The Cue Card

Oh October has been busy and flown by. Luckily as a remedy to all the jarring political news going on these days … I’ve been attending our city’s annual book festival over the past week called The Imaginarium (put on by Wordfest), and I’ve enjoyed seeing and hearing from so many authors. It turns out in seven days, I’ve been to 10 separate author panel events (some at our Central Library pictured here) and listened to 25 authors. Some panels have been about fiction and dystopia, others about memoir, and still others about history, essays and criticism. Sitting in on these has been quite inspiring and creative to hear, and I guess I feel that supporting the annual festival is important.

Perhaps one of the more lively panels I went to was one called Not So Quiet Resistance, which featured books not uncommon to the #MeToo era. Such authors on hand were Mona Awad with her novel “Bunny,”  Leni Zumas with “Red Clocks,” Joanne Ramos with “The Farm,” and E. Jean Carroll with her memoir “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.” They all appeared quite sharp and read interesting passages from their books, which I still hope to get to. Two of the novels — “The Farm” and “Red Clocks” — are reproductive/surrogacy, dystopian-type novels made all the more chilling for their not too far-off realness. And Mona Awad’s novel “Bunny” definitely sounds strange — a grad school novel about a clique of rich girls, known as the Bunnies, who lure in an outsider named Samantha with deadly consequences. It seems both sinister and darkly funny. The author says she reeled off the novel’s first draft in three months time (so you can write one too!). I guess I’ve read a couple bloggers say they didn’t make it through “Bunny” … but I like that it’s depicted as “Mean Girls” meets “Heathers” — or something like that, which seems like a decadently crazy combination.  

As for author E. Jean Carroll, a longtime advice columnist at Elle, she was also featured at an event with Emily Nussbaum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic at the New Yorker. I didn’t know much about Nussbaum or Carroll beforehand — though Carroll’s rape accusation against Donald Trump is certainly one I had heard. She’s a hoot in public and quite a feminist cheerleader for the #MeToo movement. The interview and discussion with E. Jean Carroll and Emily Nussbaum (pictured here) on everything from their books, to TV shows, and current life made for quite the entertaining evening … funny, raucous, and thought-provoking too.

Next at the festival, I was also pleased to sit in on a workshop with grammar guru Mary Norris, who was a copy editor and proofreader at the New Yorker for several decades. As a former copy editor myself, I sort of liken Norris to a hero and enjoyed her first memoir called “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,” which came out in 2016 and was a funny ode to the correct way of punctuating and writing. She has a new one out now called “Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen” about her passion of all things Greek. What was cool in the workshop was that she had printed out worksheets for our gathering to go over of published news articles that had errors in them that we had to find and correct. Ohh it was good fun and took me back to the days of yore. It’s always good to refresh one’s understandings of grammar rules and usage … especially when I often find mistakes creeping into my own writing. Who doesn’t?

Lastly it was great to hear from a combination of big well-known authors — such as Emma Donoghue, known for her book “Room” among others, Michael Crummey for “Sweetland” among others, and Stephen Chbosky, who wrote “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” — with lesser-known or debut authors. I must say those big three were very well spoken. I really liked “Sweetland,” so Crummey, who I’ve heard interviewed in person before, is always a treat. He’s got a new one out — “The Innocents” — which I plan to get to soon. And Stephen Chbosky, pictured with me here, couldn’t have been nicer at his event. His new novel “Imaginary Friend” seems very long but worth checking out. Stephen’s been in the film industry as a screenwriter and producer for a long time — he recently adapted the screenplay for the movie “Wonder” and said he wrote his new novel over a period of 10 years. You might recall he also wrote and adapted his bestselling first novel “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” to the big screen, which was excellent in both forms. 

That’s all for now. Though I didn’t even talk about Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo both winning the Booker Prize recently, or Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian author Peter Handke winning Nobel Prizes for Literature for their works. Have you read them? Atwood’s books are familiar to me, but I’d like to explore the others’ books too, so I’ll toss them onto my ever-growing TBR heap. In signing off, I’d like to just list the authors with their latest books who I saw at various events at the book festival. Many are Canadian with a sprinkling of other nationalities. Have you read or met them? And if so, what did you think? 

