The Cue Card

Greetings. I hope everyone’s June is going well. Things are very green here now and in bloom. My book assistant, at left, and I are especially enjoying the lilac bushes in the park. Don’t you love the smell?  So far these past couple of weeks I’ve been completing some wacky books, not really wacky per se but books outside my normal reading zone. Do you ever do that — finish several outside your usual reading genre — and you think oh that was different.

I didn’t exactly plan to read them, they just came to me like that from the library. One was sort of a motivational book, another was from a movie actor, another was sort of a romance-y novel, and one was a pivotal holocaust memoir. Talk about varied, these jumped some hoops for me but served their purpose as well … so I’ll leave you with some thoughts about them below. 

But first the latest in book news is that I scored some tickets to hear Margaret Atwood speak when she comes to town to talk about her new novel in late September. I think the event sold out in a couple hours, so I was lucky to get two seats. She’s like royalty in Canada so you must move quickly … and I mean quickly.

As you know, her new novel “The Testaments” — due out Sept. 10 — is the long-awaited sequel to her dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” from 1985. It takes place 15 years after the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and will feature the “explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.” Gulp.

Meanwhile, Season 3 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” TV series has started up … though I stopped watching after Season 1. It was just too grim and I needed all the handmaids to escape pronto. Season 1 featured the story in the novel, but the other seasons have gone beyond that. So I will wait for “The Testaments” to come out in September. And now for the reviews: 

 I first read Elie Wiesel’s 1958 memoir “Night” when I was in junior high school and I’m sure it blew me out of my shoes, just the sheer terror of it. But it had been a long time and I was foggy about its details, so when I saw the audio download available at the library, I started it with trepidation. It seemed timely as the 75th anniversary of D-Day was approaching then, and who better than the late Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to put what was at stake into context. Gulp. 

Who remembers that it was so late in the war — 1944 — when Wiesel, his family, and fellow Jewish villagers from Transylvania were rounded up and deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I wish they had run away sooner, but Wiesel says many still did not believe it would happen to them, or they thought the war would end before then. They either did not believe the death accounts or thought they could avoid them. Elie was just 15 years old when he arrived at Auschwitz (as was Anne Frank incidentally), he and his father were selected for forced labor, while his mother and one sister went to the gas chambers, two other sisters survived. 

Much of this slim book tells of Elie and his father’s days at the camp, struggling to survive many months of hard labor with hardly anything to eat. The scenes of torture, camp dentistry, and the hanging of a child shape them in unimaginable ways. Finally with the Allies getting close, the SS decides to abandon the camp and force Elie, his father, and the remaining inmates on a death march first to Gleiwitz, some 50 miles away, then to be put on a train to Buchenwald, where Elie somehow manages to keep alive until the camp’s liberation on April 11, 1945. 

Oh it’s not an easy book to revisit — the death march and ending are particularly horrifying and tragic — but it seemed necessary to return to this account of what the Wiesel family experienced and millions of others. I had not recalled how unsparing Elie Wiesel is of himself and others in the camp about when they failed to help those in need, despite their very desperate conditions. The destruction of the beliefs in humanity and God and the self and soul are all in this one memoir. It’s downright shattering, even surmising what’s coming the second time around.

By the way I have not read Elie Wiesel’s two other books in this trilogy: “Dawn” and “Day,” but I plan to in the future.

After that, I listened to the audiobook of Oprah Winfrey’s recent book “The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose,” which lays out in 10 chapters about how you can go about doing that. In part Oprah shares her own experiences and advice on living a life of significance and she interviews other renowned figures about their paths and beliefs.

I’ve never been an Oprah TV show follower, but I found the book pretty engaging and motivational though I’m not sure I got too many concrete tips out of it. Boiled down, it seemed a bit like such advice as: follow what you love and contentment will follow, or have faith and belief in who you are, or don’t let fear stop you etc. But there are various life lessons in it that I felt were well worthwhile visiting, and her guest stars of theologians, philosophers, authors, athletes, and celebs offered useful insights into life and one’s purpose pretty articulately.  

Next up, I read actor Michael Caine’s 2018 book “Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life.” (What is it with me and “lessons” this month?) I started it as an audio but then switched to the print version when the audiobook was due. I thought this book would be a memoir of his life in the movie industry, but it turned out to be just part memoir and part words of wisdom and advice to actors and others.

I didn’t really know much about Michael Caine’s poor working-class background, and his youth during WWII, but I enjoyed hearing about it in the first part of the book — along with finding out about his service in the Korean War. He’s an eloquent and charming storyteller. 

