The United States of Trump by Bill O'Reilly

Front cover

I subscribed to Bill O'Reilly.com because I miss the O'Reilly commentary and to get an advance copy of this book which was being written earlier this year.  So when it arrived I immediately worked it into my reading time.  It is a good book, typical of O'Reilly, only 295 pages..  I did not  so much learn a lot of new things about Donald Trump as I confirmed my own impressions and gained better insight into the man I voted for President and the man I will vote for again.  Overall, what you see is what you get, Donald Trump is not pretentious and does not have a filter between his thoughts to the words he speaks,  thus so  many controversies with his Twitter storms many which he starts in his early morning times alone.  With Trump it is what it is,  uninhibited presentation.   O'Reilly mentions that Trump uses negativity like a fly swatter, he does not apologize nor admit mistakes readily if at all.  . He readily returns an insult with an invective, unlike President Andrew Jackson who might have shot the person, btw  Trump admires Jackson. 

 Trump is the consummate outsider , no political pedigree and for that the beltway insiders detest him.  I knew that.  He tends to exaggerate, not using precise language and goes along to the next item.   

Back cover

Trump has a short attention span for detail yet quickly absorbs what he needs to know, bureaucratic briefings  drive him up the wall and the stage is set for a tumultuous 4 years which it has been so far.  He sleeps very little, rises by 5:30AM,  drinks no alcohol nor coffee, has no hobbies other than golf and  is a consummate workaholic, he is always on and when immersed in something he is a bull dog.  Now that is what we need as a President to  realign this country, .  His father was all work as well so this trait  is in Trump's DNA. 


 He does drink a lot of Diet Cokes though  sometimes 15 or more a day, always from a bottle poured into a glass with ice, just he way I prefer mine too.  Yet surely all those  diet cokes cannot be good for him.  He relishes disruption and mayhem and can work thru the midst of it especially when he creates it.  Hyperbole and bombastic presentation is Trump, he considers  it insignificant.  His traits are more typical "in your face" New Yorker style than beltway. 

 O'Reilly discusses how the death of his brother affected Donald.  And the thriftiness, not wasting that  comes from his Germanic roots on his father's side (pg 43.)s

nside front flap

I did learn that the youngest son, his and Melania's , Baron is named for the Hotel magnate Baron Hilton, never knew that.  . Page 271  sums Trumps 4 pillars of his presidency, ", improving the economy,  stopping illegal immigration,  defeating Islamic terrorism, and preventing foreign nations from exploiting America financially."  .  Who but a liberal lunatic  can argue with those?  If I have any criticism of the book it is that the photos are mediocre, like reprints of newspaper photos, perhaps they are, apparently pictures were not important to O'Reilly for this book.  After all right now we are living in the midst of this Trump  Presidency, we can see pictures all over TV, 24/7; hang on Mr Toady,  the wild ride will continue!.  I give this 5 *****

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Front cover paperback

In May the local library hosted this MN author who is extremely popular locally  as throughout the state. The author is well known, acclaimed, and lives in the Twin Cities.    I had never read any of his books so I purchased this one at the others in  talk because it is a stand alone novel compared to his Cork O'Conner mystery series.  The bookseller suggested  this would be a good start for me.    It was first published in 2013, 307 pages and a reading guide with discussion questions in the back.  The writing is easy to follow and the story is well developed.  However for me there was not enough action/intrigue.  Possibly because this is the story of a family and primarily that of a 13 year old boy, Frank Dunn, preacher's son.  

The novel begins in summer 1961,  in New Bremen, MN and mentions that it was a summer" in which death in visitation, assumed many forms."  The prologue  2nd paragraph references the Greek ancient playwright Aeschylus, "He who learns must suffer.  And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."  So we are beginning to know this will be about  death, mourning and twists.  

Back cover

Pg 175, "Loss once it s become a certainty is like a rock you hold in your hand.  It has weight and dimension and texture.  It's solid and can be assessed and dealt with.  You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away."  

Pg 196, "I think we just keep going on.  We keep doing what we always do and someday it'll feel right again."  

Pg 302, "It seems to me that when you look back at a life, yours or another's, what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow.  So much is lost.  What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses.  Our histories like my father's current body are structures built of toothpicks."  

Author Krueger at the La Crescent Library.

The quotes show the depth and breadth of the writing.  Solid, contemplative perhaps and well matched to impart the story. This book about the death, finding the body and how there is a wrong accused.  the father is a Methodist pastor of 3 small rural churches.  The reference to Lutherans in MN being as "ubiquitous as ragweed," page 45.  There would be other deaths that summer including the sister, which will test the family beyond faith.  It is a Midwestern MN tale over all.  

I did enjoy hearing the author talk about his books and his writing journey.  So many there had read nearly everyone of his books, I was likely the only new reader of this author.  He is very personable.  There is nothing negative I can say about the book but it  just did not grab m.  I read it yet,  I am  not enticed to read others nor to begin the O'connor series.  I give it 3 & 1/2 stars, perhaps 4 ****

A Traitor to Memory by Elizabeth George

Paperback front cover

Read this one in August although published in 2001 it had been languishing on my stack of to be read books.  A good mystery but 662 pages, a tome as George often produces.  In this one a 28 year old violinist protege, extraordinaire, Gideon Davies, suddenly loses his memory of music and  all ability to play the violin which he had mastered at 5 years of age.  He suffers from a traumatic form of amnesia  shich can only be cured by investigating what he can remember.  With the guidance of a doctor Gideon journals what he can remember and flashes back  to the name of a woman, Sonia.  His father has poured his life into promoting Gideon.  The dysfunctional family goes over 3 generation and includes the death of Gideon's baby sister long ago.   Meantime there are other characters weaving in and out and  the mysterious killings of seemingly unrelated people,  run over by autos.