Anar Ali (Canadian) / “Night of Power” (novel)
E. Jean Carroll (American) / “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal” / (memoir)
Lynn Coady (Canadian) /“Watching You Without Me” (novel)
Michael Crummey (Canadian) /“The Innocents” (novel)
Emma Donoghue (Irish-Canadian)/ “Akin” (novel)
Dave Hill (American) / “Parking the Moose” (nonfiction, humor)
Nazanine Hozar (Iranian-Canadian)/“Aria” (novel)
Anosh Irani  (Indo-Canadian) /“Translated from the Gibberish: Seven Stories & One Half Truth”
Amy Jones (Canadian) / “Every Little Piece of Me” / (novel)
Naomi K. Lewis (Canadian) / “Tiny Lights for Travellers” / (memoir)
Ami McKay (Canadian) / “Daughter of Family G” / (memoir)
Susin Nielsen (Canadian) / “No Fixed Address” / YA & children’s author
Mary Norris (American) / “Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen”  (memoir/nonfiction)
Emily Nussbaum (American) / “I Like to Watch : Arguing My Way Through the Television Revolution” / (nonfiction, criticism) 
Sara Peters (Canadian) / “I Become a Delight to My Enemies”  
Ruby Porter (New Zealand author) / “Attraction” (novel) 
Anakana Schofield (Irish-Canadian) / “Bina” / (novel) 
Tom Lanoye (Belgian) / “Slaves to Fortune” / “Speechless” (novels)
Joanne Ramos (Filipino-American)/ “The Farm” (novel) 
Mona Awad (Canadian) / “Bunny” (novel) 
Jesse Thistle (Métis-Cree, Canadian) / “From the Ashes” / (memoir) 
Ayelet Tsabari (Israeli-Canadian) /“The Art of Leaving” / (memoir) 
Leni Zumas (American) / “Red Clocks” (novel) 
Linden MacIntyre (Canadian) / “The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a New Foundland Tsunami” / (memoir) 
Stephen Chbosky (American ) / “Imaginary Friend” (novel) 

Greetings, I hope everyone is enjoying the fall colors these days.  So far we’ve had two snowstorms here, and still the leaves seem to be in fine form and haven’t come down fully yet. It’s pretty out now … just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday, which is a holiday that always surprises me when it comes so early, but who doesn’t want a three-day weekend?

Meanwhile I’m trying to heal from eye surgery and I’ve been told not to do much for an entire week … including not reading or perusing much “screen time” or playing tennis or showering instead of bathing, or going to the gym or bicycling etc. Though yesterday I had the ingenious idea of using a swim mask in the shower so I could wash my hair. This worked, even though it scared my dog a bit. Still you got to do, what you got to do. Admittedly I’ve been cheating a bit on the reading and “screen time” though I’m trying to listen to more audiobooks. For now, I’ll leave you with some reviews of what I finished lately. 

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner / via audiobook read by Allyson Ryan 

Synopsis:  This debut novel follows the travails of 41-year-old, 5-foot-5 New York physician Toby Fleishman, who appears to be reveling in his new found dating freedom after splitting from his career-driven wife Rachel of 14 years for often being angry and paying little attention to their preteen kids. “But then, just as Toby is juggling his new girlfriends, dying patients, and unhappy children, Rachel disappears, leaving Toby to cope with logistics more complicated than he anticipated.” — Publishers Weekly 

My Thoughts:  Ha, I found this novel in the nick of time. Who knew it’d give me more faith in what’s been out this year. Going into it, I knew nothing about “Fleishman” though I heard the title batted around some. The novel, which is broken into three parts, is particularly funny and irreverent in Part 1, which details Toby’s new lease on freedom after his divorce from his wife. He can’t believe his luck and his dating apps that women are really into him at this stage in life, but lo’ and behold they are: who would’ve guessed Toby Fleishman!  (Beware dear reader: the novel is pretty explicit with the sexual musings of horny Toby, which usually would be totally yikes, but Part 1 is pretty spoof-filled so it’s pretty easy laughing off ole Toby Fleishman.) He becomes more filled in and better as the story goes along so give it more of a chance, if you’re annoyed at first. It becomes more than what you might initially think.  