The rest of the book jumps around quite a bit about his roles in movies —like how he got into acting in the 1960s, starting out small then getting his first breakout role in “Alfie” in 1966 — as well as the advice he has to share for others. Most of the tricks of the trade he shares seems to be wise common sense: such as be prepared and on time; know your lines inside and out; use the difficulty life throws you; do your research; stay focused; learn your craft; give 100 percent; be flexible and respectful of others; learn from your failures, etc. It’s all fine to read but towards the end the chapters seemed to get a bit repetitive. 

Still Michael Caine includes some entertaining anecdotes but nothing too dishy and talks about actors he’s worked with and directors he’s liked, such as John Huston and Christopher Nolan. He speaks of his movie successes and duds (such as “The Swarm” from 1978) but he says he has no regrets. He seems respectful, hardworking, and grateful about his career and family. I’ve gone to renting a few of his movies to relive what he’s been in.

Recently I’ve seen him in “The Italian Job” from 1969, “The Man Who Would Be King” from 1975; “California Suite” from 1978; “Educating Rita” from 1983; and I plan to rewatch “Hannah and Her Sisters” from 1986, for which he won his first Academy Award. His second Oscar was for his role in “The Cider House Rules.” Certainly some of his movies seem quite dated, but still he comes off quite appealing and gifted. And by now, I almost have his cockney accent down.  Which is your favorite Michael Caine movie?  

Last up, I listened to the audiobook of Tracey Garvis Graves’s recent novel “The Girl He Used to Know,” which by now having a title with “Girl” in it is almost enough to make one run. It was also a bit out of my typical range — more romance-y than I usually pick up, but I thought the storytelling was pretty engaging. It’s about two people (Annika and Jonathan) who re-connect after 10 years time and pick up where their relationship left off. They meet in college in 1991 at Illinois, date there, and then run into each other years later in 2001 in Chicago. The girl has a developmental disorder (I’d rather not say which) and learns how to navigate things in college with the help of her roommate Janice and the boyfriend Jonathan, who like Annika is on the chess team.

It seemed a bit hard to believe Annika’s parents didn’t test her or seek treatments for her when she was young, but otherwise the story seems to portray her pretty realistically. There is a touch of saccharine to the story and later a bit of melodrama, but still it made for a pretty enjoyable audiobook. As the story goes along, you begin to wonder how Annika and Jonathan will bridge their gap and get back together, and also what had happened in their past that broke them up to begin with. The author does well tying the  story together and researching the character’s life and disorder. I like how Annika must overcome various challenges and grow along the way to reach where she wants to be.

That’s all for now. I will be away starting on Saturday — we are going on a bicycle trip in Montana with a group, so I hope it goes well. I won’t be back for a couple weeks … as we will take some time there afterwards. I look forward to chatting with you then.

Let me know if you’ve read any of these — and if so, what you thought. 

Greetings, how is everyone’s May going? It’s been a pretty rainy one here lately, which has sort of helped out my reading truth-be-told. But we’ve been trying to get ready for the annual Golden Triangle three-day bike ride this coming weekend in the mountains, so hopefully the sun will come out. Cross your fingers. Last weekend we faced clouds like these at left. Sometimes when you’re on a bicycle amid the countryside such dark clouds can be rather intimidating but then you must press on to try and finish your ride and get back to shelter. Luckily the skies held for us that day. Below I’ve attached a sunnier’s day photo, which is our goal for bike riding from now on. 

For those going to next week’s BookExpo America in New York, have a great time! Apparently over 600 authors will be there including special events with such folks as Malcolm Gladwell, Rachel Maddow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Phillippa Gregory, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor among others. It’ll be a huge boondoggle. I recall Kenny Loggins belting out a mini-concert, which included “Footloose,” right there on the floor amid the book booths at BookExpo 2016. I had my picture taken with him after, ha!  That was the only BookExpo I’ve been to — it was in Chicago — and man was it a fun rush. I think I loaded myself up with nearly 20 advance book copies, wow. Unfortunately this year I won’t be going, but maybe next year I’ll be back. The Expo really showcases a lot of the best coming out in the fall, which is pretty much brain candy for us readers. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of what I finished lately. 

John Burnham Schwartz’s historical novel “The Red Daughter,” which follows the life and defection to the U.S. in 1967 of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Soviet despot Joseph Stalin’s, left quite a mark on me. Wow what a complex and conflicted woman and turbulent time in history — during the Cold War no less! Although quite a bit has been written before about Svetlana’s life — later known as Lana Evans — including a few memoirs by her and a notable 2015 biography by Rosemary Sullivan, this was my first foray into reading about Stalin’s daughter and the dynamics of her situation sort of blew me away. 

