My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

While My Reading Life by Pat Conroy is obviously about books and reading, it is very much a book about people who introduced Conroy to the joy of reading and books that have shaped his life. His mother, an English teacher, a high school librarian, a bookseller, and publisher's representative populate the story along with influential books, including Gone with the Wind, Catcher in the Rye, Deliverance, War and Peace, A Christmas Carol, and Look Homeward, Angel.

It won't surprise the readers of Conroy's novels that he portrays his benefactors warts and all. Each chapter focuses on either one of these people or an influential author. Being unsparing does not mean being ungrateful. The mentors all seem better people for overcoming obstacles, such as prejudice or cowardice, and readers sense Conroy's love for all of them.

My Reading Life is also filled with great statements about writing and reading and life. I could have chosen many to post on social media.

• "Books contained powerful amulets that could lead to paths of certain wisdom." 
• "I grew ups word-haunted boy. I felt words inside me and store them wondrous as pearls." 
• "The veneration of books carries its own rewards." 
• "On that first day, not one kid said hello to me. By chance, I stumbled onto the library and I felt the deep pull of a homecoming as I walked into its silences." 
• "Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure." 
• "In every great story, I encounter a head-on collision with self and imagination." 

By the end, readers sense Conroy's philosophy of literature. I enjoyed listening to the author read the book himself. It was eight hours well spent.

Conroy, Pat. My Reading Life. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2010. 337p. ISBN 9780385533577.

7 compact discs. Books on Tape, 2010. ISBN 9780307749222.

Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers

One of the benefits of listening to NPR Science Podcasts is learning about interesting science books. From NPR recently I learned about Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers. The pair coined the term "zoobiquity" to name interspecies medical studies, which they think go deeper than simple comparative anatomy. Physician Natterson-Horowitz particularly believes that her medical colleagues are slower than veterinarians in recognizing the convergence of their disciplines. She does not go so far as to suggest that animals get better care, but she does say that vets are far ahead in some fields of treatment. 

Of course, animal studies have long been conducted for the benefit of human medicine, but they have usually been limited to laboratory animals in sterile environments. The authors argue there is much also to be learned from the treatment of pets and from the lives of animals in the wild. They show how similarly animals and humans faint at times of danger, suffer from cancer, pursue sexual partners, abuse drugs, self-mutilate, and surrender to obesity. Almost any human trouble seems to have a corollary in the animal world that might provide insight.

Thanks to Bowers being a mainstream journalist, the text is kept from being too technical. Anyone with a pet will experience a few revelations. I recommend reading a chapter a date to not overdose on the fascinating detail. It will be in many public libraries.

Natterson-Horowitz, Barbara and Kathryn Bowers. Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. 308p. ISBN 9780307593481.

Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers

When I recently read a blog piece about the British Queens of Crime (Christie, Allingham, Sayers, and Marsh), I remembered that I had not read Dorothy L. Sayers in a long time. Even then, I had only read two or three of the books, which I had liked immensely. Feeling it was time for another, I downloaded the audiobook read by Roe Kendall of Whose Body?, first of Sayer's published mysteries.

Upon listening, I was immediately struck by how much of the story is told through conversations between the investigators, witnesses, and suspects. I suspect I would have noticed this in print, but in performance with the reader lending so many voices, it was theater. The quick pace made putting down my iPod difficult. I kept wanting to hear just a little more before stopping.

Of course, the main sleuth is the gentleman Lord Peter Wimsey, who loves nothing better than a puzzle to solve. He has survived World War I, but he needs diversion to keep from thinking about the horror. With the clever help of his valet Mervyn Bunter, who was his sergeant on the Western Front, Wimsey assists Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard who has been charged with discovering why financier Reuben Levy has disappeared. The odd body that has appeared in architect Alfred Thipps's bathtub in a nearby flat is most certainly not Levy - but is there a connection?

I am happy to have reacquainted myself with Wimsey and will start working my way through the series. Thanks to whoever wrote the blog piece that I have now misplaced.

By the way, the cover image used for the audiobook has absolutely no relevance to the story.

Sayers, Dorothy L. Whose Body? Harper, 1923.

Audiobook from Tantor Media, 2005. 6 compact discs.

Burying the Typewriter: A Memoir by Carmen Bugan

Librarians like to classify, and I am struggling to label Burying the Typewriter: A Memoir by Carmen Bugan. Obviously it is a memoir, and it is easy to identify it as a childhood memoir and somewhat of a coming of age memoir. I think it is more than either of these. It is similar to a Holocaust memoir, in that Bugan tells about how her family survived a time of great danger, but it is not set during the Holocaust. Instead, she tells of life during the waining years of communism in Romania. Iron Curtain memoir doesn't sound bad - better than totalitarian state memoir.

I know I would group it with First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung and Egg on Mao by Denise Chong, but neither of these were behind the Iron Curtain and second is not even a memoir. How about a description instead? Burying the Typewriter is an intimate account of surviving in an unjust society while actively trying to reform it. The effort to inspire the people to rise up against the oppression is a big part of the story. Bugan's father spends much of his life in Romania in prison for distributing anti-regime newsletters and openly protesting, thinking that his example would encourage others. Instead, they disowned him as friend and helped the secret police spy on Bugan's family.

Of course, it was Bugan's parents, not Bugan, who were demonstrating and conspiring against the Ceasescue regime. She hoped her father would behave himself so they would be left alone and could live a normal life. She prayed the typewriter would not be found. Bugan was, however, the member of the family who dashed past Romania police to enter the American Embassy to apply for asylum. Bugan recounts the time of her childhood with passion and understanding.

Burying the Typewriter is a great addition to a literary genre that I am having trouble naming.

Bugan, Carmen. Burying the Typewriter: A Memoir. Graywolf Press, 2012. ISBN 9781555976170.

Into the Western Winds: Pioneer Boys Traveling the Overland Trails by Mary Barmeyer O'Brien

No self-respecting boy of the nineteenth century could pass up the opportunity for adventure. What could be better than crossing the American West in a wagon train? There were horses to ride, wild animals to hunt, rivers to cross, mountains to climb, and lots of other boys to befriend. There would be no school and little bathing. How hard could it be? In Into the Western Winds: Pioneer Boys Traveling the Overland Trails, author Mary Barmeyer O'Brien lets us know how hard.

In her compact book, author O'Brien tells us stories of eight boys who joined their families in crossing the continent between the 1840s and 1860s, before there were railroads to speed their journeys. Each of them either kept a journal or wrote a memoir about his experience. O'Brien identifies the resources and retells some of the best stories from each.

Readers will quickly realize how important the boys turned out to be to the success of their families' fortunes. They herded livestock, hunted, drove wagons, gathered firewood, and went for help in emergencies. Some were even left in the wild to guard family possessions when they were dropped to lighten wagon loads. Moses Schallenberger survived a winter alone in the high Sierras two years before the Donner Party was stuck there! All eight lived to become import men in their frontier communities.

