The Cue Card

Greetings. I hope your spring is going well. Brrr, it’s still cold and windy here. April is considered a shoulder season month, so we await May when the real spring and blooms come.

Meanwhile I see all the pretty azaleas are out at Augusta National for the Masters golf tournament. They remind me of the azaleas I had when I lived in Virginia — pretty in pink. And good luck to Canadian golfer Corey Conners in today’s final round. He had a hole-in-one yesterday at Augusta’s sixth hole. Wow, love that kind of luck.

Meanwhile we finished watching the Ken Burns/ Lynn Novick three-part documentary about “Hemingway” on PBS. Did you see it? It was quite good though the big game hunting they showed Hemingway doing in Africa as well as the bull fighting from Spain were ghastly. The final episode too was quite grim, as he struggled with mental illness. I guess I didn’t remember that Hemingway and wife #4 had miraculously survived two successive plane crashes in Africa in 1954, yikes. He sure endured a lot of head concussions during his life, which they note in the series.

And it appears wife #3, Martha Gellhorn, didn’t cave to him but continued to pursue her own career … which I remembered from Paula McLain’s novel about Gellhorn “Love and Ruin.” All in all, the documentary has some excellent photos and film footage of Hemingway’s life as well as some interesting perspectives about his writing from such authors as Edna O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, Mary Karr, and Abraham Verghese among others. I recommend it if you get a chance. Now we’re on to watching PBS’s drama series “Atlantic Crossing” about the Norwegian Crown Princess Martha and Roosevelt during WWII. So far, so good.  

I have been reading and reviewing but mostly for Publishers Weekly, and recently I switched my category from memoirs to fiction there, yay. I’m told they don’t want me to link to the reviews I did as they are meant to be anonymously reviewed and they can’t be reviewed here either … so I guess I’m out of luck in mentioning the titles, bahhh. But below are reviews (not for them) of two audiobooks I listened to lately. 

The Push by Ashley Audrain / Pamela Dorman Books / 320 pages / 2021

Synopsis: What starts as some kind of dream marriage between Blythe and Fox Connor soon begins to show its holes once they have a baby girl named Violet, and Blythe, who narrates the story, doesn’t take to her as much as she thought she would. Is she having postpartum depression or is something wrong with the child’s behavior? Or is it a bit of both? The husband thinks his wife is making a mountain out of a molehill about the child and doesn’t think anything is wrong, but he seems to feel Blythe is not being the capable mother that he thought she’d be. Uh-oh. 

Then all becomes heightened when Blythe has a second baby Sam whom she loves to the max for a couple years (and who saves their marriage), but later something happens in a freak accident. Was someone at fault and if so who? Their worlds are soon turned upside down and their bonds come unglued. On the story goes … to her husband’s new family … as Blythe recedes into an insular, lonely person. Was she the one? You’ll have to check it out to see. 

My Thoughts: This debut story was fricked up, ha … just the kind that’s creepy, disturbing, manipulative, and provocative. It’s labeled a psychological drama, thriller type and that’s about the level you should prepare for yourself going in. 

As such, I liked how the author keeps you guessing about whether it’s the child, or the mother who’s got something wrong. Though I wasn’t really pulled in to the second interweaved storyline about Blythe’s mother and grandmother … and how they had it rough and weren’t good mothers themselves. So their mothering skills are sort of perceived to be like it’s handed down, which I guess adds more doubt about Blythe into the equation. 

Actress Marin Ireland does a great job once again in reading for the audiobook. I’ve listened to three by her so far. She’s one of my favorites. The novel explores facets of motherhood that seem taboo to even think about …. about a mother inherently having negative feelings for her own child, or a child being born a bad seed. If you’re not turned off by things that provoke that border, then check it out, otherwise stay clear.

Summerwater by Sarah Moss / Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 208 pages / 2021

Synopsis: It takes place over a single summer day in the Scottish Highlands at a woodsy cabin park along a loch, where there’s various tourists and families staying. The chapters follow a handful of different characters (with their inner monologues) as they go about their day, complaining about the torrential rain and each other, especially the “Romanian” partyers and their loud music at night, which is keeping them awake.

There’s a jogging mom meditating on various things while she runs, and her retired husband who thinks about the park’s better days, and a woman’s thoughts during sex with her boyfriend, and a teenage girl sneaking out at night. My favorite chapter was the teenage boy who goes kayaking across the loch in a storm and things get dicey. The writing in that one is particularly transporting and has a lot of atmosphere. 