At the height of the Cold War, apparently Stalin’s daughter, who sought to defect, was seen by many in the CIA and State Department as “too radioactive to handle, likely to upset the fragile balance of nuclear forces thought to be keeping the world, if only barely from self-annihilation.” But ultimately the U.S. chose not to turn away the “most important Soviet defector in our country’s history,” so notes the book. 

The novel is told via Svetlana’s fictionalized journal entries, which alternate in chapters with those of Peter Horvath’s, a lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America, 14 years after her father, Stalin’s death. They keep in touch after her defection throughout their lives and that forms the gist of the narrative. Apparently in real life the lawyer was the author’s father and that’s how he came to write this story. Although, according to an Author’s Note at the back of the book, the character of Peter Horvath was much different than his father and did not become as involved with her.

Despite these embellishments between the two, the story seems to follow Svetlana’s life fairly closely.  And my, did she come to live and move around quite a bit amid the U.S., Russia and England. She seemed a complex person who could be charismatic and bright as well as difficult and headstrong. She also seemed neither solely Russian or American but caught between East and West, feeling at times alienated by both.

Surely she made some disastrous decisions, which ended up haunting her the rest of her life. For one, Svetlana, at age 41, defected to the U.S. abruptly during a trip to India, leaving behind her children, ages 17 and 21 without warning, which left her with much remorse and longing ever after, as detailed in the book. Then while in the U.S., she joins a cult-like community run by architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow, which ends badly after a couple years. And later in 1984 she decides to revoke the West and return to living in the Soviet Union with her American child, which doesn’t exactly work out either. Oy vey, what was she thinking. 

Despite these decisions, the story paints her a bit tragically and sympathetically as a figure who wished to escape her father’s infamous past (whose regime killed off many of her own relatives among the millions) and live her life on her own terms, which was never fully successful.

What I liked about it was that you really get a sense from the novel of the emotional weight of the Cold War and her decisions — her guilt as a mother for her acts — and how she couldn’t really escape her legacy. I felt sliced open just feeling the stress of all she struggled with, coming to this country like she did, as a spectacle, alone amid her circumstances. I thought the novel had some very well done passages that brought to life her mind-set and situation — making her perhaps not totally likable or forgivable but a complex figure in the clutches of history. 

Next up, I listened to the audiobook of Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel “American Spy,” whose premise lured me to pick it up …. about a female black protagonist who’s languishing at the FBI and gets picked for a task force in 1986 to insinuate herself with the “charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention.” Uh oh. 

The novel is labeled as a “spy thriller” but to me it seemed more like a coming-of-age tale or a fictional memoir about a young black woman (Marie), who wants to follow in her sister’s footsteps to become a spy. But then her sister is killed in a mysterious accident (known from the start), which Marie is still trying to get a handle on. The novel starts out with a pretty action-packed chapter of Marie and her two children surviving a home invasion and then goes back in time to various locales as Marie details her life becoming a spy that has led up to this event. 

She narrates the slow-burn of a story as if explaining to her twin boys who their father is and what happened in her career, alternating chapters from different times in her life between her FBI days in N.Y., her mission in Africa in the mid-’80s, and her current days with her mother in Martinique. It’s a bit convoluted and took quite while to get to the main gist of the story about her mission to get close to the leader of Burkina Faso. Apparently president Thomas Sankara, who’s a part of the story, was the real leader there from 1983 to 1987, so it was interesting to hear about his role in the country. I had not known of him before, or his ideology, or the various tides in Burkina Faso that were playing out during those days. 

Unfortunately at times the narrative seemed a bit weighed down with superfluous information to the plot, or too meandering, and I found the writing a bit over-explained … becoming at times convoluted and then over-simplifying what was going on and the bad guys’ operation. So I wasn’t as gripped by Marie’s story, or the writing, as I was hoping. I wanted to like the novel a bit more, but was able to see Marie’s mission through and found parts of it worthwhile. I just wouldn’t market it as a blazing spy thriller because to me it was more of a slow-burn novel about a young black woman becoming a spy that had a couple action scenes to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author puts out a sequel since this was only Marie’s first mission.

P.S. I found the cover of the paperback version of the book, which I attached at the top, much better than that of the hardback version in yellow. What do you think?

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

I have been a bit AWOL from the blog lately as I was playing in a big senior tennis tournament here last week and my doubles partner from Austria was staying with us. She used to live here and decided to fly in and visit so we could play the age-group event, which included players ages anywhere from 35 to 85, competing against one another in their own age bracket. It was fun and we did fairly well and battled hard. I also placed fifth in singles, and now need to rest up after the seven matches played. Tennis is not so easy on the ole body, but it sure can be a good adrenaline rush at times. 