 The author weaves a readable saga,  with multitudes of characters and stories related to each.  Seemingly separate but all will be interlinked. For example,  on pg. 485, the reappearance of a character Katie leads Gideon to a conversation about Katja.  Katie  had not been mentioned nor  featured since the first chapter at the beginning of the book.   In the midst of the book pages 369-370 I noted that I disliked the switching back and forth between characters and stories.  Malcolm Webberly has just been run down walking his dog Alf and then the tale switches back to Gideon.  Still it is well written and there are many passages worth noting.  

Pg 132, about failure, "  "Sometimes you fail.  You don't intend to.  You don't even contemplate failure.  But it happens.  It comes out of nowhere and it takes you by surprise and before you have a chance to stop even to react in some useless way, it's on you.  Failure."    

Pg 161,  "life wasn't a continuum of events, although it wore the guise of exactly that.  Instead, it was actually a carousel.  In infancy one mounted a galloping pony and started out on a journey during which one assumed that circumstances would change as the expedition continued.  But the  truth of life was that it was an endless repetition of what one had already experienced...round and round and up and down on that pony.  And unless one dealt with whatever challenges one was meant to deal with along the route, those challenges appeared again and again in one form or another till the end of one's days."   

Page 571, "left with her thoughts, those mischievous companions of one's solitude."  

Overall I enjoyed the tome, but at times I felt it could have speeded along.  Masterful writing none the less.  I give this 4 ****

Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

Read in October, another well written, suspenseful mystery set in and around fictional Three Pines, and Montreal featuring Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache,  The author is consistenly good at keeping the suspense and yet planting seeds of wondering.  The great characters of the Three Pines Village are at it again and this time, Gamache is awaiting news of his suspension.  That in itself adds another twist to the mystery.  Paperback,513 pages, this edition published 2018.   On page 236 we get the origin of the title, "in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king."  but there are plenty of references to blind through out the book.  A memorable quote in this mystery, page 440, Myrna replies to Jean-Guy, who has proposed that reality may not matter what matters is what people believe, "People were capable of believing almost anything.  And hope was even more sweeping and powerful."

Back cover

I learned about poison gardens, pages 90-91 and that certain plants including hydrangeas and lily of the valley are toxic.  Some I knew but not those and I was unfamiliar with a poison garden.  The mystery involves the death of a woman, a stranger, the Baroness,appoints  Gamache, Myrna and another young man, Benedict Pouiliot, as tri executors of her will, despite leaving behind  3 adult children. 

Acknowledgements by author

The book begins, " Armand Gamache slowed his car to a crawl, then stopped on the snow covered secondary road.  This was it, he supposed.  Pulling in he drove between the tall pines until he reached the clearing.  ......Putting on his reading glasses, he rubbed his face.  And read it again.  It was an invitation of sorts to this desolate place...."  It is an old desolate farmhouse, the former residence of the woman, Bertha Baumgartner.  It is  a building in need of demolition but where the attorney Maitre Merciere  chooses to reveal their task to them.  

So the adventure of the three begins.  There is comedy amidst the pathos and mystery, reference to Charles Dickens characters to the attorney Merciere.  Particularly comical is the description of Benedict's arrival as Dr Seuss meets Charles Dickens, or the Cat in the Hat enters.   No mistake this mystery will intrigue until the end.  And there will be another story within the tale, about Armand's suspension and his  attempt to retrieve opiods from the streets.  The opiods were lost in an arrest and will devastate many unless stopped.  We meet Amerlia, a candidate at the academy of the Surete who is a rising star but is  kicked out and who now is amidst the junkies.  She will turn out to be a secret weapon of Gamache. 

A ll in all another 5 ***** mystery.   It has been awhile since I read a Penny mystery and delighted in the suspense and characters.  

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

I have been curious about this for awhile but was not willing to rush out and purchase it when it was first published in 2018.  Finally it was put into large paperback edition in 2019 and when I saw it at Sam's and ready to read something else, I bought it.  I am glad I waited and had I not been so curious I could have easily passed this by.  It is at best a mediocre read, disappointing to me as I expected better with collaboration between James Patterson and Pres. Clinton.  I do not believe Bill Clinton should plan on a career writing crime/mystery/action novels if this is any indication of his ability to create in that genre.  

The 513 pages have some interesting moments but nothing especially compelling. The philosophic statements pages 500- 504 about how democracy needs  working together, across party lines, beyond political ideologies, to survive are applicable today.  

The presidency in this novel, has multiple  females including a female vice president, female chief of staff, and Speaker of the House, there is no first lady as the spouse is deceased. There is a first daughter however.  President Duncan suffers from a debilitating blood disorder wh ich has been kept from the public.  Page 15, "Sooner or later every president faces decisions in which the right choice is bad politics, at least in the short term.  If the stakes are high you have to do what you think is right and hope the political tide will turn.  It's the job you promised to do." President Duncan ponders as he  discusses with the chair of the House Judiciary committee whether or not impeachment will proceed. The President has information about a major terrorist and yet agrees to meet incognito with others without Secret Service protection at a ball park because his daughter has been contacted by the people.  There is a dangerous computer virus, Dark Ages that threatens the power grids and  all internet for the entire country.  President Duncan will  work to stop that and then it is determined that within his tightest circle in the White House  someone is a traitor and has been leaking information.    So it goes along. 