My Thoughts: If you are looking for a lot of story or plot or action, then this novel will likely not be for you. (I was looking for a bit more story.) But if you like slice of life kind of situational /multi-character based vignettes then check it out. The author writes really well about the inner dialogues people have with themselves … and also is excellent at atmosphere and description. There were times I had to laugh at what these people were thinking and other times I had to cringe at their insensitivity. By the end I felt like I was there in Scotland among these vacationers as they struggled to cope with the rain and the tedium and each other. There’s also brief interludes between chapters of nature and the park that adds a touch of place and buffer. 

The ending takes an interesting and a bit of a dramatic turn amid these strangers. While I didn’t get to know any of these characters well, I got a sense of their troubles, self-absorption, and what was on their mind. The novel’s exploration of isolation and community, kinship and cruelty was thought-provoking. This was my first time sampling a book by British author Sarah Moss, who’s written six other novels besides this one. At one point I almost DNF’d it because I was looking for more story instead of interlocking pieces. But I’m glad I didn’t — Moss is a perceptive, gifted writer and I’ll  stay tuned for whatever she writes next.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read either of these books or authors?  And if so, what did you think?  And how is your spring going? 

Hi. I hope you all are great and that the spring weather is boosting your spirits. I finished my 14 day quarantine on Friday and feel terrific to be able to walk our dog and be outside again. Most of the snow in our yard is gone and I feel eager to do a yard cleanup. I didn’t have a new photo to share so I’m putting up this oldie photo taken with my husband-to-be around 2004 during my first trip to Canada. On this trip, we hiked up towards the glacier above Lake Louise. You might be able to see the Chateau beyond the lake in the far distance. It’s a gorgeous place … along with the whole range of the Canadian Rockies, if you ever get a chance to go. Luckily we live about two and a half hours away and go several times a year, mainly to bicycle on the backroads near there. It’s beautiful. 

This past week we watched a couple movies: “The White Tiger” (on Netflix), which is based on the 2008 debut novel that won the Man Booker Prize by author Aravind Adiga. The movie started out being this seemingly nice rags to riches story set in India about this young man who rises out of poverty to become a driver for a wealthy family, but then towards the end it turns quite dark and it was like: Oh no. Still some of the shots of India and characters made it worthwhile.

Then we watched “My Salinger Year” based on the memoir by Joanna Rakoff, which I reviewed as an audiobook in 2015. It was all right — nothing too great but at least it was pleasant enough when I was looking for something light. It’s set in New York about a college grad girl who gets a job working for the literary agency of the renowned, reclusive writer J.D. Salinger. Sigourney Weaver stars as her grumpy boss, so that was Okay.

Meanwhile we are midway into the first season of the TV series “Your Honor” with Bryan Cranston as a father and judge who’s doing all he can to get his son off the hook after he’s involved in a hit-and-run accident with a mobster’s son. Uh-oh he’s “Breaking Bad” again. The series is quite squirm-worthy. Have you seen any of these movies or shows?

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of the books I finished lately. Both of these novels (below) are scathing portrayals of elements affecting their societies. I felt the first novel was more effective to me about how it went about this. The second novel I had a bit of trouble sticking with it. I almost DNF’d it, but here’s a confession: I rarely ever stop a novel once I’m a good portion into it. I just soldier on. And sometimes it gets better and other times it does not. I think I’m in the minority about doing this. Do you DNF books midway in?

A Burning by Megha Majumdar / Knopf / 304 pages / 2020

I’m really glad I got to this one, I almost missed it. I didn’t know what to expect going in but really enjoyed the audiobook of it. It’s a story set in India that revolves around three main characters after a terrorist attack on a train that kills 100+ people. There’s Jivan from the nearby slums where the attack happened who writes a rash comment on Facebook about the government and becomes implicated in the attack. Then there’s Lovely, a transgender girl, who took English classes from Jivan and wants to become an actress and star. And lastly there’s PT Sir, a former gym teacher of Jivan’s who becomes interested in a right-wing political party that’s on the rise.

Other secondary characters play parts as well … to this plot that snowballs against Jivan, who tries in vain to proclaim her innocence. PT Sir and Lovely both know Jivan, but their ambitions and rising trajectories complicate them from helping her against the charges. The insight into all three characters is well done and I had to even laugh at times at their characterizations and intentions despite how serious what’s happening is. The parts with Lovely and her acting ambitions are amusing (she was my favorite), and those with PT Sir are too — about his ego-driven thoughts and vanity. And Jivan is likable too, she spent years trying to care for her ailing father and help her mother, and is working her way up at Pantaloons, a mall retail store. 

It’s a tragic story that is short (almost too short – I wanted more), affecting, and moves quickly. You might wonder how this could happen, and try to poke holes at its evidence or probabilities (it’s not caught up in real-life crime forensics and might be a bit too simplistic?), but the point is more a damning spoof of the justice system and political parties and the corruption that runs through India’s society. It gets to the heart of the tragedy in an affecting way and without being dense. I will read whatever this author puts out next.