In Part 2, the novel goes back in time to Toby and his wife Rachel’s first days, and those of their marriage, their kids, and what went wrong; while Part 3 gives more of Rachel’s side of things — as well as Libby’s — who is a college friend of Toby’s who tells most of the story. These parts become more serious in tone, and explore details of marriage, career ambition, and what women face … that have insightful introspective touches to them. 

It’s a novel that reminded me a little bit of a funny version of Lauren Groff’s “Fates and Furies” or a funny, Jewish version of “Fates and Furies.” It’s different than that, but explores similar themes. And I probably liked it better. For whatever reason, I was picturing Toby throughout the book as Philip Seymour Hoffman, who seemed to perfectly fit my image of Toby, but sadly he won’t be able to play him if there’s ever a film version. I warmed to Toby’s character, though not much to his wife Rachel’s, despite her rough familial beginnings.  

Still I was quite impressed with Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut. Apparently she wrote the book in six months time, all the while being a journalist and contributor to GQ magazine and The New York Times, where’s she’s now a staff writer. You can tell from “Fleishman,” she’s a fan of the works of Philip Roth, John Updike, and Saul Bellow – if you know or like those. I hope to read more from her in the future. She definitely had me laughing during the novel’s first half, and pondering during its second half. 

Inland by Tea Obreht / via e-book on a plane  

Synopsis:  The novel features two alternating storylines that converge a bit at the very end — the first is of a frontierswoman named Nora and her family living in Arizona Territory in 1893 and the other is of a former outlaw named Lurie, who becomes part of the U.S. Army’s Camel Corps on a trek through Texas and the American West.

My Thoughts: I was quite taken by Tea Obreht’s first novel “The Tiger’s Wife” in 2011, so I really wanted to like this one as well, but I didn’t fully warm up to the story until the second half when it finally started to move for me. The protagonist of Nora is a pretty tough lady, who’s waiting for her husband to return from a far-off errand of acquiring water for the household. She’s trying to manage the bone-dry property and family of boys, while still holding conversations with the one young daughter she lost years ago. Meanwhile Lurie, the former outlaw, who is being chased by a sheriff, joins up with an Army regiment of Camel Corps in Texas, which apparently once truly existed in the West as a means to transport gear over the dry, rough terrain. Lurie becomes attached to his camel Burke, and the two share in a variety of adventures on a trek though the West, culminating eventually in crossing paths with Nora.  

The idea of the Camel Corps and the frontierswoman in Arizona Territory sparked my imagination, and there are some keen descriptions in the story of the landscape and characters that captured me, but you also have to wade through quite a bit. It’s not exactly a page-turner, but I did want to see how it would end. So while “Inland” was quite a bit more work than I thought it would be, there are some rewards if you see it through to the end. Though perhaps I was expecting a bit more from the story … or I found it a bit slow in parts. Admittedly I don’t read a lot of western novels, but if you liked Paulette Jiles’s 2016 novel “News of the World,” which I did, than you might try this one as well. 

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes / via audiobook read by Julia Whelan 

Synopsis:  A widow (Evvie) in a seaside town in Maine ends up renting part of her house to a former Yankee pitcher (Dean) who’s recently retired after losing his game … and the two try to start over after life throws them some surprises. 

My Thoughts: This was a light, entertaining romantic-comedy-type of novel. I listened to it as an audiobook and picked it up because I liked the idea of a professional baseball pitcher moving in next door. Why doesn’t that happen to me?  I also like sports novels in general, but I don’t think this was exactly that. 