I rate this barely 3 ***, more like two & half but cannot display that.  Buy a used copy if you are curious as I was.    

Personal by Lee Child

Published 2014, acquired at a book sale 2018, read July 2019, 353 pages, and another Jack Reacher hit novel!  This novel finds  Jack pulled back from retirement by the State Department for the CIA, and off to London.  A sniper has missed a shot at the French President in Paris from 3/4 of a mile.  The suspected expert sniper is John Kott, an American gone to the dark side. Although a loner and preferring to work that way, Reacher is teamed with Casey Nice, a female rookie analyst on the international investigation.  

It begins, Chapter 1, " Eight days ago my life was an up and down affair.  Some of it good.  Some of it not so good.  Most of it uneventful.  Long slow periods of nothing much, with occasional bursts of something.  Like the army itself.  Which is how they found me.  You can leave the army but the army doesn't leave you.  Not always.  Not completely."  and the third paragraph, "The Army Times is a strange old paper.  It started up before World War Two and is still going strong, every week, full of yesterday's news and sundry how to articles, like the headline staring up at me right then:  New Rules!  Changes for Badges and Insignia?!  Plus Four More Uniform Changes on the Way!  Legend has it the news is yesterday's because it's copied secondhand from AP summaries, but if you read the words sideways you sometimes hear a real sardonic tone between the lines.  ..."  it begins with some interesting trivia, historical perspective.  Always something to learn in these Reacher novels.  Another example on Page 67,   "Pi times the radius squared.  I said. Very nearly 2 square miles."  "Average population density in major Western city centers?" Which was neither math nor arithmetic but general knowledge.  I said, "Forty thousand people per square mile?".."You're behind the times.  Closer to 50,000 now, plus or minus.  P{arts of Londond and Paris are already 70,000.  ....."  I wonder how much it has increased today, 2019 as city centers swell to over capacity.  

This sniper could be one of 3 internationally known and stopping him from wreaking  evil at the the upcoming summit of world leaders has engaged not only the US, but British and Russian experts.  Another great read, page turner.  I  have only one more Reacher book on my shelf to read from the book sale bonanza I found last year, so far 11 read and not all in chronological order of publish, so I will soon be ordering more on Amazon, I have kept track of the  Reacher novels I have read.  The chronology of publication is #1 Killing Floor 1997, #2 Die Trying 1998, , #4 Running Blind 2000, #9 One Shot 2005, #13 Gone Tomorrow 2009, #14 61 Hours 2010, #15 Worth Dying For 2010, #16 The Affair 2011, #17 A Wanted Man 2012, #14 Personal  2014, #22 The Midnight Line 2017.   As every other  this was a 5 *****

Just look at the shelf alongside my PC

I always have a stack of books to be read.  I puck up books wherver thrift stores, garage sales, book sales and even new, online.  I will never be without books.  My compulsion, perhaps, but I would rather be a reader than not.

The truth about books, by Carl Sagan

4 Jack Reachers by Lee Childs

Published in 2012, The Affair is a prequel to all the other Reacher novels and  relates how he began of his nomadic  life after the Army, but in this novel Reacher is still active Army.  I reflected on the characters who became familiar in the other novels, Graber for one.  The Washington Times  review declares this is one of the tow or three best Reacher novels.  "Mr. Child has written a veritable tour de force, the almost  perfect prequel to his 15 previous books."  It begins March 11, 1997, a Tuesday, "The pentagon is the world's largest office building, six and a half million square feet, thirty thousand people, more than seventeen miles of corridors, but it was build with just three street doors, each one of them opening into a guarded pedestrian lobby."   

This is set between DC and Carter Crossing, Missiissippi Kelham Army base.  Page 11 discusses the common law test for criminal culpability, Latin and law.  Timely for today with lingering brouhaha from the disgraced, fired FBI Director, James Comey  set a new standard for intent in interpretation of why he would not prosecute Hillary Clinton, she didn't intend  to do it.  Hah!  But here is page 11, "Action plus intention is the standard.  They were waiting for me to prove my intention.."  And true to other Reacher novels there is surprising detail about various aspects of Army life, interesting to me, a civilian, page 11, "Army regulations are surprisingly vague about shoes,.  Plain black lace up oxfords or close equivalents, conservative, no designs on them, minimum of 3 pair of eyelets, closed toe, maximum two inch heel."  Reacher is on a mission to be alert outside the base in MS and blend with the civilian population while another  Army major has been assigned inside the base. Local women have been killed, throats cut ear to ear over  months and the locals are certain that a soldier  from Kelham, a home for Army Rangers shipping in and out  on secret missions, is responsible.  Meantime the Army wants to prove it is a civilian responsible.  The town of Carter Crossing depends on the base to exist.  The local sheriff who becomes involved with Reacher is Elizabeth Devereaux, an ex Marine and also a native of the town.   Another intrigue, kept me guessing and another 5 *****.