At 107 pages, many readers can finish Into the Western Winds in a night or two. I enjoyed looking at the trail maps and old photographs. A trip out west to see western migration historic sites could be a lot of fun.

O'Brien, Mary Barmeyer. Into the Western Winds: Pioneer Boys Traveling the Overland Trails. Twodot, 2003. 107p. ISBN 0762710209.

The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley

Kosovo is not on our minds much. It is not surprising that The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo by Paula Huntley has not been borrowed from my library recently. But I found it, took it home, and enjoyed reading about a woman's year teaching English in Prishtina, Kosovo.


Though we have pretty much forgotten the former parts of Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Albanians think of us often. They have little trust for the governments of Europe but consider the United States the force of justice on the planet. With NATO and UN forces, we saved them from the Serbian Army which was trying to remove all Albanians from Kosovo in the late 1990s. Naturally, many think of us as friends and hope we will continue to support them with investments and education. Many Kosovar Albanian students dream of learning English, attending college in the United States, and returning to Kosovo to rebuild their country.


Huntley learns all of this first hand from her students, most of whom attend high school. To help them further their language skills, she starts a book club to read in English. Their first book is The Old Man and the Sea, which turns out to speak directly to the plight of down-on-their-luck Kosovars. 


Of course, The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo speaks directly to us. Huntley wonders what role we intend to play in a world in which there seems to be another crisis every week. What will ultimately happen when we seem to never help enough in one country after another?

Huntley, Paula. The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2003. 236p. ISBN 1585422118.

The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan

I am again reading books that no one else has read. In inventorying the collection, I found my library had owned The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan for four years, but no one had checked it out, despite its being only 115 pages, which some of our readers could handle in a night. Perhaps "the end of dreams" idea is something no one wanted to face.

In this case, the dream that seems to have faded away is that a new and better world will form now that the Cold War has ended. The author tells how many people in and out of Western governments around the world thought that democracy and capitalism would sweep the planet soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. According to Kagan, evidence to the contrary began to appear quickly in Tiananmen Square, the Balkan states, Africa, and across the Middle East.

In his book-length essay, Kagan takes us on a tour of problematic countries, showing us how they have changed. India is far different, but most other states have settled into positions similar to those before the fall of the wall. The U.S. is the primary superpower, and the autocratic states of Russia and China are the main competitors (if not enemies). In Kagan's view, the U.S. and the rest of the West are greatly distracted by the troubles in the Mideast and not addressing their own long term interests.

While four years have passed since publication, a time in which world economies have faltered and much has happened in the Islamic world, the overall picture is much the same today. The Return of History and the End of Dreams is still a worthwhile book for readers interested in geopolitics.

Kagan, Robert. The Return of History and the End of Dreams. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. 115p. ISBN 9780307269232.

The Pyramid: and Four Other Kurt Wallander Stories by Henning Mankell

After writing Brandvägg in 1998, translated to Firewall in English, Swedish novelist Henning Mankell indicated that he was no longer intending to write about police inspector Kurt Wallander. Then almost immediately, he put together five stories (not particularly short) into a book to recount Wallander's early years as a policeman and investigator. Published in Sweden in 1999, American readers finally got The Pyramid: and Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries in 2008. The fifth story ends with an early morning phone call telling the groggy inspector to go to a murder scene which any devoted reader will recognize as the start of Faceless Killers, the first Wallander novel.

Though I have read several of the books and seen the Wallander television series with Kenneth Branagh, I made several connections in Wallander's character that I had not before. It helped to witness his relationship with his wife Mona instead of just hearing of it after the separation. The marriage seemed a mistake from the beginning and he could not see it - very much like real life. I also think that his domineering father primed him for involvement with an unsuitable partner. I also found, as in all Wallander books, his lack of personal discipline maddening at times but now see that it is the same unwillingness to adhere to the smart and logical that lets him disregard rules to make important discoveries.

"Wallander's First Case" is particularly interesting to anyone who has read Before the Frost, Mankell's novel about Kurt's daughter Linda. Father and daughter both get drawn into investigations before official police job appointments. Both foolishly put their lives at risk. Unlike all other Wallander stories, "The Man with the Mask" takes place in a single day. In "The Pyramid," Wallander juggles care for his  elderly father with official duties. All are as well crafted as the full-length novels.

Because the Wallander chronicle now starts with The Pyramid: and Four Other Kurt Wallander Stories, it would be a good introduction to the inspector. Readers can try out a story without as much of a time investment as the longer works and might even have a little more insight into the world that Mankell has created.

Mankell, Henning. The Pyramid: and Four Other Kurt Wallander Stories. New Press, 2008. 392p. ISBN 9781565849945.

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Life in 1990s Kiev is hard. The winter is brutal, jobs are scarce, and the government is corrupt. Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov is very lucky to have been hired to write obituaries for the Capital News, though it does seem odd that none of his subjects are dead - yet. He even interviews a few of them. But he can not be choosy about work. He has a penguin to feed.

It is now 2012 and only a year since American readers have gotten an English translation of Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov, a darkly comic tale published in Russian in 1996. Melville House has added it to its growing Melville International Crime Series, paperbacks that give us affordable literary fiction.

Back to Victor and the penguin, whose name is Misha. Both are lonely guys. The impoverished Kiev Zoo gave away most of its animals to anyone who would take them, so Victor took Misha to his apartment where they are lonely together until four-year-old Sonya joins them while her father goes underground. They become an odd sort of family, decorating a Christmas tree and hiding from the gangsters that Victor has unwittingly crossed.

Death and the Penguin is a great read for anyone who enjoys offbeat humor and a totally unfamiliar menacing setting.

Kurkov, Andrey. Death and the Penguin. Melville House, 2011. 228p. ISBN 9781935554554.

Which President Killed a Man? : Tantalizing Trivia and Fun Facts About Our Chief Executives and First Ladies by James Humes

I am weeding books again. As I always do, I find some books whose inactivity surprises me. This time I found Which President Killed a Man? : Tantalizing Trivia and Fun Facts About Our Chief Executives and First Ladies by James Humes. According to our records, we have had it eight years, and no one ever borrowed it. Since I was probably the librarian who bought it, I checked it out and brought it home. I had a great time reading it from cover to cover - though Bonnie may not have appreciated all my "Did you know?" questions.

As you might guess, Which President Killed a Man? is an extensive collection of questions with answers grouped in thematic chapters. The author suggests readers could use it to play trivia games at parties or family get-togethers. That sounds like a nerdy thing to do, but I actually think it would be lots of fun. You have to have the right kinds of friends. (Pete Midkiff, Jack Oliver, Don Richmond, Robert Goehring, or Glenn Kersten might do.)