Meanwhile spring seems to be gaining hold and we’ve had some warm days recently. I need to get the garden going, especially in planting tomatoes, cucumbers and geraniums — the usual summer drill. The owl family that I posted about earlier has left the trees by the river; they are gone now. We believe they are healthy and happy somewhere and we wish them the best. We will continue to watch for them.

Meanwhile my book assistant and dog, Stella, at left, enjoyed a nice swim in the river over the weekend. She would make a good river otter and doesn’t hesitate to launch into any body of water. I just need to make sure there are no rocks before throwing her her ball. She will get it no matter what.  

Speaking of water, I enjoyed Peter Heller’s recent outdoorsy novel “The River” about two college school buddies (Wynn and Jack) who decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada and end up getting a wee more than they bargained for. There’s a wildfire headed their way and a couple of drunk Texans (damn) and a married couple at odds with one another who make things rather dicey. It’s not only the wildlife or natural disasters that you need to worry about, it’s the creepy homo sapiens you come across in the wild. You might recall the 1970’s book and movie “Deliverance” right?  It seems this canoe novel pays a bit of homage to that, mentioning author James Dickey along the way, though the story doesn’t come off as chilling as that scary river classic. 

I enjoyed “The River” as an audiobook. It starts off rather leisurely paced as a backwoods paddle between two Dartmouth College friends who seem adept outdoorsmen — Wynn is a burly tall guy from Vermont and Jack grew up on a ranch in Colorado — and builds as it goes along as conflicts start to arise and ultimately spills over into a pretty action-packed ending. The author writes well about the natural world and men camping and fishing in the woods. Apparently he’s a former whitewater kayaker who once traveled the world writing about challenging descents. 

I’m not an avid camper or kayaker (I’ve tried them a bit), but I’ve done quite a bit of hiking, cycling, and two river raft trips in the mountains so wilderness /survival novels sort of entice me. This is the third of Heller’s books that I’ve completed — perhaps the best being his post-apocalyptic debut novel “The Dog Stars” from 2012. “The River” touches quite a bit on male friendship and the outdoors. It’s probably not for everyone, but I found it hit the right rapids for me and would make a good summer read for those interested. 

Next up, I read Australian author Jane Harper’s mystery “The Lost Man” about the Bright family and its three brothers who have large adjacent cattle ranches to one another in the remote Australian outback. When Cam, age 40, the middle brother, and largest land overseer, is found dead near a gravesite in the parched sun nine kilometers away from his truck — his mom and relatives are perplexed: why would he leave his vehicle and its safety rations under such brutal heat conditions? Did he wish to kill himself? The older brother, Nathan, starts to investigate what happened to him, ultimately learning some things about his brother and family that were long-ago tucked away. Uh-oh. 

Most of this mystery I really liked, especially the setting in Australia’s remote outback, which is very vivid in the story, and its main protagonist Nathan, a lonely divorced dad who’s been ostracized from the town for reasons that become clear and who is trying to reconnect with his teenage son Xander, who’s visiting from the city. He makes for a sympathetic investigator into his brother’s death. And it’s compelling too that for quite a while in the story so many people seem to be possible suspects to what happened to Cam. Was it the backpackers that worked at his ranch, or his wife who he wasn’t getting along with, or the younger brother Bub who wanted more of Cam’s land? Or someone from his past who had been trying to contact him? You won’t find out till the very end when it all unravels. 

But meanwhile it’s a slow burn of a story that kept me interested till long past dark, particularly due to Nathan and his circumstances and complicated history with his brother’s wife, but the ending and who did it I found quite disturbing and maybe even hard to believe. The ending likely docked a star from me on Goodreads, otherwise there were parts of the book I enjoyed. I wouldn’t totally throw it against a wall, but the whodunit reveal didn’t really agree with me. 

This is the third book I’ve read by Jane Harper and is a standalone novel from her previous two mysteries that feature federal agent Aaron Falk. This one is without Falk, and I must say it was okay he wasn’t there. I’m not sure which one of her mysteries I liked best; they all had a few pluses and perhaps one minus to them. So while I’ve liked them, I haven’t overly loved loved them. Still they are enjoyable enough and somehow I continue to be drawn to her mysteries’ in remote Australian settings. I’m sure I’ll likely pick up the next one because I seem to be a sucker for them. 