This paperback edition also included the short story, "The Second Son" about Reacher's childhood and family. It opens August 1974 in Paris with references to an old man, Jack's,  maternal grandfather, only that is not known until subsequently pages later.  His father, Stan, was a Marine and the family moved around a lot.  As early as 13 years of age he had become Jack Reacher.  Interesting that everyone called him Reacher no other nick name, even his brother, it stuck.  His perspective on taking tests  was formed solid by age 13, if 51% is passing, that is good enough, no need to expend extra effort studying for a higher score than passing.  His father's thoughts about him, are that he was not academic like Joe, the older brother,  "but the kid could think too.  ..His IQ was about the same but it was a get the job done, street smart IQ."  The closing paragraph is memorable, about the death of his grandfather.  "Laurent Moutier was gone, at the age of ninety, taking with him like everyone does, a lifetime of unknown private hopes and dreams and fears and experiences and leaving behind him, like most people do, a thin trace of himself in his living descendants.".   Another 5 ***** read.  

I read Gone Tomorrow, in March.  It is the 13th of the Reacher novels  published in 2009, and opens in New York City, 2:00AM, on a subway ride,  discussing suicide bombers and  the Israeli counterintelligence tactics,  which Reacher memorized 20 years ago and still relies on. Page 1, "Suicide bombers are easy to spot.  They give out all kinds of tell tale signs.  Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first timers."  From the front cover flap, " Susan Mark was the fifth passenger.  She had a lonely heart, an estranged son, and a big secret.  Reacher, working with a woman cop and a host of shadowy feds wants to know just how big a hole Susan Mark was in, how many lives had already been twisted before hers, and what danger is looming around him now.....plain little life was critical to dozens of others in Washington, California, Afghanistan..from a former Del;ta force operator now running for the US Senate to a beautiful young woman with a fantastic story to tell--and a host of others who have just one thing in common, they're all lying to Reacher."  Pages 252-3 describe regions of New York City, trains to boroughs and distinctions of each.  More interesting trivia on page 256 about the word, "hello"."..developed as a greeting only after the invention of the telephone.  People felt they needed something to say when they picked up the receiver.  It was a corruption of the old word, halloo. Which was really an expression of temporary shock or surprise.  You would come upon something unexpected and you would go, Halloo!"  Pages 322-327 discusses Reagan's administration and Bin Laden and even Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.  In reference to these prior dealings with today's terrorists, pg 329, "Sometimes our friends become our enemies and sometimes our enemies become our friends."  .And  to open Chapter 82, page 400, "Scientists measure time all the way down to the picosecond.  A trillionth of a regular second."   Five stars*****

And the last for this post, Worth Dying For published in 2010..   I have yet to read a Reacher novel that is not 5 ***** in my ratings, so that said, perfect scores so far.  I read this in April.  I will  edit and add to this review tomorrow or later on.  This novel is set in the corn country of Nebraska and a local clan, Duncans who rule the entire town.  Reacher becomes involved determined to solve the unsolved case  of a missing child, already decades old.This novel surprised me again and again. Just when I think I know something it twisted and I was wrong. 

 It opens, " Eldridge Taylor was driving a long straight two lane road in Nebraska when his cell phone rang.  It was very late in the afternoon.  He was taking his granddaughter home after  buying her shoes and the kid was flat on her back on the small rear seat.  She was not asleep."  By page 6 there is a thorough description of the Grand Alaskan rifle,  of interest to   me because I know little about rifles, etc, the author always includes some interesting descriptions in every Reacher novel.   Page 9 describes the setting of the bar/hotel in the area, " "The whole place was bizarre; like a 1960's version of Las Vegas transplanted to outer space."  Now  conjure that image for the  setting.  Page 34, fact about the US Canadian border should have alerted me to the importance it would have in this novel, but I did not realize that until I was almost at the end of the book.  "world's largest land border followed the 49th parallel over mountains and roads and rivers and streams and through towns and fields and woods."  I had formed an opinion that drugs were being smuggled but was very wrong and was astounded that it was human trafficking.  Page 98 explains the phrase, " our ship has come in" from old seafaring days when there was no communication, no radio, no phone, no telegraph.   Page 102 documents information about international shipping containers, corrugated metal boxes. which are easily swapped between different modes of transport.    

2011 reads copied from other blog

I found this old post on my other blog, the original blog which I neglect mostly now.  It is from 2011 and has a list of books that I read, crammed up at the last minute, not much has changed with my technique because I have a small stack awaiting review and posting here and then to be donated.  Apparently back then I did not scan the covers of all the books so I have only one to share here, the last one.  So here goes from 2011>>>>>


"When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue--you sell him a whole new life." Christopher Morley

A stack of books grows higher by the week alongside my computer, books I have read from late October until now, books  I have just set aside until I have time to review them for the blog......but as I posted  a week back time is running out and my stack gets taller.   I will have a new blog in 2012 solely to record my readings and my reviews.  For now, to expedite the process and  move books into either  donation bags or, if a keeper,  to the shelf in our home  library, I am borrowing a technique from Kat Mortenson and assigning stars  *****  to rank the books,  with 1 low and 5 high:

5 ***** being a top notch read and a book I loved.  

No * indicates a book I did not finish,  which means it is  really  a poor read and  had no interest for me; oh does this mean I really have a 6 point rating system? 

1 * will mean a book I plowed through under some protest. 

I suppose  that technically I have six ranks from No to *****.   There would be few books with No and few with *****, most somewhere in between. 

It has taken me awhile to learn to discard a book that does not hold my interest, I have so many books to read and so little time to do so that it's not worth wasting my eyeballs on a bad one.  Why did I think I had to plod along when  the pages and words held no interest? 