Some of the humor early on in the story was enjoyable, though as it went on I sort of wondered … how believable the story and characters were — would they really appeal to one another? I also felt it was more chick lit / romance than I typically read. Still I liked Dean, but I wasn’t sure about Evvie. I wanted Dean to get over his “yips” about pitching and get back to the MLB pronto, but you have to stay tuned to see what happens. For light summer fare, “Evvie Drake” was enjoyable enough to see it through, but I think I wanted to like it more. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads, though others seemed to mark it higher. 

Southern Lady Code: Essays by Helen Ellis / via audiobook read by the author 

Synopsis:  A short collection of essays from a sassy Southern girl raised in Alabama and based in New York City. 

My Thoughts:  I actually listened to this book twice since it’s short, light, and funny in various places. (I deserve this after reading the long “Goldfinch” and dry “Inland” recently.) I would recommend it if you need a laugh, or a pick-me upper. Some of the chapters are better than others (some perhaps are too over-the-top) but overall I enjoyed this Southern author’s particular craziness on her takes on such things as manners, clothes, cooking, thank-you notes, going on flights, having, mammograms, and battling Twitter spam/pornography, etc. 

A couple of my favorite chapters were “Straighten Up and Fly Right” and  “An Emily Post for the Apocalypse” though there are others like “Dumb Boobs,” “Tonight Were Gonna Party Like It’s 1979” and  “Young Ladies, Listen to Me” that were pretty priceless too. This collection is not exactly rocket science, but it’s just good fun. I haven’t read Helen Ellis before, but I’m glad I didn’t pass this one by. It’s a good palette cleanser — and one I need to give to my sister for the laughs and for the hell of it. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books and if so, what did you think?

Hi. It’s been a busy month so I’ve been a bit scarce on the blogosphere, but I hope to catch up soon and stop by your sites. Recently I was at the beach in Southern California, visiting my relatives and it was wonderful. I hadn’t been there in August in many years and it felt great — the ocean was refreshing and the company was fun. While there, I made headway reading Donna Tartt’s lengthy novel “The Goldfinch,” which was good stuff for the beach — an all encompassing story that I’m still working my way through. Meanwhile tomorrow I’ll be heading to Toronto for the annual Canadian senior tennis nationals, where I’ll play singles and doubles. I’ll give it a shot, who knows what’ll happen. All I know is that it will be very humid and hot there and I’ll try not to melt like an ice cream cone. 

In book news, first off, I want to pay my respects to American author Toni Morrison, who passed away recently. Such a major figure in the literary world. I recall reading four of her novels long ago — each of those was from her early days — from 1970’s “Bluest Eye” to 1987’s “Beloved.” I need to revisit her canon of works and read ones that so far I haven’t. My favorite of hers has been “Beloved,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and promptly tore my heart out. Perhaps if I read her works anew, another of her books will become my favorite. Which one is yours?

Also in book news, I noticed that former President Obama put out his 2019 summer reading list. Did you see it? It definitely makes one miss a president who values reading and particularly fiction reading too. I was stoked to see his picks — several of which I’ve read. I was pleased in particular that he picked works by Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and Tea Obreht. I just finished Whitehead’s latest novel and I’m reading Tea’s … so we are on the same wavelength. I can just see Mr. Obama traveling around to far-flung places reading these books, but is he an e-reader or an old-school print reader? Maybe a combo? Whichever it is, I hope he continues with his seasonal picks because they’re interesting to see. And now, I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

I feel like Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Nickel Boys” has to be one of the most important novels of the year. Not only because of the subject matter — about the lives of boys at a hellish reform school that operated in Jim Crow-era Florida in real life for over a century — but also because of the strength of Colson’s narrative and the details of his storytelling make it transportive. It’s not an easy story to stomach but one necessary to know about in the U.S. 

Elwood, the story’s black protagonist, is an A-student and has dreams of college but winds up unjustly at the terrible Nickel Academy, where he suffers at various turns along with the other boys, and his friend Turner, who’s the opposite of the idealistic Elwood. You root for Elwood, who’s inspired by MLK Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, to make it through, find an escape, or overturn the system, but you have to wait till the very end to find out what happens to him and Turner. Meanwhile chapters of the school’s impact on the boys in later adulthood are mixed in with chapters of their student lives there. 