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

Our area usually doesn’t come into full bloom until May but something neat has happened this spring in our neck of the woods. A great horned owl family has taken up residence in a nest in a tall tree down by the river and people around town have gotten word and are stopping by to watch this now-very popular family of five. There’s two parents, the mama owl near the nest and a papa not too far off, and three baby owlets who seem to be getting too big for their roost. They’re jostling about vying for space and at times flapping their wings, but haven’t flown the coop just yet.

It’s neat to see these birds so close on a daily basis, usually they’re pretty elusive birds that are most active at night. I’ve lived here for over 10 years and have never had such a good view of owls before. Now my dog and I walk by them each day to see what is new. We hope the owlets will survive and find their way in the world. Their parents have been great caregivers so far. They’re tough and make no mistake these birds are fierce predators that can take large prey, but so far we haven’t seen them during feeding hours so don’t know their full story. Still they are fun to watch in the daylight. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of books I finished lately. 

Tim Johnston’s crime mystery “The Current” starts off with two college girls on a long road trip home who suffer an attack at a gas station and whose car gets knocked from behind by an unidentified truck into the icy waters of a Minnesota river, drowning one and injuring the other. It’s an incident that rattles the nearby hometown of one of the girl’s, which endured a similar tragedy of a teenage girl dying in the river 10 years before. The recent survivor comes to realize there’s connections between the two cases and begins to poke around into the prior murder, which was pinned on a boy who was ultimately not charged. 

Uh-oh. These kinds of icy, winter Minnesota mysteries are often hard for me to resist. And indeed I thought “The Current” had a more involved and better plot than the author’s 2015 acclaimed debut “The Descent,” which was a missing person, kidnap kind of story set in the mountains of Colorado. This one starts fast with the crime then turns into a slow burn of a novel about the injured girl and how other residents in her small hometown have been affected by the previous murder as they weathered years of suspicion, guilt, and grief. The accused boy and his family’s lives were changed forever as well as the lives of the victim’s family’s and the sheriff’s who was never able to get a conviction. Eventually the survivor girl is able to unravel enough secrets about that case and the town to get an arrest.

It’s a story, though while a slow burn, propelled me along quickly as I grappled with who and what were behind these crimes. It had a strong atmosphere of the town and the river, and the various characters felt like they had been through these tragedies. At times I wasn’t sure if the author was shooting for the novel to be literary fiction or crime fiction — it wavered between the two — as it went on at some length and manifested the various repercussions to the town folk. I liked it but thought it could’ve been edited shorter. The ending resolved one, but not fully both of the crimes, which didn’t really bother me as I felt that that is often the case, but if that bugs you, be forewarned. I will continue to read whatever the author puts out next as I think his crime novels are compelling and seem to be getting better. 

Thanks to Algonquin books for the e-galley they provided me for this review.

Next up, I listened to the audiobook of Leila Slimani’s novel “The Perfect Nanny,” which was picked by the New York Times as one of the Top 10 Books of 2018. The author was also awarded France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, for the novel — the first Moroccan-born woman to win it — so I was keen to investigate. Apparently the book was a blockbuster in France but hasn’t taken off as much in the U.S. Still I was curious — though I went into it blind, not knowing much, and I was spit out the other side in a frightened fog. Holy smokes it’s dark! Need I say it’s inspired by a real crime that happened on the Upper West Side of New York in 2012, in which a nanny bludgeoned the family’s two children. Gawd I wondered after the first chapter — what was I doing. 

From the novel’s outset you know that a horrific crime has happened and who the perpetrator is but then you go back in time to get a sense of the mind-set and background of the nanny and her relationship with the family, especially with the mother. It’s a story, set in Paris, of Louise, who at first appears to be the quintessential nanny to Myriam and Paul’s two children. She does everything wonderfully: engage the children, clean the apartment, mend the clothes, cook the meals for the family. But in time as the married couple — Myriam, a lawyer, and Paul, a music executive — and the nanny become more dependent on one another, feelings of resentment and jealousy mount. The lonely Louise, who’s insinuated herself into all aspects of their lives, expects to be apart of their family, but the parents look to her services basically to care for their kids so that they can pursue their careers. 

Uh-oh. You begin to feel uneasy: this is not go to go well. In an unstable person, madness is never very far away. But the parents in the story are no angels either. That’s what’s so interesting about the novel. In the hands of a different writer, it would likely come off as a crime thriller like in “The Girl on the Train” genre or in the vein of a gruesome murder in the Scandinavian crime genre, yet this author writes it in such a way that explores various other issues as it builds and becomes more unsettling: such as motherhood, class, domesticity, working parents and mental illness. It’s not as much graphic as it is just the doom that builds in your own mind, knowing about its impending arrival. 