 What I find enjoyable in reading and which will be my criteria in rating reflect my personal preferences.  I am not a fluff or what I term fiction comic book reader nor do I like science fiction.  I like to sink into a book like a nice comfy leather chair, so a novel has to envelop me.  My first preference is always non fiction or historical, memoir and biographies are first choice.  I look for excellent writing and research, well developed characters who appear lifelike with their tales, a sense of historical accuracy,  historical, memoirs that evoke emotion while reading, or a book that teaches me something.  I am as I have said many times before a life long reader from the time I learned to read as a tot.  I am never bored, lonely, or without something to do to entertain myself so long as I have a good book. 

No I do not e-read nor do I have any desire to do so, being the proud owner or stacks of books and a marvelous home library.   I never pass a book sale without picking up something.  You will see several on the list below that are used, older.  A book does not have to be on a current best seller list to attract my interest.  I have been exposed to wonderful books I might not have found nor read through my local book club where we meet monthly to discuss.

 Title,date published/comment             Author          Rating

Marilyn and Me-Sisters, Rivals, Friends 1992   Susan Strasberg       **               

Almost tedious reading but some interesting  pages
and reverie about the authors famous  parents. 

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay  2010          BeverlyJensen       *****      

A novel saga over 7 decades beginning in 1916,
sisters from Nova Scotia who immigrate to
America.  Fascinating and humorous in parts. "She was
worn to the shape of a gnarled tree...." describes their
paternal grandmother.

The Knitting Circle    2007 paperback             Ann Hood                           *****

  Our book club selection; a novel with great

characters and their stories and the grief of losing a child.

Based on the author's life.    

Left Neglected                 2011                    Lisa Genova                             *** 

 She wrote "Still Alice" about dementia, which I enjoyed. This
novel is about a condition resulting from an auto accident

where the left side of the body does not respond.

Lit                 2010 Paperback                  Mary Karr                                     **    

Her 3rd memoir and the least interesting despite its glowing

reviews; about her days in  alcoholism.  Dreary

The Quilters Apprentice    2000 Paperback     Jennifer Chiaverini                ** 

A ho hum novel, my curiosity about the process of learning to quilt

 dragged me along.  First book in the Elm Creek Quilt Series.

Our Story: The Quecreek Miners     2002     told to  Jeff Goodell                 ***

 Concise, true tale of these PA coal miner

 spent trapped underground for 77 hours

The Seventh Life of Pauline Johnson   2001        Katy King                 No stars

  If this isn't the dumbest book it is close to it. The author

hawked it at a craft show; it has been on my shelf for years

to be read.  Supposed to be a  mystery/ recipe book.

Blind Your Ponies         2011 Paperback           Stanley Gordon West             *****

Our book club selection.  Outstanding novel about  a high school

boys long time loosing basketball team, and their town. 
Excellent characters and writing by a MN author. Selection of the title  and what it represents is a story itself.  Will read more of his books.

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

Front cover paperback

It is refreshing to just read a nice, plain, simple story I thought after reading this book by the late Richard Yates.  I had found it at a sale and it languished on my to be read shelf, so  right after Easter this year, I opened it.  It was an easy read over only four days, and I thought, "Well wasn't that pleasant, no big drama, a sense of something was going on amongst a  few characters, but still no melodramas.  Just a nice story."  

The author was unfamiliar to me but I totally agreed with this Stewart O'Nan quote, "he writes about so average and identifiable, so much like the world we know”    When I read that he is deceased and his books now are seldom found on shelves, I wondered why and realized I perhaps had a treasure.  

Further research and in particular the full  review by Stewart O'Nan of the Boston Review, summed up Yates as someone who should have been read.  He is described as a writers writer but never became popular among readers.  

Back cover paperback

"Since his death in 1992, all nine of Richard Yates’s titles have quietly dropped off the shelves. Once the most vaunted of authors–praised by Styron and Vonnegut and Robert Stone as the voice of a generation–he seems now to belong to that august yet sad category, the writer’s writer. Andre Dubus, who was his student at Iowa, revered him, as does Tobias Wolff, and the jackets of Yates’s books are adorned with quotes by the likes of Tennessee Williams and Dorothy Parker, Ann Beattie and Gina Berriault. When authors talk his name pops up as the American writer we wish more people would read, just as Cormac McCarthy’s used to. In the acknowledgments section of his novellas, Women With Men, Richard Ford makes it plain: "I wish to record my debt of gratitude to the stories and novels of Richard Yates, a writer too little appreciated."And yet, Yates doesn’t fit the mold of a writer’s writer. He’s not a linguistic acrobat like Nabokov or a highflying fabulist like Steven Millhauser, not a uniquely intellectual or obsessive writer the way we think of William Gaddis or Harold Brodkey. In the era that saw Pynchon, DeLillo and Rushdie make their names (before storming the bestseller lists), he wrote about the mundane sadness of domestic life in language that rarely if ever draws attention to itself. There’s nothing fussy or pretentious about his style. If anything, his work could be called simple or traditional, conventional, free of the metafictionalists’ or even the modernists’ tricks. "..."It may be that writers prize Yates because readers haven’t. In a business that often champions shoddy and false work over true and beautiful accomplishments, his fate confirms our worst fears and prods us to demand justice. He’s the most readable and accessible of literary writers...."

This novel opens, " Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seems that the trouble began with their parents' divorce.  That happened in 1930 when Sarah was nine years old and Emily five.  Their mother who encouraged both girls to call her 'Pookie" took them out of New York to a rented house in Tenafly, New Jersey where she thought the schools would be better and where she hoped to launch a career in suburban real estate.  It didn't work out--very few of her plans for independence ever did--"

Good Reads had this about Easter Parade, which I use as I couldn't have said it better, ",,,,,first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates's classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family's past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal.  "  

Overall a 4 ****,  no great literary quotes that I will  include here from the story, just a good read. 