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue / Random House / 384 pages / 2021

I loved this author’s first novel “Behold the Dreamers,” so I really wanted to like this one as well. It started off promising about this African village (Kosawa) that is fighting against an oil company (Pexton) that is polluting and poisoning their land and the country’s colluding corrupt dictator (His Excellency). Both the oil company and the dictator are ruining their village (and other villages), and the poison and chemicals dumping into their river is killing their people and children.

After the opening action that includes a kidnapping of the village headman and two oilmen, the story settles into a many decades standoff in which the villagers try desperately to get Pexton to stop and leave their country to no avail. It’s told from various villagers points of view … notably is Thula, their opposition leader who goes to America for her advanced education and returns a decade+ later to continue the village’s fight against Pexton, first peaceably and then by arms as a revolutionary. 

While I admired the story’s theme against environmental degradation by a foreign company and the country’s dictatorship, the narrative — to me — seemed laid out in such a way that becomes repetitious and tedious. It spins its wheels over and over again about the ills happening and what Pexton has done, but it only seems to move the story forward in such small increments that you go a bit stir crazy. Around and around it goes on and on and on. It’s true it has some beautiful writing to it, but there’s not much active action, rather just remembrances of how it’s been and continues to be and whether anything will be done.

I felt for the villagers, but it became muted because of the story’s seemingly long, redundant telling. And I was never fully taken with the characters, though I was hoping to latch onto Thula. In the end I wanted to feel a bit more for the story that is surely scathing, heartbreaking, and truth-telling to what has happened to parts of Africa and is still happening. Despite these qualms, I will continue to follow this author who grew up in Cameroon and came to the U.S. to study and live — as her first book was a winner for me and her writing can be enticing. 

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

Greetings. I made it back to Canada in one piece. I had to go to a quarantine hotel near the airport for one night and then once they emailed me my negative Covid test results the next afternoon they said I could go home to quarantine, which I’m doing. It’s a total of 14 days without leaving the property. I’ve done this before — last summer — so I know how it goes. Canada is stricter on Covid rules than the U.S. and has less of a vaccine supply. But my quarantine will be over by next Friday so I’m halfway through it. Our dog Stella is demonstrating how I feel about this now, ha. I know several of you have already had your vaccine shots, which is fantastic. It seems we might soon see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

It was about a year ago now — on March 11 — that the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic. We had come back to Canada from a road trip meeting up with my sister and brother-in-law to ski in Sun Valley, Idaho, at the end of February 2020, and by March 17, I had played my last tennis doubles game as they shut everything down, including the U.S.-Canadian border to non-essential travel.

It all happened quickly. The world turned virtual at workplaces, schools, and gyms, and we experienced masks, home deliveries, and curbside pickups. It’s all too ingrained in our brains by now. Do you remember where you were when it first started? Somberly we reflect that to this date, Canada has had 22,397 Covid deaths, the U.S. has had 530,000, and the world 2.63 million. It’s mind-boggling and sad and hard to register. In the years to come we will need to draw on all the lessons from this, so we can better fight the next pandemic in the future. And now I will leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.  

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi / MIRA Books / 368 pages / 2020

I listened to this novel as an audiobook (the paperback is coming out April 6, 2021) and I was drawn in from the start. As a debut novel, it surprised me in its vibrant and sweeping storytelling of 1950s Jaipur India … and the character of Lakshmi, who is a 30-year-old henna artist to wealthy women in her community, along with her trusty assistant, a young winsome boy named Malik. (Admittedly I had to look up henna, which is a dye from the henna tree that can be put on the skin of people temporarily like a tattoo design to various body parts.) Lakshmi also uses herbal remedies on her clients in order to avoid pregnancies and the like … and you soon come to understand that more than a decade ago Lakshmi ran away from her hometown and her abusive arranged marriage, leaving her household in scandal, to re-establish herself in another town, working very hard to gradually gain some success. 

Things begin to change when Lakshmi’s estranged husband and her 13-year-old sister, the struggling Radha, who she never knew she had, arrive at her door. The two sisters are quite different — one hard working and careful and the other ill-mannered and rash — and both are flawed but also resilient. Lakshmi helps her sister with a place to live and to get a good education, but after awhile through a predicament they come to seemingly lose much of what Lakshmi had gained, and must once again untangle themselves from scandal and society’s mores. 

This novel takes a look at women and marriage in 1950s India from various angles and castes in India’s culture … and also among whites. Some characters are in arranged marriages, others are having affairs, some have kids, some don’t … some poor, some wealthy. I got caught up in Lakshmi’s world and I was rooting for her. I liked her more than Radha, who seemed a bit like a little uncooperative vixen, despite not exactly meaning to be. 