The book does not look pristine, so I wonder if the circulations stats are to be trusted. Maybe browsers at the library thumbed through it to learn the following:

• Which general was a winner when he faced four other generals in an election?
• Who was the only president to be granted a patent for an invention?
• Who was the only president to be elected to an office of the Confederacy?
• Who was the first president to be born west of the Mississippi River?

James Garfield, Abraham Lincoln, John Tyler, and Herbert Hoover are your answers. Humes tells stories in revealing the answers to these and several hundred other questions. There are two or three questions per page. Much can be learned painlessly.

The author does not seem to have updated the work, but I think there are only a couple of answers that need revising. Check it out if you can find it.

Humes, James. Which President Killed a Man? : Tantalizing Trivia and Fun Facts About Our Chief Executives and First Ladies. Contemporary Books, 2003. 242p. ISBN 0071402233.

Bird Cloud: A Memoir by Annie Proulx

Memoirs revolving around house construction are many. Anthony Shadid told about restoring his great grandfather's house in Marjayoun, Lebanon in House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East. Similarly, Tahir Shah recounted how in Casablanca he turned a ruin into a family home in The Caliph's House. Novelist Annie Proulx describes new construction in rural Wyoming in Bird Cloud: A Memoir.

While Proulx's book will seem less exotic than either of the other books, many of the same themes run through her account. Choosing trusted contractors, buying hard to find materials, and dealing with delays and budgets. All of the authors deal with disappointments and have to make compromises to get their houses built. And what they want is more than a house, as each seems to be dealing with the past, present, and the future.

As a reader, I found Proulx a bit contradictory, as we all are. She says that architects often want unpractical features just for the look. She claims to have more modest wants, but when she is unhappy with a cement floor, she pays a second floor man twice as much to fix the problem. When the floor is still not to her liking, she finds rare tile to cover it. No wonder the house takes so long to build. Still, having dealt with a few house repairs myself, I know the feeling of wanting things right.

After Proulx gets her house built, she turns to the land, a section of prairie and wetland below cliffs along the North Platte River that she seeks to protect for wildlife. The constant wind and severe winters prove too much for year round living, but she makes a necessary compromise. Her wonderful nature descriptions throughout remind readers why she makes the great effort to build.

Proulx, Annie. Bird Cloud: A Memoir. Scribner, 2011. 234p. ISBN 9780743288804.

The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America by William G. Thomas

The course of every war is influenced by the technology of its age. In America's Civil War of 1861-1865, rapid developments in communication and transportation fostered the broadening of the battlefield over greater area, as the telegraph allowed the sending of intelligence and commands and rail travel allowed quick movement of troops. Historian William G. Thomas examines the role of the railroad particularly on the war in The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America.

Thomas starts his history with a look at the state of railroads in the South before the war began. He states that it is a common misconception to portray Souther rails as far behind those of the North. While it is true that many gauges had been used by the many rail lines, the same was actually true in the North. Also, while there were fewer miles of track, there was more track per capita. Southerns were confident in their modern system of transportation, as were important European investors. The advantage for the North was not obvious.

Thomas also describes in detail the state of slavery before the war. The common image is of slaves working on cotton and tobacco plantations. Few readers realize that Southern railroads were quickly becoming a major employer of slaves to lay track, build rail stock, and operate lines. Rail companies had driven the price of slaves higher by buying ande leasing them. Many slave owners were making record profits. Rail lines also used their slave holdings as collateral for loans, when not getting generous grants from the states. Slavery was not going away.

Thomas's account of the use of rails by the military, civilians, and slaves during the war is fascinating. Many campaigns moved along the rail lines, and held lines and stations became obvious targets for guerrilla attacks. The author recounts how efforts to protect rails led to the destruction of many farms and forests along them. The lines also became symbolic of the ties that held the states together.When the Union truly controlled the rails, the South was defeated. The author also explains how the rail lines that had been destroyed and rebuilt many times actually came out of the war expanded and modernized.  


Though not a long book, The Iron Way does require some devotion to read as every page has a wealth of details and stories. Serious Civil War history buffs will enjoy sinking their teeth into this account. 


Thomas, William G. The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America. Yale University Press, 2011. 281p. ISBN 9780300141078.

Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked the Nation by Deborah Davis

The Civil Rights Movement was successful. While there is still prejudice and racism, and while there are still improvements to make, the nation is a more civil place now than before. If you need evidence, please read Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked the Nation by Deborah Davis.

On October 16, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt (who never liked being called Teddy) welcomed African American educator Booker T. Washington to his dinner table in the White House. It was an unpublicized meeting to discussion federal judicial appointments in the South. Though it was Sunday evening with most White House offices closed, one newspaper reporter noticed Washington come and go. In Monday papers, the visit was simply noted, but by Tuesday there was an uproar of disgust across the nation. Columnists and editors in cities both North and South decried the dinner using many racial slurs that would be unimaginable today.

In Guest of Honor, biographer Deborah Davis recounts how Roosevelt and Washington had lived remarkably similar lives up to the evening of their dinner, despite their differences in race and wealth. Then she tells how the dinner and the outcry effected both leaders and their working relationship. It is a good example of focused biography that is informative, entertaining, and quick to read. With Roosevelt being an ever popular subject, it can be found in many public libraries. I enjoyed the book greatly and think it would be an excellent selection for discussion groups.

Davis, Deborah. Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked the Nation. Atria Books, 2012. 308p. ISBN 9781439169810.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander

It has been four years since I listened to Nathan Englander's excellent collection of short stories For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Having greatly enjoyed that book, I was eager to get his new collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. As you might guess from the title, Englander focuses once more on the Jewish experience.

In the title story, an American couple awkwardly entertains another couple who emigrated to Israel several decades earlier. The wives are old friends, but the husbands clash, verbally sparring about issues of politics, orthodoxy, and kosher laws. The Americans are surprised to find that the seemingly zealous Israelis like to smoke pot, and the American wife steals some from her teenage son. Under the influence of the pot, the four begin to question each other about what sabbath laws they would break in emergency situations to save the lives of friends and family. The revelations are uncomfortable for all. 

"Sister Hills" is the most historical of the stories. In it, two zealous families claim farms on adjacent hills in disputed territory intent on forming new settlements. While the region becomes a metropolis, one family thrives, but the other is reduced through war and misfortune to only the matriarch. In a desperate attempt to find solace, she demands the payment of a terrible debt, bringing heartache to all. Her struggle to get her way involves the invoking of Jewish laws.

There are six more stories, each read by a different reader on the unabridged audiobook. With each, Englander creates a different world, showing great range of setting, pacing, and mood. All revolve around the ways Jewish laws are interpreted and applied. Serious book discussion groups should consider this worthy collection.

Englander, Nathan. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. Knopf, 2012. 207p. ISBN 9780307958709.

6 compact discs. Books on Tape, 2012. ISBN 9780307989314.