From the other blog December 2011 9 Reviews, short

Found this in the draft for this blog and decided to include it.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Up to date on Books Read

"When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue--you sell him a whole new life." Christopher Morley

A stack of books grows higher by the week alongside my computer, books I have read from late October until now, books  I have just set aside until I have time to review them for the blog......but as I posted  a week back time is running out and my stack gets taller.   I will have a new blog in 2012 solely to record my readings and my reviews.  For now, to expedite the process and  move books into either  donation bags or, if a keeper,  to the shelf in our home  library, I am borrowing a technique from Kat Mortenson and assigning stars  *****  to rank the books,  with 1 low and 5 high:

5 ***** being a top notch read and a book I loved.  

No * indicates a book I did not finish,  which means it is  really  a poor read and  had no interest for me; oh does this mean I really have a 6 point rating system? 

1 * will mean a book I plowed through under some protest. 

I suppose  that technically I have six ranks from No to *****.   There would be few books with No and few with *****, most somewhere in between. 

It has taken me awhile to learn to discard a book that does not hold my interest, I have so many books to read and so little time to do so that it's not worth wasting my eyeballs on a bad one.  Why did I think I had to plod along when  the pages and words held no interest? 

 What I find enjoyable in reading and which will be my criteria in rating reflect my personal preferences.  I am not a fluff or what I term fiction comic book reader nor do I like science fiction.  I like to sink into a book like a nice comfy leather chair, so a novel has to envelop me.  My first preference is always non fiction or historical, memoir and biographies are first choice.  I look for excellent writing and research, well developed characters who appear lifelike with their tales, a sense of historical accuracy,  historical, memoirs that evoke emotion while reading, or a book that teaches me something.  I am as I have said many times before a life long reader from the time I learned to read as a tot.  I am never bored, lonely, or without something to do to entertain myself so long as I have a good book. 

No I do not e-read nor do I have any desire to do so, being the proud owner or stacks of books and a marvelous home library.   I never pass a book sale without picking up something.  You will see several on the list below that are used, older.  A book does not have to be on a current best seller list to attract my interest.  I have been exposed to wonderful books I might not have found nor read through my local book club where we meet monthly to discuss.

 Title,date published/comment             Author          Rating

Marilyn and Me-Sisters, Rivals, Friends 1992   Susan Strasberg       **               

Almost tedious reading but some interesting  pages
and reverie about the authors famous  parents. 

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay  2010          BeverlyJensen       *****      

A novel saga over 7 decades beginning in 1916,
sisters from Nova Scotia who immigrate to
America.  Fascinating and humorous in parts. "She was
worn to the shape of a gnarled tree...." describes their
paternal grandmother.

The Knitting Circle    2007 paperback             Ann Hood                           *****

  Our book club selection; a novel with great

characters and their stories and the grief of losing a child.

Based on the author's life.    

Left Neglected                 2011                    Lisa Genova                             *** 

 She wrote "Still Alice" about dementia, which I enjoyed. This
novel is about a condition resulting from an auto accident

where the left side of the body does not respond.

Lit                 2010 Paperback                  Mary Karr                                     **    

Her 3rd memoir and the least interesting despite its glowing

reviews; about her days in  alcoholism.  Dreary

The Quilters Apprentice    2000 Paperback     Jennifer Chiaverini                ** 

A ho hum novel, my curiosity about the process of learning to quilt

 dragged me along.  First book in the Elm Creek Quilt Series.

Our Story: The Quecreek Miners     2002     told to  Jeff Goodell                 ***

 Concise, true tale of these PA coal miner

 spent trapped underground for 77 hours

The Seventh Life of Pauline Johnson   2001        Katy King                 No stars

  If this isn't the dumbest book it is close to it. The author

hawked it at a craft show; it has been on my shelf for years

to be read.  Supposed to be a  mystery/ recipe book.

Blind Your Ponies         2011 Paperback           Stanley Gordon West             *****

Our book club selection.  Outstanding novel about  a high school

boys long time loosing basketball team, and their town. 
Excellent characters and writing by a MN author. Selection of the title
and what it represents is a story itself.  Will read more of his books.

Prince of Darkness by Shane White

Front cover

Published 2015, 316 pages, of which I only could slog through 100 before giving up reading further.  This sounded like an interesting historical  tale, but  was very tiresome reading.  Each of the 13 chapters has an interesting title to introduce the story, based on pg 12, "material drawn from the records generated by his serial court appointments."  The author appears to have a solid background in literature and history of the times and includes interesting tidbits, as an effort to deposit the knowledge accumulated researching the main character. 

Back cover

 The opening was enticing, Chapter 1, The Invisible Man, page 1, "It was still dark when the reporter slipped into the Halls of Justice on Center Street, an architectural disaster known on account of its misguided inspiration as the Egyptian Tombs, or simply the Tombs, and glanced at the previous night's watch returns.  His eye fixed on the entry for a small time criminal who preyed mostly on other blacks in and around the Five Points, by the early 1840's, the best known slum in the world.  In truth there were scores of black con men just like him, living off their wits and a glib tongue."  .. "What had caught his fancy was that this African American had taken the name John Jacob Astor."  Page 2, excerpt,  "Astor was one of the earliest  individuals to whom contemporaries attached the novel description"millionaire".  By the 1840's the word first used by Lord Byron in 1836, was well on its way to becoming an American label."..."And the joke worked because a black John Jacob Astor was an oxymoron."  The author explains the book in  the first 14 pages.  Perhaps another author with greater story telling abilities could have written this with the limited facts in such a way to keep me reading.  As I noted, lots of information scattered here and there, historical tidbits, but just could not hold my attention.  