It’s quite a chilling tale, and one that has a strong ending. There’s a bit of a late twist in the novel that explains some of the structure before. I listened to “The Nickel Boys” as a audiobook read by JD Jackson, who narrates it superbly and makes it come alive, though at times I wish I had the print version so I could mark some of Colson Whitehead’s strong passages. Surely he has made me a fan with his evocative storytelling, so I need to go back and read more of his works, especially “The Underground Railroad,” which I started at one time but then postponed. Was it too grim for me initially?  I will have to go back for it. 

Next up, I read Blake Crouch’s sci-fi thriller “Recursion” that deals with time, identity, and memory in a kind of mind-bendy way. It’s story about a NYC cop (Barry) who’s investigating people who are suffering from “false memory syndrome” and are being driven mad by lives they haven’t lived — and a neuroscientist named Helena who’s given an unlimited budget to build a contraption that allows people — such as her mother with Alzheimer’s — to relive their memories. But when her research is taken over, things take an apocalyptic turn. 

I’m in the camp that really liked the first half of this book of the two protagonists’ lives — Helena on an abandoned oil rig trying to build her memory invention, and Barry in NY, investigating cases and living through the loss of his daughter. I found the science, the story is based on, quite fascinating stuff, but as it went on towards the late stages of the book it got pretty crazy … with characters living multiple timelines over and over again … to try stop things from happening in the present. Eventually it sort of did me in and I stopped caring as much about Helena and Barry as I had in the beginning. I had been into their family stories, their bond, and the mystery behind the memories but then the wheels spun on steroids and got the better of me. I’m in the minority though as so many loved this one and its suspenseful pace all the way through.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read either of these, and if so, what did you think?

Oh, July has gone by quickly! Next week sometime I’ll be putting together my August preview of new releases, but for now I just wanted to add a few reviews below of what I’ve been reading lately. It’s safe to assume I’m sort of behind, but summer is a busy time. I’m convinced we have our best weather of the year here now and tomorrow my husband and I will head to the mountains for a lovely day of bicycling. It should be exquisite.

Besides that, it’s house repairs, yard work and various tennis matches and events that I’ve got going.  And if you don’t know, our official flower of the province is the wild rose, which I come upon often while walking my dog out on the trails. See its beauty pictured here.

Meanwhile checking in with book news, I see that Delia Owens’s novel “Where the Crawdads Sing” has just surpassed one million print copies sold in 2019, Wow!  It’s huge, and the biggest seller in fiction this year, which is good because fiction apparently has been losing sales steadily over the past few years.

Nonfiction has been king during these crazy times. But Crawdads has helped save the day, and hopefully fiction is back! I read and liked “Crawdads” just dandy in 2018, and then apparently in March this year it took off like the wind and has been selling gobsmacks ever since. It’s probably all over the beaches this summer. And it’s definitely selling the most in the South Atlantic, near the coastal marshes, where it takes place. Way to go Crawdads!

The other book news to report is perhaps not as happy. It was announced that Macmillan publisher — and perhaps others to follow — will begin to embargo new Library e-books, making it harder for readers to get new e-book releases in a timely manner from their library. Apparently publishers have been changing the terms of their digital content in libraries in recent months, angering various library administrators. To read more about it see here. It sounds like libraries plan to fight back … surely embargoes violate the access to information. If you already sit on long wait lists for e-books at libraries, beware — it could get worse. And now for a few reviews: 

A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar / Riverhead / 352 pages / 2019

Synopsis: This debut novel is about a bookish loner named Cale, age 19, who’s been raised by her beloved grandfather, Lamb, in a small desert town near the California-Nevada border. She has no other relatives or friends (just two dogs), but as she finishes high school, she becomes close to a charismatic, glamorous girl named Penny, who gets her to work with her at the local diner. They start hanging out and it appears Penny has stuff going on on the side, like selling drugs to truckers and mixing it up with men at casinos to fund her dreams of leaving town. All is under control, until one fateful night, an act of violence shatters their worlds … and the next day Penny is missing. Cale sets off on a mission to find her, employing the town cop too, but meanwhile Cale’s grandfather’s health takes a downward turn, which sets Cale adrift at the same time Penny is missing.