Life Itself: A Memoir by Roger Ebert

Like many people my age, I discovered film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times watching Sneak Previews, a PBS movie review program that paired him with Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune. I enjoyed their jolly and sometimes heated rivalry which framed an entertaining selection of clips from upcoming and recently released movies. They proved so popular that PBS could not keep them, and they started a syndicated program, which Bonnie and I watched on Saturdays right before Star Trek The Next Generation. The program later moved to Disney and ran until Siskel's death in 1999. Ebert tells much about his friendship with Siskel, their programs, and much, much more in Life Itself: A Memoir.

Ebert begins his collection of autobiographical essays with a description of his current life. Complications from thyroid cancer which has destroyed much of his jaw have left him unable to eat, drink, and speak since 2006. Still intent of reviewing films and commenting on life, he blogs and writes books. In this book, film fans will particularly enjoy his personal essays about actors and directors, including Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Woody Allen, Russ Meyer, and Robert Altman. Ebert fans will enjoy the stories of his childhood and youth at the beginning and the later essays that deal with his current life and about finding love and a new family.

I listened to the memoir read brilliantly by Edward Herrmann, quickly forgetting that it was not Ebert's own voice recounting his life. Throughout Ebert is quite open about his family's problems, beating alcoholism, failed romances, and religious doubts, saying he has often been told that he "over-shares," but I found him refreshingly candid. I especially enjoyed hearing about his love of books and movies. 

Life Itself is highly entertaining, and many readers will identify with Ebert's family and school experiences (and wish they had his job). It can be found in many public libraries.

Ebert, Roger. Life Itself: A Memoir. Grand Central Pub., 2011. 436P. ISBN 9780446584975.

12 compact discs. AudioGO, 2011. ISBN 9781611137927.

Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini

For the holiday, here is a book about the evolution of our national character.

If you are like me, and you probably are, you have not read all of the historically important books. You may find lists of such books interesting and resolve to read them all. If so, you will appreciate Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini. Thirteen books is such a reasonable number to contemplate reading. Also, Parini's reports on the books may tell you all you want to know and relieve you from the self-imposed obligation to read them.

I found that I had read five of Parini's thirteen:

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Walden
• Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• On the Road

It has been years since I read any of these, except Twain's book about Huck Finn. I enjoyed rediscovering the stories and learning what impact they have had on literature, politics, and society.

Of the other eight, I did not even know of The Promised Land by Mary Antin. According to Parini, this 1912 memoir was widely read at a time when many immigrants from Eastern Europe were struggling to fit into an American society that was not so accommodating as they had been led to believe it would be. Reading Parini's summary is enough for now. I learned much about the willpower that made many immigrants succeed.

I also will not plan to read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock, or The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, for I think I have read plenty of the titles they spawned.

I have read portions of Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, The Federalist Papers, and The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Reading only selections is recommended for all of these.

That leaves The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches by W.E.B. Du Bois. It sounds like it might be a very interesting read.

If you want more than thirteen books, Parini does add a list of 100 more in the appendix. Happy reading.

Parini, Jay. Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America. Doubleday, 2008. 385p. ISBN 9780385522762.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin

I was slow to warm to Steve Martin. I vaguely liked some of his goofy standup routines on television's The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and other variety programs, but he seemed to repeat himself in various appearances. All the standup comedians did. Their routines were like pop songs that some people liked to hear again and again. A few years later, one of my college roommates was greatly impressed and liked to say "I'm a wild and crazy guy," but I did not pay that much attention. I was not won over until the movie version of Little Shop of Horrors - Martin was great as the dentist. Then there was the movie Roxanne, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Of course by then Martin had left standup far behind.

In Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, Martin lovingly looks back on his childhood and his evolving comedy career. It is a great coming-up-from-the-bottom story, starting with young Steve doing magic tricks at Disneyland long before he was legally old enough to work. He honed his skills at Knott's Berry Farm mixing magic, banjo, and jokes, getting $2.00 a show. Money hardly mattered. Life was great on the stage. Life at home, however, was not so good. On one occasion his angry father reacted to a smart remark and beat Steve up.

I listened to Martin skillfully read his book and was greatly moved by his matter-of-fact honesty. He expresses some regrets, but he never dwells on the bad and moves on. He is also very funny at times. I especially laughed at a thing his ninety year old mother said from her bed in a nursing home. I won't spoil it for you by telling.

After listening Born Standing Up, I checked out the book to see its many pictures. I had forgotten that he ever had dark hair. The one with the beard will make you laugh.

Martin, Steve. Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. Scribner, 2007. 207p. ISBN 9781416553649.


4 compact discs. Recorded Books, 2007. ISBN 9781428181052

Rereading of The Girl from Foreign

When traveling to new places, I enjoy hours of looking out car or bus windows, noticing the traffic, trees, flowers, fields, mountains, wildlife, livestock, bridges, side roads, houses, and people. Perhaps it is then natural for me to enjoy travel books describing drives to remote destinations. I am please by accounts such as those in The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home by Sadia Shepard, which I am rereading for a book club discussion. 

Rereading is not something I often do, as there are so many books left to read, but it is enlightening to see how a book can be so different a second time. My memory from the first reading is an emphasis on Shepard's own spiritual/emotional journey. That is still present but I see how much she tells us about the people and places that she encountered in my second reading. The mostly forgotten story of the Jew in India suggests that much of what happened in the 20th century did not have to happen as it did.

I puzzled over some of the photos, wishing Shepard had written captions. I also would have enjoyed some maps in the book. Still, rereading was journey worth taking again, as there is a rich mixture of past and present and places I could not gone had not Shepard taken me there.


Shepard, Sadia. The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home. Penguin Press, 2008. ISBN 9781594201516.

The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I remember reading a lot of poetry in 7th grade when Mrs. Coates required that each student put together a poetry scrapbook. I recall cutting out pictures from my parents magazines and gluing them to lined notebook paper on which I then hand-copied poems from library books. Most of the work was done the night before the project was due, and the photos were as random as the poems. For the slapdash effort, I did not get as high a grade as I usually earned. I am sure that with a word processing program and photos from the Internet I could do a much better job now. In minutes.

Around this time I was introduced to the long historical piece "The Courtship of Miles Standish" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which at least has a story, unlike some of the poems that we read. It dramatises the early days of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts when Standish, the commander of the colony's small militia, asked his friend John Alden to communicate the commander's love to orphaned beauty Priscilla Mullins, whose family members had died just before or after the landing of the Mayflower. Standish was sure that the bookish Alden could find better words to win the heart of the young lady. Many readers will remember that Priscilla turns the tables and said to the messenger, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"

I found an illustrated edition of Longfellow's poem in our collection. The verso says copyright 1903 below dates of 1858, 1886, 1883, and 1888, in that order. The paintings and drawings by Howard Chandler Christy have very hard to read dates by the signatures. One looks like 1923. Maybe it is 1903. It is a handsome book. Even the text has a subtle background design.