The storytelling is well done and I’m looking forward to the sequel coming out June 22 by Alka Joshi called “The Secret Keeper of Jaipur.” The author had written “The Henna Artist” over 10 years as a tribute to her mother, who she imagines in the book what her life would have been like if she had not been put into an arranged marriage and if could’ve lived the life she really wanted to live. Her hopes and dreams are manifested in Lakshmi, which is cool to think about. Check it out if you like cultural women’s sagas. Reese Witherspoon picked this one for her book club pick in May 2020, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Apparently a TV series of the novel is in development with actress Freida Pinto set to star as Lakshmi.

To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey / Little, Brown /432 pgs / 2016 

I liked this author’s first novel “The Snow Child” so much that I thought I’d check out her second novel, which is quite different but also takes place partly in Alaska. It’s mainly about an Army Officer (Colonel Allen Forrester) who takes an expedition in 1885 into Alaska Territory to chart the Wolverine River and his correspondence with his wife Sophie who stays behind at their base at the Vancouver Barracks in Washington Territory. There is also a secondary correspondence 100 years later between a great relative of the Colonel’s and a museum curator who’s documenting the expedition’s artifacts and is planning an exhibit. 

The story is told through letters, journal entries, articles, and documents, which helps to liven it up, though the stories of the Colonel’s and Sophie’s were good enough to keep me going. The Colonel’s expedition has some interesting characters, notably: a burly, lively guy named Tillman, an industrious Native American woman who’s awesome, a studious naturalist (Pruitt), the interpreter Samuelson, and a starving guy they meet up with named Boyd. I liked the Colonel’s entries best of their arduous journey and what they come to find and how they struggle against the elements and with starvation, though others in my book club liked Sophie’s entries better of her struggles as a pregnant wife and her independent nature and later her pursuit of early nature photography in 1885. 

Theirs — Sophie & the Colonel’s — is a love affair so the novel is part love story, part adventure novel and historical fiction (very loosely based on Henry T. Allen’s real life Alaskan expedition in 1885). It’s a long novel and just a few bits got a bit tedious, but what I liked is how the animal and human worlds begin to blur along the way … and how the author captures that by adding little surreal parts to the Colonel’s story, notably: a baby found amid tree roots, a lake creature, and spirits up on the mountain pass. There’s also an Old Native man who’s raven-like and a bit of a trickster who follows their journey. So there’s a bit of mysticism and magic to the story that keeps some spark and uncertainty to it. 

The novel’s also vivid and conjures up much nature and untamed wilderness that captures one’s imagination. So overall, there’s a lot to it (is it too much?) — I’m not sure I needed the second correspondence that takes place 100 years later, but others in my book club said they really liked that part. It does lend some historical perspective to the expedition and what it did to the indigenous population and what came afterwards. So that seems valid. I just mostly wanted to get back to the Colonel’s and Sophie’s stories. I needed one scene of them at the end, which doesn’t really come (a slight letdown), but it casts their future well enough. 

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

Hi. How is everyone’s February going? Has your part of the world been freezing? I hope you didn’t lose power too long if you are in Texas — I’m thinking particularly of bloggers Deb and Dorothy. It sounded very rough there … as I’ve been in touch with an old college classmate who lives in Katy, Texas, who’s given me the scoop on the disaster. Meanwhile, I feel quite fortunate here in mild, beautiful Southern California, where I’ve been visiting and helping out with my parents. We’re planning to move them soon to a new place so it’s been hectic. I’ve been M.I.A. off the blog for awhile but sometimes life requires that. It’s just a bit much right now with everything, but I hope to be back soon to all things books and visiting others’ blogs, so please excuse my temporary absence.  

I actually have been reading quite a bit (in the middle of the night, ha), primarily for my side gig with Publishers Weekly. Lately I’m just helping out with PW’s BookLife Prize, which is an annual contest to support independent, self-published authors. My reading category has been memoirs, and there have been some good ones, which has sort of surprised me, a lot is out there from people with a variety of life experiences.

You should think about it, if you’ve written a book and it’s just sitting around on the back burner. Go ahead, dust it off, and turn it in to PW’s BookLife. You might just win some cash for your efforts. And now, in addition to the colorful flowers at left, which I saw on a bike ride, I’ll leave you with a review of what — besides the PW stuff — I’ve finished lately. 

Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son
by Homeira Qaderi / HarperCollins / 224 pages / 2020 

Synopsis: This is the life story / memoir of an Afghan woman who grew up with her family during Afghanistan’s war-torn years of the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, the civil war that followed, and the subsequent rise of the Taliban who captured the city of Herat where her family lived. It follows the tough choices she had to make to survive and find a life out of oppression. 