My Thoughts: There was much I liked about this coming-of-age, first person narrative debut, which features a mystery due to the missing friend. Its grittiness and desolate desert setting were tangible, and the writing captured Cale’s home life as well as her friendship with Penny — who is her  opposite — as they both try to find some spark in their dead-end town. I could sense lonely Cale’s eagerness for such a friend, and its desert surroundings were relatable to me, growing up in California. 

What happens on their fateful night is pretty hair-raising, and I was keen to find out about Penny — and see what would happen to their friendship — but after much searching by Cale — a few parts a bit cryptic to me — the ending sort of fizzled a bit. I was expecting a big denouement but it felt a bit less than that. Still the story piqued my interest and seemed to speak to the processing of traumatic experience by two pretty different female friends in the West. How it went about that was pretty admirable.    

The only weird thing was the author’s choice to number the book’s chapters out of order (from 31 to 2 to 5 to 3 to 32 etc.) to represent parts of Cale’s past and present being told. I’m not sure it was that necessary, or needed to be mapped. I alternated pretty seamlessly through Cale’s life fine without going haywire over time and numbers. Despite that quibble, I liked how the author conjured their world and put me in Cale’s shoes. 

Normal People by Sally Rooney / Hogarth / 268 pages / 2018

Synopsis: You know what it’s about: a young Irish couple: Marianne and Connell and their relationship through high school and college. They come from different backgrounds: Marianne’s family is wealthy and Connell’s is not; his single mom works for Marianne’s family, which is awkward at best. Marianne is unpopular and nerdy in high school, and he’s popular, and then she is popular in college and he isn’t. Are you paying attention? 

Marianne and Connell are never really exclusively girlfriend/boyfriend in a conventional sense but start hooking up and become bonded over time. They seem frustratingly right for each other but through missteps and miscommunication hurt each other time and again, and never seem fully ready to commit. 

I liked Rooney’s writing for its observations, adolescent insecurities, and dialogue, but for readers who like a lot of plot or action this story will likely not be for you, nor if you don’t care to hear much about the sex lives of adolescents. The novel’s everydayness might drive readers to wonder what the big deal is about Sally Rooney’s books. This one received so much hype and recognition. I had to wonder myself. I guess in a coming-of-age kind of way, it’s interesting to see if these two characters will evolve, or what will happen to them. Maybe it’s a nerdier, much more mundane Fates & Furies? I liked Connell much better than Marianne, for sure, but I likely won’t hold my breath to find out if they return in Rooney’s next installment. 

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth / St. Martin’s Press / 347 pages / 2019

I enjoyed this novel as a light summer mystery audiobook and liked how its premise touched on mother-in-laws and their relationship with their kids’ spouses, which has such potentially fraught possibilities, either wonderful or frightful. 

In this story set in Australia, the wealthy matriarch Diana appears at first to be a stone-cold (SOB) mother-in-law … and yet she runs a charity for immigrants, is a pillar in her community, and appears to have feelings after all, especially for her husband Tom and her grandkids, just not exactly for her daughter-in-law Lucy. And Lucy so wants to be liked by Diana and her husband Ollie’s family, which includes his sister Nettie and her spouse Patrick, but nothing is easy. Money is an issue — Diana doesn’t want to give handouts to her married son, who is starting a business, or her daughter, who is seeking fertility treatments, nor does she appreciate Lucy at first — who is a stay-at-home mom to three kids. 