Pages 67-69 describe slaves and indentured servants  in New York City, "typically in the city, husband and wife had different owners--meant it was not at all unusual for one or more family members to remain enslaved for some time after their kin had achieved freedom...." Page 70 describes how court records detail, "involvement of very young African American females in violence against their owners.  ...December 1811, an eight year old black servant girl having been whipped by her mistress, used a burning log from the kitchen fire to try and incinerate her owner's stables."  .."arson was among the most atrocious of human offences."  

To me the book was very disappointing, lacked coherence and  flow and I decided not to read further, too many other good books to read. Too bad, but it did not work trying to piece a tale from legal and court records.   I give this only 1 *, and have donated it to the library sale.  

Matters of Chance by Jeannette Haien

Front cover

I picked up "Matters of Chance" by chance at a booksale and  finally took it off my to read shelf.  Published by Harper Collins in 1997, it is a nice fiction story, almost an adult fairy tale, decent writing, almost lyrical in parts, decent characters, who display mixtures and blends of integrity, endurance, persistence, achievement inspiration, how to put on a good front,  and yet it took me a while to completely read all 439 pages.  To me it moved along smoothly but very slowly. Jeannette Haien, the author, was unfamiliar to me,  but apparently she is known as a concert pianist and teacher and has also written "The All of It" according to the back cover.  

I enjoyed the opening with the Thomas Hardy poem, "Afterwards"poem.   This saga of an American family begins in November 1925 in Ohio and follows over the years. Page 1, " Away from home for the first time at a boarding school he did not (then) much like, Morgan Shurtliff was a shy, lonely, fourteen year old dreamer, a bright though erratic student, a passionate reader."  We meet Morgan at the start, main character and while this could have been titled the Tale of Morgan and Maud, there is much more woven through the fictionalized family through World War II and the post war years, their adoption of twins and the efforts of  Miss Zenobia Sly, the administrator of the orphanage where  Maude and Morgan will adopt their twin daughters Julia and Caroline and someone with whom Morgan will keep touch throughout life.  It was intersting to read about the Liberty ships during WWII and Morgan's service on them.  

Page 15, " To read of the lot and destinies of others and of the tests they were put to and triumphed over or failed at made him feel about his own life less amazed, less anxious, less--(he shied from the word for its hint of betrayal to Maud, but it persisted in his thoughts)--hermetic."     

Back cover

I was drawn into dates in this fiction story, when  I noted on page 183 the date "Friday, November 12, 1945"  I was born November 13, 1944, so I thought that if  that date was a Friday, the year before it would have been a Thursday making  November 13, 1944 a Friday.  I had never heard that I was born on a Friday the 13th, so I googled to learn and verify that November 13, 1944 was a Monday!  Phew, relief to me and this miscellaneous trivia.  

Page, 267, "...they would linger over coffee and ruminate outside of Time about nothing much at all, lik two very old people about to pass away--a communion of souls.  Their friendship had become an entity that capable."  

Page 317,  is a lyric tribute to the transition from train travel to airplane.  Morgan will be traveling between Ohio and New York with is law firm. "He thought that from now on, the plane would be the way to go, speed now, the great impulse; the great thing.  No more the train, that old important earthbound prolonger of expectation.  Think how the train had once been hailed.  How Victorian, saluting the wonder of it, had dubbed it "the Iron Horse."  Hail now the plane, celestial, way up there, ripping through the clouds, still ascending.  Angels of Heaven, beware."  Page 318 describes Morgan's widower stage of life after Maud's sudden tragic passing, " Give me a sense of purpose.  .....I hit trouble.  Trouble in the form of myself...I ran into myself coming down the road fom the opposite direction and I saw myself in disarray, without much hope of a future of much value.  I can't think of a better way to say it......".  Page 319 is interesting details about the growth of law firms in the 1970's to address the proliferation of government agencies, regulations, tax policies, "  After  the experience with days and dates, I wondered if this were true, although it does make sense and today we have I feel excessive numbers of lawyers, lawyers on every corner.  Has the solution to a perceived problem become the problem itself?  

I give this book 3 stars, ***, it is a good simple read.  

2 more Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child Die Trying and One Shot

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Two more Jack Reacher's by Lee Child as I work thru the stack I  scooped at the book sale last fall.  I am fascinated by these featuring that bad ass, Jack Reacher and cannot read them fast enough.  I read Die Trying December thru January, published in 1998, paperback edition has 422 pages.  In this Reacher, ex Army Major, MP is an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time as seems to happen to this character.   A mysterious  woman is kidnapped and the ransom amount is exorbitant. Reacher happened along and was  taken along for the ride.  Although she urges him to escape and leave her, and doesn't ask for his help,  Reacher will help her. 