My Thoughts:  I listened to this memoir as an audiobook on my afternoon walks while I’ve been in California. What was I thinking to start such a grim book? I think it just came in on my library account and I started it one day not knowing much. Whoa … as if I didn’t have enough to think about recently.

The author Homeira tells of the wars she and her family endured, which were terrible and scary enough but then with the rise of the Taliban — whose leaders banned girls’ education, and music, TV, and such — things turned from bad to worse. Somehow Homeira perseveres by secretly teaching girls and boys reading and writing lessons within a mosque tent and she even teaches a couple rogue Taliban who very secretly want to learn too.

Then at age 17 she is forced into an arranged marriage to a local man and is taken to Tehran, Iran, where she’s amazed by seeing women living with more freedom there. She goes on to study at the university, earning degrees (eventually a PhD in Persian Literature), teaching, and having a son, but all that changes when they return to Kabul 15 years later, and her husband shocks her by reverting back to oppressive ways, and announcing he plans to take a second wife. What happens next is a very difficult decision that changes her life forever. 

Oh cripes. Poor Homeira. Luckily she is one courageous Afghan woman who perseveres and today is an author of six books in Afghanistan and Iran and a human rights activist. She seems very impressive — a learned writer and lover of literature and teaching — in 2015 she left Kabul to attend the international writing program at the University of Iowa (!). So despite the book being quite bleak, I think sometimes we have to see and know how women are faring under oppressive regimes. It’s hard to face, but her actions are also inspiring and we can learn from them and better support movements for women elsewhere to gain more rights and freedoms. 

What Homeira describes life being like under the Taliban in her story will disgust and infuriate anyone with an ounce of feeling in their body. I’m now quite worried about the recent news that the U.S. and NATO have plans to pull troops from Afghanistan entirely, and I fear the Taliban will return to recapture areas and inflict once again a perverted version of sharia law on the women there. For the sake of Afghan women, I really hope this does not happen. We need to stay tuned to what’s going on and what the Afghan people, such as Homeira, are saying.

Her vivid, moving true story — that recounts her secret homeschooling of other kids — slightly reminded me of Azar Nazir’s terrific 2003 memoir “Reading Lolita in Tehran” even though it’s about a different country. Though I thought Nazir’s book was a bit more developed and better. It also raises similar themes to the 2007 novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini, which was also similarly bleak. All three are strong cups of coffee to take but are also necessary, compelling reads. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these and what did you think?  And how is your February going?

Well last week’s U.S. Inauguration went thankfully well with no disruptions, and the singers (Lady Gaga, J.Lo, and Garth Brooks) and the youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman were quite the talk. Gorman, the youngest Inaugural poet at age 22, seemed to belt it out of the park with the reading of her inspired poem “The Hill We Climb.” For those interested, Gorman’s first poetry collection comes out Sept. 21 and to find out more about her you can check out her fun interview with CNN here.

I’m still thinking about it, but I’m also gearing up for my flight Feb. 1 to California to go stay and help my folks. There’s quite a few restrictions now on international travel, but I’m willing to meet all the requirements as I see this as essential travel. I feel good that people on the flight will all have to show a recent negative CV test result in order to board. So there’s much to do to get ready. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with reviews of two books I finished lately. 

At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman/Algonquin/304 pages /2021  

Synopsis: Seligman’s debut novel follows the life of 20-year-old Maddy Donaldo who is homeless, living with her dog Root and a few others in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. One night after she unwittingly comes across a dying homeless boy amid the bushes and his attacker, her world is turned upside down. The police and the dead boy’s parents want to talk with her … and ultimately Maddy must decide about her life on the streets and whether to make a change or chance having a similar fate. 

My Thoughts: This first-person narrated story mixes being a bit of a murder mystery with a sociological look into Maddy’s life among the homeless in San Francisco. Her close-knit group, which meanders from their make-shift camp at Golden Gate Park to the downtown streets and shelters, includes her dog Root, a pit bull mix, and her friends: Hope, Fleet, who has a pet rat named Tiny, and her boy interest Ash. Like the others, Maddy has had a tough childhood with mostly absent parents and has been at Golden Gate Park a couple years when her dog and her come upon the dying teenager and his attacker amid the bushes … and she goes running. Uh-oh.

There’s decent suspense about whether the creepy attacker will come after her, especially once she testifies at a preliminary hearing against him. A bit surprisingly, the dead boy’s parents who attend the hearing befriend Maddy — thinking perhaps she’s the last link to their homeless son even though Maddy did not know him. They want to help her, or get her to reunite with her family, though she doesn’t want their help and would rather spend time with Ash and the others. Still Maddy takes it upon herself to investigate their son’s time in the park and his death and in the process comes to do some soul-searching of her own. You will want to read till the end to see what happens. 