I was surprised to find no rhyming, but I am not surprised to find 19th century attitudes toward women and American Indians. I'll bet this is not taught in many schools today. It probably should be (in context) so students can understand how attitudes have changed. It could be paired with an unedited The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Another funny thing is that is more about John and Priscilla than about Standish. Check it out yourself and see what you think.

Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris by Christopher Kemp

I am inclined to read any book dealing with New Zealand and enjoy investigative reporting, so Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris by Christopher Kemp was a welcomed reading assignment for me. (Thanks, Brad.) I did not know, however, whether I could read a whole book about a strange substance that comes from the intestines of sperm whales. Luckily for me and others who may chose to read this unusual book, Kemp is a clever author who keeps us entertained with his obsession to find ambergris while instructing us in natural history and varied uses of the strange rock.

So what is ambergris? It is a substance that builds up in the intestines of one in every hundred sperm whale's intestines. The statistic is based on findings of whalers who cut open whales. It is thought that the substance obstructs and eventually kills some whales. In their demise and putrefaction (or being torn apart by scavengers), the ambergris is released and might float around the oceans for months or years before it washes up on be aches, such as those of New Zealand. There, if found, it can sell for many thousands of dollars.

Identifying ambergris is really difficult, as the curing time and environment can effect its appearance greatly. The key is its smell, which may be described as a mixture of cow dung, tobacco, mown grass, turned earth, vanilla, Brazil nuts, and violets. You may be surprised to learn that it is used by the makers of very expensive perfumes, who bid on ambergris finds at exclusive auctions. Readers learn much about the valuable substance as Kemp combs beaches and travels the world in search of experts, some of whom are particularly strange characters.

I hope this book does not just get lost back in the science shelves, as it is entertaining.

Kemp, Christopher. Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris. University of Chicago Press, 2012. 232p. ISBN 9780226430362.

Pravda: A Fleet Street Comedy by Howard Brenton and David Hare

Bonnie and I attended a slew of plays when we spent two weeks in and around London in late spring 1985. I was reminded of this when I found Pravda: A Fleet Street Comedy by Howard Brenton and David Hare at my library. At the National Theatre we saw Anthony Hopkins in the role of Lambert Le Roux, a very Rupert Murdoch-like newspaper tycoon. We knew of Hopkins from several programs that we had seen on Masterpiece Theater. He was big then but not as big as he would become soon after. We were very lucky to get tickets, as the play had just debuted. We were at the right place at the right time to get returned tickets and had great seats.

After 27 years, my memory of the actual play is fuzzy, so I borrowed and read the book. I was surprised to learn that we also saw a young Bill Nighy as La Roux's evil aide Eaton Sylvester. I verified this with the playbill, which we still have. In Pravda, La Roux and Sylvester dissect the very lax-standards British newspaper publishing industry for their own profit. The comedy is very dark in this play that foresaw much that seems to have become true in Britain and the U.S.

If you have not tried reading plays since high school, let me recommend them to you. They are usually dramatic (of course) and take just an hour or two to read (depending on your reading speed).

Brenton, Howard and David Hare. Pravda: A Fleet Street Comedy. Metheun Inc., 1985. 148p. No ISBN.

The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose

When I reviewed Letters from Eden: A Year at Home, in the Woods by Julie Zickefoose nearly three years ago, only one library in our local library consortium had bought the book, which was already three years old at the time. Only two of the libraries have bought her 2011 book, Backyard Birding. I am happy to report that in 2012 her latest book is getting more attention. Already 16 libraries in the SWAN consortium have her new work The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds.

Zickefoose, a columnist for Bird Watcher's Digest and contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered, has always been a good storyteller, but her entertaining collection of bird rescue stories in The Bluebird Effect is worthy of the increased attention it is getting. As the only local person willing to take injured birds into her Ohio home, she is often called upon to raise orphans or rehabilitate songbirds who have been attacked by cats or run in to picture windows. She has cooked gruel and diced mealworms for her patients while raising her own children. Most of the birds have either been released or died in her care. A few that could not be returned to the wild became members of her family.

Each chapter focuses on a different bird species and may recount several cases. Most focus on the behavior of the birds and how she was able to work with them. A few chapters near the end question human actions that harm birds, sometimes sending patients her way.

I want to emphasize that Zickefoose is also an artist whose drawings and water color portraits of birds illustrate all of her books. These beautiful books would be great to own.

Zickefoose, Julie. The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds. Houghton Mifflin, 2012. 355p. ISBN 9780547003092.

The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts

The oceans are so big that we have long believed that nothing we could do would ever effect them. Our pollution and garbage should just disappear into the vastness. And the fish are so numerous that we should be able to harvest them at will. If the fish in one area dwindle, there should always be somewhere else to cast our nets or lines.

In a similar vein, most of us living away from the coasts do not believe the oceans to be of much consequence to us.

According the marine environmentalist Callum Roberts in his new book The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea, our assumptions are all wrong. The oceans have been absorbing our excess carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and various air pollutants for centuries, serving as a planetary safety valve, but now water temperatures and acidity are rising. The combination is killing the coral reefs that protect many shores from ocean storms. Warm water is shifting air currents, changing the weather of many regions. Because the air is also warming, glaciers are melting and the oceans are rising. Global warming is already here and will be difficult to abate.

Also, the fish are not so unlimited as believed. Huge industrial fishing ships have systematically taken so many fish that populations of some species have crashed. While they take all the large breeding individuals, they often also destroy breeding grounds. As our world population increases, we are hampered by the constant reduction of fish caught.

While Roberts excels at describing what has brought about our ocean of troubles, he is not a pessimist. He argues that we have no choice but to make the best of the bad situation - and soon. He proposes stricter regulations of fishing, reduction of the use of fossil fuels, and restoration of natural environments as the key to the survival of life at sea and on land.

The Ocean of Life follows Roberts' acclaimed The Unnatural History of the Sea. It will appeal to readers of natural history and current events.

Roberts, Callum. The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea. Viking, 2012. ISBN 9780670023547.

Remarkable Creatures: A Novel by Tracy Chevalier

It is often said that a benefit of belonging to a book discussion group is being required to read books that would not otherwise come home with you. This is true. I would not have chosen to read Remarkable Creature by Tracy Chevalier if it had not been our book for May. Having seen Girl with a Pearl Earring, I had a positive impression of Chevalier, but fiction is not my usual reading fare. (Although I have listened to several novels in the last month as it is often hard to find nonfiction audiobooks that I want.)

It certainly helped that Remarkable Creatures is historical, as history is one of my main interests, and the substantial dose of science made the book more appealing for me. I liked reading how fossils would have been discovered, collected, preserved, and studies in the early part of the nineteenth century. I also enjoyed the early women's rights movement part of the story. Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot are characters with who I sympathize, and I was glad to learn at the end that they were real people.

