn’t as great as I thought or hoped it would be. It seemed uneven, some parts were quite interesting and other parts not so much. I got the gist of her outlook of trying to view things not in terms of the White Male Explorers and their northern conquests, but more in terms of the land and the Inuits or Natives. She does talk about Sir John Franklin’s lost 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, especially since their ship follows his route, but her focus seems to be more on the land and Natives along the way and their cultural ways and words, which was interesting but also seemed in glimpses.

In general the book came off more as her impressions or reflections while in the North. I guess I was looking for it to be a little more substantial. It felt a bit flimsy in parts, or dreamy, as she tries to describe throughout how it feels being at one with the environment, how the land affected her, or what conversations she was having with other passengers. The book was okay but I wanted or expected more. Still many on Goodreads rated it high, and I think it would appeal to nature readers among others.

How about you — have you read any great travelogues, or natural history kinds of books? If so what were they and what did you think?

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I don’t often listen to audiobooks although it’s not because I don’t like them. I do. It’s just that I’m either not in one place long enough (I don’t have a long commute), or I don’t have a system worked out of listening to the endless hours behind them. There are remnants of audiobooks I’ve started (five discs in, five more to go) that I have not finished over the years. Perhaps I could remedy this by listening more to audiobooks on my iPod while gardening and dog walking.

I find audios enjoyable but also different for me than reading books. I either experience them differently, or focus differently, or use different muscles :-). Sometimes I worry I’ll miss small details if they’re spoken and not in print, or else I’ll lose my place when I put an audio aside. For various reasons I guess I much prefer reading over audios but every once in a while I’ll treat myself to listening to a production of a good narrator breathing life into a novel. What are your thoughts on audiobooks? Do you find them as effective as reading books? When do find the time to listen to them? And do they count in your book totals?

Last week I (finally) finished the audio of Amy Greene’s 2014 novel “Long Man,” which we had started in June while driving to Glacier Park in Montana. It consisted of just 9 CD discs but somehow those seemed to last a lifetime. Still I was transfixed at times to the story and actress Dale Dickey’s voice who told it. She was the perfect narrator with her Tennessee accent where the story is set and by giving all the characters such an emotional authenticity.

The novel takes place over a few days in 1936 as the government plans to dam the Long Man River in East Tennessee and flood a small Appalachian town to bring electricity and jobs to the region. Just a few holdouts remain, notably Annie Clyde Dodson, who wants to keep her family’s mountaintop farm and is protesting the power company from driving her out. But as the deadline looms for her to leave, a storm rages and her three-year-old daughter, Gracie, goes missing.

Did Gracie drown amid the rising river, or did Amos, a drifter who’s returned home to wreak havoc on the government’s plans, take her? You won’t know till the very end. But meanwhile the book is quite a bit more than just the one storyline. It’s very descriptive and goes into the whole Appalachian town and community and what’s happened to it during Depression times.

There’s various characters, too, that the story gets into the heads of, namely Annie Clyde, and her husband James Dodson, her aunt Silva, Amos the drifter, and the woman who raised him, the town’s sheriff, and the man from the power company. It takes a little while to keep them all straight, but including them all infuses the story with a fuller picture of it from various angles. Just a few times I wanted to clobber the ever-stubborn and at times crazy Annie Clyde for not getting out and saving her family before the flood. Though she doesn’t seem to listen.

Still I’m quite amazed by author Amy Greene’s gift for storytelling and writing in “Long Man.” The amount of detail she uses in itself is luminous. I haven’t read her first novel “Bloodroot,” which was highly praised as well, but I’m thinking I need to. Surely no one paints a more thorough picture of East Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains and its characters than Amy Greene does in her books. She’s from there, and packs a wallop in everything she describes. I thought the suspense in “Long Man” was pretty good too, though at times all I wanted was the story to get back to finding out where the child went. Did the river swallow her or not? I listened long and hard to the audio to find out and was rewarded with an interesting and fulfilling ending. Now I will eagerly await whatever book Amy Greene does next.

What about you have you read either of Amy Greene’s books, and if so what did you think? Or what are your thoughts about audiobooks?

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Last weekend, the Hub and I drove to Glacier National Park in Montana, staying for a few days to celebrate our anniversary. It’s a beautiful place where we love to bicycle and hike. The Going-to-the-Sun Road, which winds through Glacier Park for about 52 miles, is an awesome journey that makes its way over the Continental Divide at Logan Pass at 6,646 feet.