 It begins, first paragraph, "Nathan Rubin died because he got brave.  Not the sustained kind of thing that wins you a medal in a war but the split second kind of blurting outrage that gets you killed on the street." and page 2, " Jack Reacher stayed alive because he got cautious.  He got cautious because he heard an echo from his past.  He had a lot of past and the echo was from the worst part of it. He had 13 years in the Army and the only time he was wonded it wasn't with a bullet"   page 3, "He was standing next to a woman.  He was holding her arm.  He had never seen her before.  .....They were in Chicago, Center of the city, a busy sidewalk., a Monday last day of June.  Broad daylight, bright summer sunshine.  ..."  Page 50, " He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place, just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down.  He was comfortable with that.  He understood freak chances.  Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise."  Their abduction  in the van will take thme across the midwest.  Holly will have military connections too.  As in all the Reacher novels, there is a lot to learn about topography and observation and usually  details about something I would never have known.  Pages 258-259  detail firing a sniper rifle, from the mechanical engineering of the rifle,optics and geophysics. The novel twists with  unsuspected characters, someone in the FBI is crooked, or is it higher in the military.   Another 5 *****.novel.  


The second is One Shot, the only Reacher novel to have been made into a movie, and now that I have read several of these and am familiar with the physical description of Jack Reacher, I cannot understand why Tom Cruise would have been cast as the character, he simply does not fit the description, too short, etc.  That is another  discussion.  I recall enjoying the movie but really did not remember much of it and read the book totally unaware of the outcome.  Copyright in 2005, but mass market published in 2012 by Dell, the paperback edition has 466 pages and a prologue into another Reacher novel.  It is set in the heartland too, Indiana,  page 1 begins, "Friday, Five o'clock in the afternoon.  Maybe the hardest time to move unobserved through a city.  Or maybe the easiest.  Because at five o'clock on a Friday nobody pays attention to anything except the road ahead."   In this novel Reacher's military background  proves  that all is not as it seems, the shooter is not the one who confesses to the massacre, Jack knows but no one else does.  Reacher is drawn back into the  back story of James Barr. a former Army sniper who got away with murder in the Army and yet asks for Reacher.  More characters of intrigue, the cop, detective, DA, Helen Rodin who is the defense attorney and also the DA's daughter,  and a reporter, Ann Yanni,  who will become  Reacher's alibi.   Of interest in this book was the information about boat shoes on page 288, .."boat shoes had been invented by a yachtsman looking for better grip on slippery decks.  The guy had taken a regular smooth soled  athletic shoe and cut tiney stripes into the rubber with a straight razor.  He had experimented and ended up with the cuts lateral and weavy and close together.  The had done the trick, like a miniature tire tread.  A whole new industry had grown up."   Reacher will also have a brief reunification with a former Army fling, Eileen Hutton sent up  from the Pentagon to cover the story  about Barr.  Another 5 *****

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Front cover

I finished reading something very different for me but the photo of the front cover may give you a clue what attracted me when I found this at a book sale.  A novel that must have something to do with books, I was not disappointed.  The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, published in 2006, 406 pages and a very thought provoking Reader's Guide in the Index, for good discussions.   It had been on my To Be Read Shelf, has excellent writing, set in Yorkshire and the moors of England, a tale about life stories, writers, books, twins, ghosts. Some of her phrases, "smooth as a statue on casters", "silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you." and this seemed off to me, "Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. ...One needs no particular talent to be polite. ...being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else." And Page 398, near the very end of the novel, "The truth is heavy enough without the additional weight of the world's scrutiny on his shoulders..."

Briefly, Margaret Lea works in her fathers antiquarian bookshop with a fascination for the biographies of the long-dead that lead her to write about them herself. She receives a letter from a famous author of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter, a known recluse.  Miss Winter is elderly, in failing health and finally wants to tell the story of her life, she invites Margaret to travel to her home outside Yorkshire.Here we begin to hear the Gothic tale of the Angelfield family. The book reminds me of the classics Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Each character is prominent and woven through the novel by the writing.    

The opening sentence caught my attention, November is my birth month and so begins this picturesque

Back cover

novel.  "It was November.  Although it was not yet late, the sky was dark when I turned into Laundress Passage  Father had finished for the day, switched off the shop lights and closed the shutters but so I would not come home to darkness he had left on the light over the stairs to the flat.,"  In addition to the quotes above there were so many that I cannot take the time to include all here.  I marked up the book, underlining in pencil so many phrases, so that anyone who buys this may wonder. 

Page 6, ""My gripe is not with lovers of the truth, but with truth herself.  What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story?" so writes Ms Winter to Margaret.   Page 8, "There is something about words.  In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.  Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts.  Inside you they work their magic."   Page 17, "People disappear when they die.  Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath.  Their flesh.  Eventually their bones.  All living memory of them ceases.  This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some ther is an exception to this annihilation.  For in the books they write they continue to exist."    Page 29, "I read old novels.  The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings.  Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled.  These in my view constitute an ending worth the wait.".    

Because these brutally cold winter days have me staying put in the house, I have time to read.  I am grateful for the habit of reading that came to me very early in life, with being read to and with treasuring my Little Golden Books.  Page 289 has one of my favorite quotes in the novel, "  Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you?  You leave the previous book with ideas and themes--characters even--caught in the fibers of your clothes and when you open the new book they are still with you."     

Grief  on page 289, "  We all have our sorrows and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.  "  I never considered the color of grief, what would it be, grey, dreary, tinged with hues?  Another intersting theme in this novel is the story that everyone has and a reference to a weightless story being one that has never been told, never shared, never put to words.  Weightless stories can be a missing part of a puzzle and cause people to wonder about them all their lives. Such weightless stories  are untold and may be presumed better than a heavy load brought from the  shared details of a told story.  I wonder is it better to know or not often.  

I give this book 5 *****.  I understand the author has another book out and likely I will want to read it too.