Of course, not everyone see things as I do. One member of the discussion group wished all the science had been cut by the author, but I don't think Chevalier would have had an interest in the story without the fossils and the issues of religious men of science accepting the idea of evolution. It appears that all her stories revolve around the history of women in the arts and science. Her novels might even make good listening for this summer's gardening if my supply of history and biography runs dry again.

Chevalier, Tracy. Remarkable Creatures. Dutton, 2010. 310p. ISBN 9780525951452.

Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter by Frank Deford

Just like Queen Elizabeth II, it seems like sportswriter Frank Deford has always been here. As long as I can remember, he has been writing for Sports Illustrated, appearing on television, and commenting on sports for National Public Radio. He's also published 18 books (or more). In truth, the queen has Deford beat by ten years, as he did not start his job until 1962. Still, that is 50 years in sports reporting about which he writes in his new book Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter.

Sports Illustrated was a much different magazine when he started. As the least of weeklies from Time-Life, it focused more on individual athlete sports, such as boxing, track, golf, and tennis, than on team sports, such as football or basketball. A horse was more likely to make the cover than a basketball player. Having played a bit of high school basketball, he knew more than most of the reporters and got some early assignments that no one else wanted.

As television coverage of games spread, print sports became less about reporting games and more about examining the players. That was where Deford excelled. He interviewed many of the key athletes and executives who transformed their sports and society, including Muhammad Ali, Billy Jean King, Wilt Chamberlain, and Pete Rozelle. The person that he seems to have admired most, however, was tennis champion Arthur Ashe, about whom he writes several chapters.

Over Time serves as a memoir in that Deford tells about his work and travels. Highlights are his editorship of the ill-fated The National and his role in the famous Lite Beer commercials. Still, the book is more about his times than himself. Over Time is especially reader-friendly for people just like me, boomers who enjoy sports in a context of their times.

Deford, Frank. Over Time: My Life as a Sports Writer. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012.354p. ISBN 9780802120151.

Review for Read On Biography and Other Read On News

The first of the reviews for my book Read On ... Biography is out. Booklist likes it. I appreciate the word "essential." If you have not heard, I reviewed 450 biographies, most written since the year 2000. They are organized by appeal factors into topical lists. There are author-title and subject indices to help you find books that you know, which are grouped with books that you might try. Of course, I would like to see Read On .. Biography in libraries everywhere.

Here is other Read On news. In celebration of National Audiobook Month, Libraries Unlimited is offering a 20% discount on Joyce Saricks' Read On...Audiobooks for the month of June. Use promo code 12LU189B to receive the special offer. You may read more about the book and order from http://www.abc-clio.com/product.aspx?isbn=9781591588047.

Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story by Dame Daphne Sheldrick

This is very much a biography and should not be assigned Dewey 639 where it will be lost.

For a number of years, Bonnie has been a fan and avid supporter of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Orphan's Nursery in Nairobi National Park. Every month she receives email reports from Dame Daphne Sheldrick about the rescue and rehabilitation of orphaned elephants. Until recently, there were notes and pictures of Zarura, the elephant that Bonnie sponsors, but he has chosen to leave the sanctuary and live wild. Bonnie passes the reports to me, so I also learn about dramatic rescues, wonderful keepers, mud baths, soccer games, and special friendships among dozens of orphan elephants. We are not the only fans.

Thanks to Elephant Diaries on Animal Planet, a couple of stories on CBS's 60 Minutes, and the 3-D IMAX film Born to Be Wild, many people now follow and contribute to the trust. Some of them even travel to Kenya to visit the nursery and witness the daily feedings and baths of the orphans. So we are the target audience for Dame Daphne Sheldrick's new autobiography Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story, in which she recounts a lifetime of caring for orphaned animals. Even as a girl on a farm in the Kenyan highlands, she befriended numerous small mammals and birds that had been orphaned or injured. Her stories about the creatures are always entertaining and sometimes sad, as many do fail to thrive or become the prey of other creatures.

Much of Love, Life, and Elephants is a romance, as the author tells about her life with her second husband David Sheldrick, the warden of Tsavo National Wildlife Park for over twenty years. It was David who introduced her to fostering large mammals, including elephants and rhinoceros. Together the Sheldricks worked to expand Kenya's parks, protect the animals from poaching and habitat loss, and develop ecological tourism at a time when Kenya was given its independence and was struggling with political corruption. Sheldrick is a congenial writer with a wealth of stories and passionate about her cause. Her book should be popular with many readers.

Sheldrick, Dame Daphne. Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. 352p. ISBN 9780374104573.

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon

I'll be brief. I listened to another Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery just a few weeks after listening to A Noble Radiance. This time I got Dressed for Death in audio on compact discs. It was originally titled The Anonymous Venetian. I am working my way to the beginning of the series, having had book 7 and now book 3.

What I like best about Leon's mysteries is just hanging out with her main character. Guido is a likable family man, who seems to truly regret that his work demands so much time that he misses important events, in this case a family vacation in the mountains. Instead, he stays in a blistering heat of Venice to solve a murder, which turns into a case of murders. His family complains, but they still seem to really love him and understand how important his work is to him. There seems a warm acceptance when they are reunited.

How Guido handles suspects, witnesses, and survivors and relates to his boss and other police drives the story more than solving the mystery. The police seem to spend much time just gathering facts with no idea what they are seeking in the two books I have read. Then toward the end, the commissario understands and goes out on a limb to challenge the guilty party. The two books that I have read were similar in that there was no rush to get to the solution, giving me time to just watch the commissario work in a city that I would like to visit. Good reading.

Leon, Donna. Dressed for Death. BBC Audiobooks America, 1994. ISBN 9780792763666.

The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case by Alexander McCall Smith

Chat shorthand for this blog: BBHGB. "Bonnie brings home good books." I say that often. The latest is The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case by Alexander McCall Smith with illustrations by Iain McIntosh. McCall Smith has written a No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book for young readers. I see that the Downers Grove Public Library copy identifies it as 3rd-4th grade reading. I liked it, too.

To be specific, it is a pre-No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book as it tells the story of the first mystery that Precious Ramotswe solved as a school girl in Botswana. I hope more are to come. I learned more about the sleuth and her revered father Obed Ramotswe, who tells a wonderful story early in the book. Teachers will like The Great Cake Mystery, too, as it has discussion questions, a short glossary of geographical terms, and curriculum suggestions in the back.

It would be fun if someone would write young Miss Marple or young Poirot mysteries. There are young Sherlock books.

BBHGB.

McCall Smith, Alexander. The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case. Anchor Books, 2012. 73p. ISBN 9780307949448.

Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir by Joyce Farmer

I have forgotten who recommended Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir by Joyce Farmer. I think that it was one of my friends on Goodreads or Facebook. If you remember who you are, accept my thanks. Once it reached the top of my stack of books to read, I read from it every chance that I had.