Near the top, the road narrows and tightly clings to the mountainside while taking you around some high tight turns. It’s a ride in places that’s not exactly for the faint of heart (like me). If you’ve ever seen the movie “The Shining,” the opening scenes and aerial shots are of this epic road, which sets the movie’s beginning perfectly, both for being isolated and a little ominous.

Luckily our trip didn’t include any spooky moments like those in “The Shining.” I did not run into Danny talking about “redrum” or see any twins in the corridors of our lodge. Thank goodness. Instead check out the photo at left of Lake McDonald, which is serene and beautiful and along which we lodged and spent most of our time. Just don’t fall in. I’m sure it’d be rather chilly.

While there, I read Celeste Ng’s 2014 highly acclaimed debut novel “Everything I Never Told You,” which I picked for my book club to read and discuss after the novel was selected on many best-of lists last year. Perhaps I’m one of the last bloggers to read this quite sad but notable book? Luckily it generated a good discussion last night at book club. I think it’s because it delves into various issues that are still relevant today and consists of some characters and drama that can be argued over for quite a good long gathering.

It’s not giving anything away to say “Everything I Never Told You” is about a teenage girl (Lydia) who goes missing and is found drown in the local lake. That’s at the beginning of the book. The rest of it goes back in time, gradually laying out how she got there and why she died.

Set in a small Ohio town in the 1970s, the story explores Lydia’s close ties within her Chinese-American family who all feel like outsiders in their Midwest community. It delves into her parents’ backgrounds (her mother’s unachieved dreams of becoming a doctor, her dad’s humble and unpopular youth as a son of immigrant workers) and the views of her older brother and younger sister who are often ignored. In her parents’ eyes, Lydia is the favorite child who gets all the attention and is expected to achieve the unfulfilled dreams that they did not.

It’s an intense little book (292 pages) of an unraveling family and is a quick read. The author seems a natural, getting into the heads and backgrounds of all, while the pages flip by easily. It’s a sad and tragic story. Everyone in the family fails to communicate truthfully with one another, keeping secrets that ultimately have such regrettable consequences. I liked the many issues that this book touches upon which felt real to me, namely: the pressures kids and parents put each other through; women’s roles in society and unfulfilled dreams; being an outsider and feelings of inadequacy for those of mixed-race ethnicities — and on the flip side of that — the whole stifling, homogenized world of 1970s small-town America is effectively displayed in the book.

It’s agonizing at times how aggravating the characters can be and how suffocating the setting is. If only they would do this and this and this! — you think. But no, they don’t. Still you feel compelled by where their lives have taken them. You sympathize. It’s impossible not to. Despite whatever your minor quibbles, you must hear this novel out. For a slim debut, I felt it packed a lot of issues in. I’ll definitely be looking for whatever novel author Celeste Ng puts out next.

What about you have you read “Everything I Never Told You,” and if so what did you think? Continue reading →

Wow the trailer to “The Martian” came out this week and Matt Damon is Mark Watney! For those who read Andy Weir’s 2014 bestselling book, you know what I’m talking about … The red planet. The astronaut left behind. The rescue plans he comes up with. With Ridley Scott directing, the movie adaptation, coming out at Thanksgiving time, is going to rock! I reviewed the novel “The Martian” in April 2014 and was sure it’d make a heck of a movie. I just didn’t realize how quickly it would be made. Check out the preview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI
and let me know what you think.

Also this past week, congrats to Scottish author Ali Smith for winning the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction for her 2014 novel “How to Be Both,” which the New York Times describes as “an innovatively structured novel about a young girl in modern-day England and a painter in Renaissance Italy.” I’ve heard mixed things about the book, which apparently is poetic and challenging and not for everyone. Author Sarah Waters was the odds-on favorite to win the prize for her bestselling novel “The Paying Guests,” but alas didn’t win it, which surprised me.

Also congrats to Jack Livings for winning the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction for “The Dog,” a collection of short stories set in China. New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani says the collection opens a “prismatic window on China, showing us how part of the country is rushing to embrace the 21st century, even as its history continues to exert a magnetic hold over people’s thinking and expectations.” Hmm. I haven’t heard if many bloggers have read this collection yet, but it sounds like one to behold.