But Diana’s life has been harder than you think — as you come to find out by the chapters being alternately told by Lucy and Diana in the past and present. Both sides are compelling — neither one being all good or all bad — and I liked its entertaining look at the mother-in-law dynamic — which is more attenuated once Diana is found dead along with a suicide note. Uh-oh. Did she do it, or was it someone else? You’ll have to keep on till the end to find out. 

Granted, Diana was the opposite of my beloved mother-in-law, who I lost in 2013. She would’ve been Lucy’s dream MIL from the very beginning.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these — and if so, what did you think?

July has been busy. Last week I was in a town a couple hours north of here officiating the junior provincial tennis tournament for 18- and 16-year-olds, which meant long days outside on the courts. Some days were freezing, and other days were frying. Ha, it’s one of my retirement jobs and I’m enjoying it so far. The kids are good and competitive and I just need to make sure the matches are played by the rules and fairly … that all line balls are called good etc. I survived a week’s worth and now I’m glad to be home again. 

We’ve been back just a few weeks from Montana, so I thought I’d include a couple more photos (at top, and left) from the trip. It’s still on my mind how great Montana is, so if you get a chance, check it out. 

I hope everyone is enjoying their summers so far, amid all the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and heat waves: take care out there. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee / Crown Publishing / 2017 / 300 pages 

Admittedly I’m an animal person, whether wild or domesticated, large or small, I’m an admirer, but you don’t have to be to get hooked by this nonfiction book. Wow I had no idea it was this good— I just picked it up to read while at my brother’s house in Montana recently and I’m so glad I did. 

It tells the story of the U.S. government’s reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and the decades that followed for the species in and around the park. It does so in a way that grippingly zeroes in on the lives of one such wolf pack in the park’s Lamar Valley led by a dynamic alpha female known as O-Six, for the year she was born. Holy smokes, she’s something to behold: a mother, fighter, protector, hunter, and glue who holds her pack together. From early on she becomes beloved by a group of avid wolf watchers that includes park ranger Rick McIntyre, who meticulously note the pack’s lives on a daily basis. It’s thanks to them that her story unfolds. 

And it’s not an easy one. O-Six and her pack must fend off other wolf packs that will kill to get their territory, and must contend with cattle ranchers and hunters if they cross the park’s boundaries who also want them dead. It’s a gripping narrative that as it goes on ropes you more into the intricacies of O-Six’s pack dynamics and the wolves’ lives while at the same time revealing such interesting information about the animals that you never knew before. In a wolf pack, for instance, there’s just one alpha male and alpha female pair and usually they’re the only ones who mate within the group; they breed once a year; and are said to mate for life unless their partner is killed. Both female and males take care and hunt for their young and they depend on the pack for survival. 

The book also delves into the politics surrounding the Endangered Species Act and the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho that have delisted and re-listed the species from time to time and have allowed annual hunts for the wolf. The protected Yellowstone packs haven’t been immune, many — even the ones wearing tracking collars — have been killed upon crossing the park’s boundaries. The narrative, though appreciative of the wolf, includes the anti-wolf side as well not shying from hunters and the killing that goes on. For any wolf fan, the story will infuriate you and break your heart on numerous occasions. I’m not a typical crier, but this one moved me to tears. 

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim / Sarah Crichton Books / 2019 / 355 pages

Synopsis: It’s a novel about a group who’ve been seeking help at a special treatment center — an oxygen chamber operated by a Korean family — for afflictions ranging from autism and other developmental disorders to infertility. But when an explosion at the chamber occurs and two are killed, a court case a year later ensues  to get to the bottom of who was responsible. 

My Thoughts: I know everybody loved this immigrant family and courtroom drama but for whatever reason the story wasn’t a huge hit with me like I thought it would be. To me, the crime or accident was horrific, and the cast of characters was unlikable in their flawed ways … the swirl of lies was nonstop, and it went round and round with everyone having a motive to possibly causing what happened to happen or playing their part in it. Usually I like having lots of suspects but not particularly this time.