I suspect many people who would really appreciate Special Exits have not seen it. Boomers taking care of their elderly parents are not as a group very aware of graphic novels. That's too bad, because the book dramatizes a situation in which they may find themselves - trying to respectfully manage the lives of people who have lost the ability to care for themselves. The complications are many: bad health, poverty, delusions, loss of memory, reluctance to accept help, etc. The demands are many: sacrifice time, negotiate calmly, tolerate idiosyncrasies, lose battles gracefully, and learn to guide the elderly to make the decisions that you know that they have to make.

Special Exits is presented as a true story for which all the names have been changed. The daughter taking care of her father and stepmother over the course of four years makes some mistakes and only slowly learns what she can and cannot accomplish. We can all hope never to be so challenged as the daughter, but we should probably all be ready to step up to do what we have to do. Reading Special Exits beforehand may help.

Farmer, Joyce. Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir. Fantagraphics Books, 2010. 200p. ISBN 9781606993811.

Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles: A Muppet Sketchbook by Alison Inches

Our library has had several requests for books about Muppet founder Jim Henson lately. A new generation of teens is interested in puppetry, animation, and television and coming to our desk seeking instruction and inspiration. Through interlibrary loan I found Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles by Alison Inches to be a helpful title. With access to the Jim Henson archives, the author discovered many sketches showing the energetic muppet master's creative process. She arranged them into chapters recounting Henson's early career, his construction of muppets, his production of commercials in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and his efforts to get his own television show.

I enjoyed seeing early sketches showing the birth of characters who were only fully realized years later. Oscar the Grouch started as orange instead of green. Bert and Ernie came after a series of short-and-tall friends. Even Kermit was not a frog in the beginning.

Boomers can appreciate the book for different reasons than the teens. The author includes biographical and historical details that will remind them of their own early years. The publisher should should bring this fun book back to print.

Inches, Alison. Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles: A Muppet Sketchbook. Harry N. Abrams, 2001. 127p. ISBN 0810932407.

Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith

If I had Silly Fun Awards to grant, I'd probably give the first to Monty Python's Flying Circus and then bestow one on Gary Larson for his The Far Side comics. Then I'd give one to author Alexander McCall Smith for Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. I just listened again to Portuguese Irregular Verbs, the first book in the series in which readers follow the ridiculous life of philologist Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. He is occasionally called Maria.

The learned professor is famous for his 1,200 page text titled, of course, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, of which nearly 200 copies have been sold in a decade. At one point in the story, he discovers that only two copies have sold in the previous year, and he worries so much about whether a colleague bought a copy, he schemes to get in the fellow's apartment to check his bookshelves. Book sales aside, he is famous enough in the world of philology to receive constant requests that he speak at conferences. At each, like all of the other philologists, he repeats the same lecture. He is greatly excited when a new member of the brotherhood presents a new topic.

My favorite story is about the professor falling in love with his dentist who so skillfully and quickly relieves his toothache. Can you guess what he gives her as a thank you? If you can, you may also foresee the result of his courtship. In another chapter he recalls a trip to rural Ireland as assistant to a professor studying old Irish vulgarities. The moral of this story is be careful where you leave your transcriptions. 

Portuguese Irregular Verbs is wonderful in print or audio, as read skillfully by Paul Hecht. It is followed by The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances.

McCall Smith, Alexander. Portuguese Irregular Verbs. Anchor Books, 2005. 128p. ISBN 1400077087.

4 compact discs. Recorded Books, 2004. ISBN 1402590504

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt is pleasurable listening. I really enjoyed hearing Ballerini's pronounciations of the many Roman and Italian names that were a part of the story of the discovery and copying of On the Nature of Things, a poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. The Epicurean poet would approve, as the seeking of pleasure is a central theme to his first century B. C. poem that posed that all matter was made of tiny atoms.

One of those great Italian names was Poggio Bracciolini, a personal secretary to an overthrown pope. Poggio (Greenblatt always calls him by the first name) used the freedom he had after losing his job to visit out of the way monasteries to see what forgotten classical texts he could find. As soon as he found a ninth century copy of On the Nature of Things, he recognized it as an important missing text. Because he could not borrow the book, he hired a scribe to make a copy, which he sent to a friend who contracted the making of copies in a better hand.

Greenblatt contends that Poggio's discovery was a key event of the Renaissance, for the ideas contained in the poem were spread to dissenters who eventually broke the power of the Roman Catholic Church to restrict scientific investigation and discussion. The idea of atomic particles was considered by church officials to be a direct attack on the miracle of the eucharist. Poggio escaped being punished because he worked during a brief period of liberal thought but many others were burned at the stake later when the church tried to suppress the poem.

The story told by Greenblatt is epic in size, including Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance history. The conclusions even include William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Darwin. The Swerve is a bestseller worth reading and keeping.

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Recorded Books, 2011. 8 compact discs. ISBN 9781461838227.

Steve Justman Plays Friday at the Ford

Steve Justman is a collector of songs, and like many collectors, he likes to show others what he's found. That's what you'd expect from a folksinger, a role Steve plays well. In his Friday at the Ford concert at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, to the delight of the audience, he pulled 18 songs out of his big bag. Many were familiar without being from a predictable playlist of the past, each ripe for rediscovery. A few old songs from outside the mainstream of popular music were revelations. "High on a Mountain" by the Appalachian singer/songwriter Ola Bella Reed is the best example of something old that was totally new to most of the listeners.

Steve is also a historian of American song. For almost every song he provided a context, often noting singers and songwriters, but sometimes adding personal reflections. What became obvious is that he has crossed musical genres all his life. It seems natural that he was able to sing Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" to his between two country classics. People sand along, as they did with Steve Goodman's "The City of New Orleans." My favorite of the night was "You Got Me Singing the Blues," sung more in the sty;e of Guy Mitchell than Marty Robbins.

I enjoyed talking about music with Steve while he packed his guitars and banjo away, being just hours away from a trip to Minnesota to play bass for June's Got the Cash, a June Carter and Johnny Cash tribute band. He's be back in the Chicago area soon, playing for senior centers, farmers' markets, and libraries. See his website for the schedule.

Karen Cries on the Bus a film by Gabriel Rojas Vera

We have all imagined, if only for a moment, the lives of strangers. Most of us guess a few stereotypical details and drop the matter quickly. Colombian film director Gabriel Rojas Vera, however, after seeing a woman quietly crying on a bus in Bogata, wrote and directed the film Karen Cries on the Bus, the story of a timid woman trying to break away from her marriage to find a more satisfying life. From the opening scene of Karen on a late night bus, viewers know something has gone wrong in her life.