I liked how the author blended the issues of homelessness into the story, so you become aware of them in the context. The story made apparent the backgrounds of the homeless such as Maddy; how their lives are often unpredictable and count on parks and shelters; and how they are often beaten up and harassed while on city streets by police and others. You also get a sense of the complexities of homelessness — how there are no easy fixes and how the homeless at times reject help or are unable to change. Maddy is a flawed protagonist who in that way is exasperating at times but also likably comes to try to find her way.  

“At the Edge of the Haight” is not a perfect novel — it’s a bit simple in its telling and uneven — with tangents that pull from the main plot — and maybe too the dead boy’s parents seem to act to an extant a bit unlikely — but despite this I felt pretty immersed in Maddy’s story and felt the novel explored some thought-provoking and moving angles of being homeless on the streets. The author, a journalist, acknowledges in an end note the homeless people she met for the research of the book, which undoubtably lends to its authentic feel and immersive quality. It made Maddy’s story feel close-up and personal and I was rooting for her from the early pages on.

Thanks to the publisher Algonquin Books for providing me with a copy of this new novel (out Jan. 19) to review.

The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest
by Ed Caesar / Avid Reader / 288 pages / 2020

Synopsis:  The true tale of one man’s attempt to be the first to climb Mount Everest in 1934. 

My Thoughts: I hadn’t heard of the British mountaineer Morris Wilson before this book came out, but I love these kind of true adventure tales and this one was a whopper. 

Wilson was one of those World War I veterans who fought bravely under dire circumstances during the war, eventually becoming injured by machine gun fire and sent home, forever changed by his service. He couldn’t adjust to post-war England so he traveled for several years, notably to New Zealand where he lived married for awhile and then returned home to England after shedding two wives. There he fell in love with a friend’s wife — Enid (his soul mate) — and took up a period of fasting to recuperate from an illness said to be both physical and mental. 

It was while recuperating in 1932 that Wilson read about the failed attempts on Everest and decided to climb it alone. His plan was to fly a small airplane to Tibet, crash-land it on the upper slopes of Everest and walk to the summit.  It was a crazy idea … especially since he was not a climber and at the time he did not yet know how to fly. Yet by April 1933 he was off in a small Gypsy Moth airplane setting his sights on Everest. His journey would be full of twists and surprises and he eventually would have to leave his plane and trek on foot (in a costume so as not to get caught) with three Sherpas from India to Everest in Tibet. His attempts on the mountain would be epic, though the first time he didn’t even know to use ice crampons for the climb.

Author Ed Caesar brings the tale and the era of Morris Wilson vividly to life despite there not being much earlier information about Wilson to go on. Some of the book recounts Caesar’s fruitless efforts to find relatives and primary sources about Wilson, which took years. But what he eventually is able to piece together through Wilson’s letters (many to his love Enid), diary entries, and the historical context is an engaging look at this man who was quite a vivacious character, lost in some ways, and very determined by his Everest obsession. 

Wilson reminds me a bit of the British sailor Donald Crowhurst, who in attempting to sail alone around the world in 1968, didn’t have the skill or the experience but wanted the notoriety of the adventure and was determined to undertake the dangerous journey regardless of the warning signs. Caesar’s book points to Wilson’s trauma during WWI and how he felt the need to redeem his life and make sense of it. Whatever the case, he was quite a brave (albeit misguided) adventurer with his daring flight to India and his long trek and attempts on Everest during the early climbing era of 1934. It’s an amazing and hard to fathom true story as told in the book. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these — or what do you think about them? And what are you reading? 

Hello. It’s been almost 50 degrees here (so far north), which we are sad about since it will kill our snow for skiing. We need a storm, but there’s nothing in the foreseeable forecast. It won’t be a good day when the polar ice caps melt. Just another thing to add to our long list of worries.

Speaking of which, we have 4 days left to the U.S. Inauguration. Let’s hope for a peaceful and kind transition. Is that too much to ask? I remember being at the Concert on the National Mall for President Barack Obama’s first Inauguration in 2009. Oh yeah, I was there. Ha. Me, Springsteen, U2, Mellencamp, Usher and Stevie Wonder among others. I almost froze my feet off standing out there for four+ hours, but it was a very memorable day … and the concert was a rocking.  

With all the insurrection news the past couple weeks, and the worry about my parents and their health in California, my mind has been distracted beyond belief. But I think things are starting to feel a bit more hopeful and to calm some (though alarmingly the pandemic continues to take thousands of lives per day). Knock on wood for what’s ahead.