I found the novel well done, enough to give it 4.5 stars on Goodreads despite its very dark subject matter. Midway through, I began to ask who is this author and why have I never heard of her before, which is usually a sign that I find the writing pretty effective. It’s translated from French, so you might notice some language variances. But now that I know all about the insufferable Louise and the crime, I need to get them clearly out of my head for good. I used to like the name Louise but I’m not sure I can stomach it much anymore.  

That’s all for now, what about you have you read these novels and if so, what did you think?

I’ve been in Southern California this past week visiting my parents. My hub was here for awhile and we rode bikes, which was fun and scenic. Thanks to rain this past winter, it’s much more green here than in years past. My folks still live in the same house from when I was in first grade, if you can believe it. It’s in part of the “Inland Empire” area between Los Angeles and Palm Springs and boasts lots of lovely citrus and avocado trees, and gorgeous views of the mountains. It’s a nice, peaceful place to visit, and warmer than our Canadian environs, so I can’t complain.

Despite being here, I did not attend the huge Los Angeles Times Festival of Books over the weekend, which is the largest annual literary festival in the country with more than 150,000 visitors. I’ve always wanted to go but never quite made the trek and I sort of wonder if I’d be swallowed up by it and not spit out. Still, Rebecca Makkai won the L.A.Times Book Prize for fiction there for her novel “The Great Believers,” which I plan to get to. Speaking of literary prizes, congrats to author Richard Powers for winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his epic environmental novel “The Overstory,” about the life of trees and the people who understand them. Judy over at the blog Keep the Wisdom loved it and I’m curious sometime to test it out. “The Overstory’s” win gives a big boost to eco-novels everywhere, so I’m excited about that.

Meanwhile I finished a couple books lately that have been bantered about this year. First, I listened to the audiobook of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel “Daisy Jones & the Six,” about the rise and fall of an iconic 1970s rock band. Did you think I’d miss it? I grew up on classic rock in the ’70s and ’80s and have consumed a steady dose of various rock star memoirs and their lives of sex, drugs, & rock ’n roll. My brother still gives me a new rock bio each Christmas — whether it’s of The Doors, or Eric Clapton, or Robbie Robertson, or Janis Joplin, or whomever I’ve likely been glued at one time to their stories. If you like such tales, then this one is worth checking out.

As you might have heard, “Daisy Jones & the Six” is a novel written in an interview format that unfolds like an oral history of the band with all its various members and managers giving input into what happened. I found its structure really conducive to experiencing the novel as an audiobook. It follows chronologically and all the various characters — of which there are quite a few — are played by different people so you become familiar with their voices and they seem to really take on their roles. Their dialogue too plays off each other in a cool way. By the end, I was pretty convinced the band was real and the individuals were all apart of it … but alas, no, this is a novel after all. So I had to wake up and snap back to reality.

The story revolves around a band that reminded me a lot of Fleetwood Mac. There’s the core group out of Pittsburgh that begins with two brothers, the Dunne brothers, Billy and Graham, along with four other musicians, who come to make up The Six. Then in an interesting way a free-spirited young woman, Daisy Jones, joins the band when they move out to L.A. Like Fleetwood Mac, the band includes two female members: singer-songwriter Daisy and the keyboardist, Karen; there’s also at times similar infighting and in-sleeping among the group’s members.

Lead singer Billy, who’s trying to hang onto his sobriety and marriage, and new member, Daisy, at first differ a lot on artistic directions of songs, their words, and styles, but over time come to thrive on writing songs together. They have a creative chemistry, perhaps in my head a bit like Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, or Lennon & McCartney for that matter. But while, author Taylor J. Reid says her inspiration for the band was a group like Fleetwood Mac, she also says such bands like the Eagles gave her much fodder to work with for the details, especially in their pitfalls. And believe me, Daisy and the other members have their share of drugs and misadventures.

It’s no secret Billy and Daisy’s band in the end break up, it’s set up that way from the beginning, but you wonder along the way how or why it happens. They hit a huge pinnacle of success after the band’s album “Aurora” comes out (a bit like Fleetwood Mac’s blockbuster “Rumors”), but then little cracks begin to deepen. The story takes a couple turns that kept it fresh enough, though you’ll probably guess the particulars. For the most part, I found the novel an enjoyable romp through the ’70s music scene and the life of a band. I liked the various characters and voices who made the story come to life via the audiobook. While a few parts might have been a bit cheesy, on the whole I was sad by the band’s end and nostalgic for those ’70s days when such music and stars reigned supreme. I hear the author might someday bring these characters back. What do you think, will there be a sequel, or just a movie?