Meanwhile though it seems I’ve been away from the blog for a while, it’s just that summer has become busy and I was up to my eyelids in Anthony Doerr’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set during World War II “All the Light We Cannot See.” Need I say more? It’s a long war. Awful. I was on the sixth floor of the house in Saint-Malo, France, hiding with blind 14-year-old girl Marie-Laure and hoping she was going to make it. She was at her reclusive uncle’s house so close to the sea, where she liked to visit a nearby grotto that had barnacles and snails on its walls, which I could see blind Marie running her hands over. I was also imagining 16-year-old orphan, German soldier Werner in the Opel truck driving across the Occupied countryside tracking the resistance through his radio receiver. But the toll the results take on him, sets him off on a different course. I knew these two protagonists’ paths would cross towards the end, but heck what would happen to them then?

I had to hurry to find out, but it took awhile to get there. Anthony Doerr’s book is quite an epic read (530 pages) that goes back and forth in time and alternates Marie-Laure’s story with that of Werner’s into short chapters. There’s also a storyline about a large valuable diamond — apparently cursed — that Marie finds from her father after he is arrested and a Nazi who is pursuing the gem.

I liked the book quite a bit (though maybe didn’t love, love, it) and found it vivid and visual of the historical time period. It’s excellently weaved together with some elegant prose. I felt for the characters and finished the book as if I had endured the war too — emaciated, sleepless, and a mess from death, bombs, and trying to avoid Nazi capture. I particularly liked the radio aspects of the story — how radio transmitters were used by both sides — and how Werner’s passion for radios and science and Marie’s passion for Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” eventually brings them together. It’s wonderfully imagined. I liked how it transported me to these young characters lives behind enemy lines. Although I think it could have been cut 80+ pages shorter and put into longer chapters. I’m still wondering too about the ending — was it enough? It feels quite fleeting and maybe not what you want but perhaps that’s exactly the way pivotal things in life go sometimes.

What about you have you read “All the Light We Cannot See,” and if so what did you think? Continue reading →

I didn’t realize I had been sucked into Lily King’s 2014 novel “Euphoria” until the end of the book — and then I was a sad wreck for the characters, as if it were a true story and I had lost touch with people I had known quite well.

Interestingly, author Lily King bases the characters on a brief time out of American anthropologist Margaret Mead’s real life story. It was a period of five months in 1933 when Mead and her second husband took a field trip to study the native people along the Sepik River, in New Guinea. There, they collaborated with the man who would become Mead’s third husband, the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson. See the photo of the three of them below, as they were in 1933.

King takes this situation and setting and then develops a unique story for three anthropologists that is all their own. In the book, it’s Fen and Nell that are married, and Englishman Andrew Bankson who meets them while researching a tribe alone in New Guinea in 1933. Much of the novel delves into the three anthropologists hard at work, and their professional ambitions, studying the human behavior of the river tribes in the jungle. To me it was helpful to have an interest in anthropology to be intrigued with the book as it spends considerable time on the tribes’ behavior.

At the same time the story is also about the love triangle that develops between anthropologists Nell, Fen, and Bankson, and this undoubtedly is the most alluring part of the story. It’s cleverly done: how they’re exploring human behavior while dancing around their own. It’s raw and primitive in the field, and at times, sickness, remoteness, and ambition tightly bring together the three anthropologists and at other times cloud their judgements.

The novel’s well researched and vividly conjures up the settlements, the insects, the dirt, the native peoples, the scientists’ dress and equipment in 1933. The imagery is so visceral it’s as if you’re with them amid the jungle and can breathe the dense humid air.

It’s lonely Bankson, too, that makes the story come to life. A bright, sympathetic soul, he narrates the book mainly — combined with some field notes from Nell — and inevitably draws you into their world one step at a time. You feel him falling for Nell from the day he meets her. But she’s with Fen, who he’s also close to, and their lives and work are complicated. It’s a threesome that works, but also doesn’t. Three makes a crowd so they say.

I don’t think I foresaw the exact ending of the novel. Would Bankson and Nell wind up together, Fen and Nell break apart, or any of them make their mark from their research on the tribes once they returned to civilization? I went down their path, hoping for the best for each, but was quite saddened by the end, which is all I can say about it.

“Euphoria” is a vivid, real-feeling story that moves along faster toward the end. Its denouement will definitely stay with me for a long while. No wonder the New York Times chose it as one of the 10 best books of 2014. The novel takes a historical setting but then creatively flies off in an another direction, all the while touching on some of the drives and desires of the human experience. See Lily King’s illuminating essay on how she came up with the story here.

How about you have you read “Euphoria” and if so what did you think? And by the way, what are you up to this Memorial Day weekend?! Continue reading →