How has your reading year started off? Mine has been surprisingly not too bad: I’ve read a few books for my freelance (PW) gig, and finished a long audiobook. So I’m aiming for completing 70 books this year. We will see. I’m not too caught up in the numbers — I’m just hoping for good quality reads and a decent mix of light and heavier books, from an array of authors with diverse backgrounds and locations. What about you … any big reading plans? And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. (p.s. The second book below was finished at the end of 2020.)

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora / Random House / 416 pages / 2020

Synopsis: The novel follows the lives of three women amid their isolated  Southern plantation community that spans slavery times (1850s) and also just after the Civil War in the Reconstruction era. The slave May Belle is a respected healing (conjure) woman who passes her gifts along to her daughter Rue, who becomes a midwife and healer during post-slavery times, though she often uses her healing powers to foment secrets and lies to her advantage. There’s also Varina, the white plantation owner’s daughter who is Rue’s friend from childhood but who is pressured to toe the line to the ways of her white slave-owning family. 

The story, which alternates chapters between slavery time and freedom time, is set in motion by the birth of a strange, mysterious baby; the arrival of a charismatic preacher; and a strange sickness that begins killing the children in the area. With the deaths, the trust in Rue’s healing and midwifery begins to ebb and the community begins to suspect she’s into witchcraft, so she’s left to figure out how to win back their trust. 

My Thoughts: Wow, there’s a lot in this historical novel, and it’s quite a long saga, which I listened to as an audiobook for weeks during my morning dog walks. There were times I wasn’t sure it would end, but I kept going with it. I’m so glad I didn’t stop. I felt it was quite a storytelling feat … following these characters through the end of slavery into the Reconstruction-era to see what would become of them. The timeframe plays an important part as blacks (freed for the first time) and whites (who lose the War) must figure out new ways to live and relate to one another due to the changes. 

It’s a story that delves into the fraught relationships of the mother May Belle, and daughter Rue, and with the white mistress Varina … as they navigate events that test the community. Rue, the main protagonist, is a bit of a conundrum (both good and bad), which adds a bit to the complexity of the story.

My favorite part of the novel was the storytelling and the language the author uses that made the 1850s, ’60s, and Reconstruction era come to life. The author obviously did a lot of research from diaries of the time period to get the whole flavor for the people then, their healing techniques, and how they spoke. I felt like I was right there on the plantation with them. Kudos to the author for this inspired debut novel. Some have compared it to Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel “Washington Black,” which I loved, but it being different … that novel didn’t come to mind for me, despite this being also quite notable. 

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook / Harper / 416 pages / 2020

Synopsis:  In a dystopian future wracked by climate change, a woman (Bea) and her husband (Glen) decide to leave the unlivable, polluted City with their young, ill daughter (Agnes) to join a survival study in the Wilderness State. The governing authority is allowing 20 volunteers to live in the last swath of protected land amid nature, where they must learn to adapt as nomadic hunter-gatherers without help from the outside world. The novel plays out as a portrayal of motherhood (with Bea and Agnes) and humankind, and is a lament of our treatment of nature. It was shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize. 

My Thoughts:  This debut novel came out the same month (August 2020) as Charlotte McConaghy’s novel “Migrations,” which is also a bit about nature and humankind’s ruin of it — and I thought I would like it as much (I wanted to), but to me the execution of “The New Wilderness” wasn’t as good a story and I wasn’t drawn into it nearly as much as “Migrations.” I guess I was genuinely a bit surprised that “The New Wilderness” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. 

Still parts of it are compelling and visual — the mechanics of the group (called the Community) — and its fight for survival in the Wilderness State and not knowing if its members would make it while hunting and living off the land, and what would happen to them and with their dealings with the Newcomers arriving and the Rangers who control the area. 

The story reveals the complexities in the relationships between Bea, Glen and Agnes, and with the rest of the group, whose wannabe head honcho Carl seems like a testosterone narcissist. Some of the writing of the action and the natural world is good, though some of the plot to me seemed to sort of drift along at times — like it didn’t know where it was going or have a plan to what it actually wanted to do. I was hoping the plot was going to go in a different direction than it eventually did. 

And while I liked the toughness of the mother Bea’s character, who is sort of the de facto leader of the group, some of her actions and the ending don’t do much with or for her. Agnes is one to watch for. I listened to the book on audio, which was a pretty easy but long listen. If I had the print copy …. the longness of it as well as its drifting and conclusion might have made me want to throw it against a wall, ha. It does seem like it’s set up to have a sequel. 

The group dynamics of the story made it seem to me sort of like: “Lord of the Flies” meets “Hunger Games” or something like that … but I wouldn’t elevate it to Margaret Atwood’s “MaddAddam’s” trilogy or such.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books, or how is your reading year starting? Stay well. 