Next up, I read Susan Choi’s novel “Trust Exercise,” which is a more complex book than any “Daisy Jones.” It’s broken up into three parts … overall it’s about teens at an esteemed performing arts high school in the 1980s whose teacher, Mr. Kingsley, puts them through some intense exercises and long production days, which will affect them and they’ll remember in different ways for the rest of their lives. The first part is told pretty straightforwardly about their high school days, and two teens in particular, Sarah and David, who get involved in a sexual relationship that is on again, off again, when Mr. Kingsley tags them for some of his class exercises. Uh-oh. Shortly after, an English-exchange troupe arrives at their school, and Sarah and her friend Karen get involved with two of the older guys from it.

Then it cuts to Part 2: which shifts to a dozen years later and to Karen’s point of view of her past at the school and in the present of her contact with the other alums. This section confused me with its use of Karen in the first person, as well as third person narrative, and I was like whaaa? But I kept going. In Part 2, Karen returns back to her hometown where her former classmate David is putting on a play, and in which she, Sarah and Karen’s former English beau get involved with. Uh-oh it’s the four of them again, confronting their old high school ties and days … in a final act that turns into a doozy. The book ends with a short coda from another character, only indirectly related.

It’s a novel that doesn’t exactly make you want to go back to high school again — with all the angst, hormones, embarrassment, and power plays at hand. The adults don’t seem to be acting any better than the kids, and the power and abuse in it are disturbing. I was reminded of people’s #MeToo moments. It offers up various characters who seem to remember things and confront their memories about those times differently.

It’s an ambitious novel with a lot to think about and the author writes well, but I didn’t find it exactly enjoyable — because of the flawed characters and place for one thing — nor was it an easy read. There’s not much dialogue or paragraph breaks in it and the narrative changes threw me a bit. You have to work for this one! Still Susan Choi is a talented writer with plenty of insight and turns of phrases about high school life and these characters that gave me enough to make it worth it. I’m sure her novels in the future will continue to challenge readers like this and push the envelope so to speak.

*Thanks to Grazia at Henry Holt Books for sending me a copy of “Trust Exercise” to review. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read either of these books and if so, what did you think? Lastly, I just want to pass along my utmost sympathies to the people of France and everyone for the awful fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral. I just couldn’t believe it, so horrible to hear. We had passed the Cathedral last summer on our trip. Feels emotional to see such flames on such an iconic, historic and beloved place.

Wow what a difference a couple weeks make. Our temps seem to have soared from single digits to 60 degrees this month, and now we have ponds of snowmelt all over the place. Spring appears to have sprung for the moment, and Frosty the snow pile is headed out. Or is it? I’m sure winter will try to make a come back a few more times here, but it won’t last long now. We are in the homestretch. Say goodbye winter.

The start of spring can feel truly amazing … and yet there’s news of epic flooding in other parts of the world that look truly devastating — in the Midwest for one, and especially in Mozambique and Zimbabwe right now due to a cyclone. So my thoughts are scattered at the moment on everything from the basketball of March Madness to sheer catastrophe.

Which reminds me:  If you’re feeling stressed about something these days: work, bills, house, politics, the state of the world, then perhaps familiarize yourself with the Dammit Doll. Have you seen these? My sister gave me one years ago when I was following a losing football team. The Dolls are made to be whacked about against a sofa or wall so you can feel better and let your stress or anger go. The instructions say as you whack the stuffing out, it helps to yell: “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” I think the company that makes them is out of California, where someone apparently has a good sense of humor. I got a new one this past Christmas, pictured at left, of our current occupant in the White House. Let’s just say, it’s helped me out quite a bit these past months relieving stress … that is, when my dog isn’t trying to pull it apart. And now, I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.     

I feel like I’m on the bandwagon with this one, liking Michelle Obama’s memoir “Becoming” very much. It came out in November and I’ve inundated myself with it the past couple of weeks, first listening to the audiobook of it read by the author, then reading the hardback copy, so I could note some of its passages. I know it quite well now. I liked both formats but would especially recommend the audio version as Michelle’s reading of it is pretty illuminating. Her varying inflections and slow thoughtful reading of it make her story come to life and give more resonance to what she wrote.

It’s not an overtly political book — nor merely PR fluff — about the Red and Blue states and whose policies are the best and what she accomplished under the administration, though there’s some of that at the end, instead it focuses more on her life story, her family, and how she was shaped by her upbringing and those close to her. There’s also some juicy parts about the presidential campaigns and her time in the White House that come to light. So what more do you want — the book is a behind-the-scenes look at history told in interesting detail from an accomplished African American woman, reflecting back on her experience. As she writes: “I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey.” 