It’s good the story highlighted the care of special needs children who were taken by their parents to sit in the chamber multiple times a day for months on end — though it was mostly about the lengths mothers will go to treat their kids and how they are driven crazy by the health needs and their kids’ disorders. I kept thinking about the kids sitting in the submarine chamber and autistic Henry in particular and it disturbed me what happened, along with various other things with the characters as well, such as between the infertile patient Matt and the Korean owners’ daughter Mary, and the relationship of the Korean owners. I might have felt for their situations, but I did not exactly like these individuals and spending much time in their wakes.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak / Little Brown/ 2017 / 320 pages

This novel is about two recent college grads, Evan is from a small town in Canada and Julia from an affluent family in Boston. They meet at Yale, Evan plays on the hockey team and they become a couple. Afterwards they move in together in NYC and find jobs — Evan at a hedge fund and Julia an assistant at a foundation. They try to make a go of their young lives together but they become more separated as time goes on. 

The financial meltdown of 2008-2009 in NYC plays prominently in the book as a backdrop, as huge layoffs are happening and Evan’s boss makes a shady deal with the Chinese. Both Evan and Julia, who narrate the story in alternating chapters, are pretty selfish and unlikable characters yet I still found the story an interesting look into young adulthood and the mistakes that are made in one’s early 20s. 

You can sort of see where the story will lead before it gets there but it’s a train wreck that you keep watching. What happens between Evan and Julia seems real and affecting, but the later transformation of the characters in the year or so that follows, I wasn’t totally sold on. Still I thought the debut author did a nice job with all the young, privileged angst in the story and the feelings that were prevalent during the financial meltdown of 2008/09.

I hope to read the author’s new novel “Necessary People” sometime so I thought I’d start with this one, which I listened to as an audiobook. 

The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle / Bantam / 2012 / 290 pages

Next up is a memoir my husband and I listened to as an audiobook while on our road trip to Montana. We were headed on a week’s bike ride, so I thought it’d be sort of inspiring to hear what’s cycling is like on the pro tour … going up long mountain passes and over hill and dale racing, but it’s a lot — more than I realized it’d be — about the doping shenanigans that went on in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Still it’s quite a potent story. Even this many years later, after the whole doping scandal of Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Postal team has been revealed, the memoir opened my eyes to elements I hadn’t known before. Just the scope of doping within professional cycling seemed universal at the time, it wasn’t just one team doing it, it was rampant among all the top cycling teams. This memoir was actually published a year before Lance’s 2013 confession so the lowdown of all that was going on behind the scenes is explosive stuff. The author was a teammate of Lance’s for three years when Lance won the Tour in 1999, 2000, and 2001.  

Whoa. Tyler tells the story from the beginning of his cycling life in the 1990s and gives an insider’s view of his career and wanting to compete at the Tour de France. It all started out so innocently just being an athlete and cyclist — but then he got roped in like so many others — basically given the ultimatum: you either dope or go home. 

The story unfolds chronologically of Tyler’s years at the Tour de France and the teams he doped with, revealing the secrecy and lengths of hiding the doping, the types of drugs — EPO and blood transfusions — the shadowy doctors, and the team players. It was quite an operation and is unreal they were able to beat the drug tests for so long and so often — before testing was adequate enough to detect most of it. It’s still not 100 percent; there could be various dopers today trying to beat the odds of being caught. 

In Tyler’s memoir, Lance Armstrong comes off as quite the nutcase with no longterm loyalty to friends and with a vengeance toward anyone who’d stand in his way or taint his reputation. It’s disconcerting and illuminating. Tyler also seems to hold himself accountable; he could’ve stopped or told the truth or blown the whistle so many times years earlier but he covered the doping up just like so many others in pro cycling. There was an unspoken oath of secrecy among all the cyclists to keep quiet. It was only when Tyler was subpoenaed in 2010 did he finally tell the truth, which led to him writing this book. So while the general knowledge of doping has been known now for several years, I found parts of this memoir still quite riveting and revealing about the whole operation from racing to behind the scenes. It’s a train wreck that’s quite hard to fathom. 

What about you — have you read any of these, or have any thoughts on them?