Well I’m finally getting my 2020 year-end stats and list out. It was an unprecedented year with the pandemic and millions of lives lost around the globe and with a White House that worked to overturn a democratic election. It’s been disturbing, shocking, and upsetting to say the least. And now today I’m watching an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with a mob in the Rotunda and the Chambers. This is outrageous. It’s come to this.

Which leads me to wonder how I was able to concentrate enough this year to surpass my reading goal of 60 books, but it’s probably because of all the lockdowns and cancellations — there was not much open or places to go. My part-time tournament officiating job was shutdown … and I eventually picked up a freelance gig in November to review some books, which ended up boosting my reading towards the end of 2020. It helped too that Biden/Harris won the election in early November, which was a great relief. Let’s just hope there’s no more political violence in the U.S. in the weeks ahead.

As for which books were my favorites — there were many good ones that took me away to faraway places and stories. I narrowed down my picks to 11 novels and 7 nonfiction books from a long list of ones I enjoyed and reviewed. While Stella, at left, was more interested in playing with her kangaroo.

I think it was Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s novel “Migrations,” which I finished late in the year … that sort of captured the global times and general feelings for me this year — so I’ll pick that one as my favorite novel of 2020 — and Nina Willmer’s 2016 book “Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall as my favorite nonfiction read … since it taught me quite a bit about life during the Cold War. My big sagas of the year were Min Jin Lee’s novel “Pachinko” and Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers” — both of which I was very pleased to finally get to. Let me know what you think of my lists below and whether you liked some of these as well. 

67 books finished
18 nonfiction, 49 fiction
13 male authors, 54 women authors
35 print or ebooks
32 audiobooks
15 Non-white authors
50 American authors
5 Asian born/raised authors
3 British authors
3 Canadian authors
2 Irish authors
1 Africa born/raised author
1 Polish author
1 German author
1 Australian author

Favorite Fiction

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy (2020)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (2020)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020)
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016)
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (2020)
The Innocents by Michael Crummey (2019)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (2020)
Writers & Lovers by Lily King (2020)

Favorite Nonfiction

• Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner (2016) 
• She Came to Sleigh: The Life & Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar (2019) 
• She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (2019) 
• A Bookshop in Berlin by Francoise Frenkel (1945)
• Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jeanne Wakatsuki & James D. Houston (1973) 
• Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road by Kate Harris (2018) 
• The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah M. Broom (2019) 

Favorite Audiobooks 

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy  (read by Barrie Kreinik)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (read by Marin Ireland)
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (read by Greta Jung, Glenn Davis)
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (read by Kimberly Farr)
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (read by Allyson Ryan)
Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (read by Cassandra Campbell)
The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett (read by Shayna Small)
The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali (read by Mozhan Marno)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (read by Traci Kato-Kiriyama)

Categories: 

Post-Apocalyptic / Dystopian / or Speculative Novels

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy (2020)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (2020)
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook (2020)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (1994)
A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (2020)

Pandemic or Plague Novels

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue (2020)
The End of October by Lawrence Wright (2020)
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (2020)

Memoirs 

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (2019)
Already Toast: Caregiving & Burnout in America by Kate Washington (2021)
Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence by Tanya Selvaratnam (2021)

Classics 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) 

Coming of Age Novels

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett (2019)
Writers & Lovers by Lily King (2020)
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016)
The German House by Annette Hess (2019)

Debut Novels

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (2016)
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook (2020)
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (2019)
What’s Left of Me Is Yours by Stephanie Scott (2020)
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (2020)
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar (2018)
The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell (2020)
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel (2009)
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (2019)
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens (2020)
The German House by Annette Hess (2019)
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett (2019)

Crime & Popular Fiction Novels:

These Women by Ivy Pochoda (2020)
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (2019)
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (2020)
You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (2020)
The Holdout by Graham Moore (2020)
What’s Left of Me Is Yours by Stephanie Scott (2020)
Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger (2019)
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (2020)
Long Bright River by Liz Moore (2020)
The Holdout by Graham Moore (2020)
The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell (2020)

Literary & Contemporary Fiction:

I Give It to You by Valerie Martin (2020)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2020)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (2020)
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld (2020)
Sea Wife by Amity Gaige (2020)
Heft by Liz Moore (2012)
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel (2009)
Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh (2016)
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar (2019)
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner (2019)
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy (2019)
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (2019)
Monogamy by Sue Miller (2020)
The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali (2019)
Prairie Fever by Michael Parker (2020)
The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve (2017)
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (2019)
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman (2020)
A Keeper by Graham Norton (2019)
A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier (2019)