Indeed it was. From a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago (whose parents did not go to college) to attending Princeton and Harvard Law School, she was an overachiever, a box checker she says, who met her future husband while being a mentor to him as a summer associate at a Chicago law firm. Oh yeah. Barack comes off like a nerdy prodigy, not a happy hour kind of guy, but one from a far-off family with a different, mixed background. Her family, on the other hand, was Michelle’s home base, forever on the South Side’s Euclid Avenue, where she lived even during her working life after law school.  

Michelle and Barack were like yin to each other’s yang, so she writes. She liked order and routine, he gravitated toward mess and chaos. He felt a calling for politics, she felt the opposite. He was from Hawaii, she had never been West. Their lives were busy and loaded with work and projects. At one point, she says they sought marriage counseling. At another point she talks about them wanting children, but they had to go through IVF for the pregnancies of both daughters. You get a sense that their lives were quite a handful even before he became a state senator and eventually a U.S. senator, traveling to D.C. while Michelle stayed behind in Chicago. She was not a big fan of the political circus life, or of his life taking over her career. Yet ultimately she did not want to stand in his way. 

She writes about trying to balance being a wife and a mother, and working full time. And later, about getting onboard Barack’s run for the presidency and campaigning for him in Iowa and elsewhere. She elaborates on the perception she got of being an “angry black female” and a “radical” on the campaign, which is illuminating. She comes off being more of a pragmatist and a family person than any kind of radical. Both Michelle and Barack were also touched by tragedies: Michelle’s father, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, died when she was in her first job after law school, and her close college roommate, age 26, died around the same time. While Barack’s parents were both dead by the time he became a state senator. So they shared similar losses and adversities, yet were endeared to each other, their remaining families, and high-powered jobs.  

You’ll just have to read it, if you haven’t already: as Michelle’s view of Election Night in 2008 and her family’s subsequent years in the White House are definitely worth the price of admission. You’ll want to find out what living in the White House was like, with their daughters, and how things played out there. Michelle also talks about her health initiatives for kids, her work with Jill Biden to help military families, and the vegetable garden she started on the White House lawn. There’s not many swipes at political opponents, like the Bushes, or John McCain, though there are a few pointed ones at Trump: “I will always wonder,” she writes, “about what led so many women, in particular, to reject an exceptionally qualified candidate and instead choose a misogynist as their president.” Me too, Michelle, me too.

I guess in general the book made me like the Obamas a bit more. I had already been fans of them but now I felt I understood them and their humble backgrounds a bit better. Michelle’s grace, dignity, and intelligence shine through in this memoir, which seems a pretty candid look back. She’s not out to settle scores, but more in it to highlight her journey. Here’s one passage I found particularly on point:  

“The president-elect, I learned, is given access to $100,000 in federal funds to help with moving and redecorating, but Barack insisted that we pay for everything ourselves, using what we’d saved from his book royalties. As long as I’ve known him, he’s been this way: extra-vigilant when it comes to matters of money and ethics, holding himself to a higher standard than even what’s dictated by law. There’s an age-old maxim in the black community: You’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far. As the first African American family in the White House, we were being viewed as representatives of our race. Any error or lapse in judgment, we knew, would be magnified, read as something more than what it was.”  

— Michelle Obama in “Becoming,”  Page 295

Next up, I finished Maine author Susan Conley’s slim novel “Elsey Come Home” that came out in January. It’s a bit of a different, meditative kind of novel, told in the first person, about a woman who’s struggling in her life, to find a balance between being a wife, a parent to two young daughters, and a successful painter. She and her family are expats living in Beijing, China, when her Danish husband suggests she go on a one week group yoga retreat to the mountains to stop her alcoholic drinking. 

Elsey’s afraid she will lose her marriage and family, so she grudgingly goes on the retreat, where she meets a number of other people with similar problems. There she appears to be on the verge of a breakdown and is grasping to work through issues from her past (her sister’s death in childhood) and her present (her drinking and the balancing of being a parent with being an artist). You have to keep reading to see whether Elsey can reclaim her life and keep her family in tact. As it went on, the more I became involved in her plight to hold on and turn her downward spiral around. 

I guess I can best describe it as a meditative, expat novel that talks about far away places and the heart strings of family connections. It’s a sparsely told story that sort of sneaked up on me. Elsey’s two kids (and even her husband), who she so adores and await her return from the retreat, are so well done in the book, that you find yourself rooting hard, despite her seemingly unyielding slide, for a positive ending. I’m not sure I always thought Elsey was that likable or relatable, but I did sympathize with her to some extent. In the end, I found it an oddly moving tale about love of family and place.  

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