Dressed nicely, if somewhat plainly, she seems out of place on the bus and in the poor neighborhood in which she drags her rolling suitcase. In the dark, she pleads for a room and overpays. In the morning, after she discovers the filth and insects, she begins her search for a job with which to support herself. The quest is, of course, difficult for a woman who has never worked outside the home, and her resolve is quickly tested by offers from her mother and husband to let her return to where they want her.

The director has said that he was quite astonished by the strong response to his film by women in his country. He thought he was telling an individual's story, but many women of Colombia and elsewhere identify with Karen's struggle against the demand that she return to the role her family had assigned her as a youth. Our film discussion group at the library was sympathetic and appreciated the artful storytelling. Karen Cries on the Bus is a good addition to foreign film collections.

Rojas Vera, Gabriel. Karen Cries on the Bus. Film Movement, 2011. ISBN 9781461843849.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams

Mark Adams had not slept in a tent since childhood - and rarely then - when he decided to hike through the Andes Mountains of Peru to follow the path of the archeologist Hiram Bingham III, whose National Geographic articles one hundred years ago sparked international interest in Machu Picchu. With Australian guide John Leivers and a small Peruvian support team, he visited a network of holy Inca ruins connected by the surprisingly intact Inca Trail over high mountains and into deep valleys. He reports on his discoveries about the Incas, Bingham, and modern Peru in his highly descriptive travel memoir Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time.

"Discover" is an often misused word, according to Adams, especially when used with explorers. Machu Picchu had never actually been lost. Local villagers had always known it was there in an emerald valley sometimes described as a jewel box. To his credit, Bingham and National Geographic made the world aware and in awe of the Inca city, probably saving it from destruction.

I am surprised to see relatively few libraries have added Turn Right at Machu Picchu (according to Worldcat which can sometimes be a slow indicator). I enjoyed Adams report which recounts Peruvian history from the times of the Conquistadors to the present. I had not known about the lawsuit over antiquities between the nation of Peru and Yale University Museums or about the landowners who claim Peru never paid them for the nationalization of their property. Even more I enjoyed his account of hiking to great Andean vistas. I hope Adams plans more adventures and books.

Adams, Mark. Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time. Dutton, 2011. 333p. ISBN 9780525952244.

Room for Improvement: Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports by John Casey

I could count if I knew what to count, but I don't. What are the twelve sports to which John Casey refers in his new book Room for Improvement: Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports? I don't see a list on the cover or in the preface. There are 24 chapters whose titles are not "Number 1: Swimming," "Number 2: Hiking," and so forth. Is survival training a sport? Do we differentiate between canoeing and sculling? He mentions throwing a shot-put once - do I count it? Do I count hunting and fishing? Maybe teasing readers?

Casey is a novelist, so maybe he is trained not to be so obvious as to include lists in his autobiographical essays. As readers we are supposed to discover his story of sport a little at a time, cheering as he turns his law school era fatness into hard and lean fitness and then staying actively athletic for fifty years. Most of that time is spent outdoors, and many of his activities are extreme. Would you run-walk 50 miles on your 50th birthday? Casey recounts his efforts with enthusiasm and vivid detail. The most gripping story is about his three weeks spent with Outward Bound off the coast of Maine. It is all what-does-not-kill-you-makes-you-stronger stuff.

I enjoyed Room for Improvement but not enough to reread to count the sports. If you can count them, let me know.

Casey, John. Room for Improvement: Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports. Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 229p. ISBN 9780307700025.

A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon

Readers' advisory expert Joyce Saricks has always said that readers do not have to start mystery series with the first book. I wanted an audiobook and found a handful of Commissario Brunetti Mysteries by Donna Leon on the shelf at the Downers Grove Public Library. I took the one with the oldest copyright home (after checking it out, of course).

Over several days while driving and gardening, I enjoyed listening to Samuel Gillies read A Nobel Radiance, a cold case mystery in which Venice's police detective Guido Brunetti seeks to discover who killed the young heir of a shipping fortune. Two years after his kidnapping, a body had been found in a field. Wondering why the criminals would leave a valuable signet ring beside the bones, Brunetti restarts the investigation.

A Nobel Radiance is a leisurely-paced procedural mystery in which readers spend almost as much time learning about Brunetti, his family, his colleagues, and the city of Venice. In the course of several weeks, the detective learns much about the victim and his family without discovering a suspect or a motive. Readers won't mind, however, for just following the life of Brunetti is entertaining. They will learn that Brunetti is persistent and finally recognizes without hard evidence the situation leading to the crime.

After finishing the book, I checked and found A Nobel Radiance is actually the seventh title in what is soon to be a 21 book series. That is good for me, as I'd like to read more.

Leon, Donna. A Noble Radiance. Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0142003190.

7 compact discs. Clipper Audio, 1999. ISBN 1402545118.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Being a big baseball fan, I also enjoy a good baseball novel every now and then, such as The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It tells the story of Henry Skrimshander, a college shortstop who loses his confidence right at the point that he ties a national record for the most games without an error, a record held by his idol, former St. Louis Cardinal Aparicio Rodriguez. The Art of Fielding is the title of Aparicio's collection of quotes about the philosophy of playing shortstop, a book that Henry reads constantly.

Henry's breakdown comes at terrible time for the surging Westish College Harpooners and four others on the campus by the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. Subplots involving the president of the college, his daughter, the Harpooners' catcher, and Henry's gay roommate divert readers from the shortstop's struggles for chapters at a time.

Baseball is only one of the elements of the unpredictable story. Literary readers will enjoy the discussions of architecture, philosophy, women's rights, campus promiscuity, drug use, and environmentalism. The writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville are quoted alongside the words of Aparicio Rodriguez. Like many others who have reviewed The Art of Fielding, I was greatly entertained.

Harbach, Chad. The Art of Fielding. Little, Brown, and CO., 2011. 512p. ISBN 9780316126694.

Hachette Audio, 2011. 14 compact discs. ISBN 9781611132106.

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: A Graphic Novel by Wilfred Santiago

I wanted to like 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: A Graphic Novel by Wilfred Santiago, but I wanted a fuller biography of the Hall of Fame baseball player. The art work effectively evokes the poverty of Puerto Rico and the grit of industrial Pittsburgh, and I think Santiago succeeds in dramatizing the big games, but 21 is just highlights from the great Pirate outfielder's life with lots of gaps. Turn a page, and years have passed without explanation. Knowing baseball history, I am able to fill in the gaps, but I can't imagine a young reader can.

21 is still an attractive introduction to learning about baseball of the 1950s to 1970s. I hope it encourages young readers to probe further. A more complete profile of the Pirate can be found in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss. Dismiss the "last hero" idea though as there have been many worthy players after Clemente.

Santiago, Wilfred. 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: A Graphic Novel. Fantagraphic Books, 2011. ISBN 9781560978923.

The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret by Kent Hartman

Do you know what "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel, "California Dreaming" by the Mamas and the Papas, "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire, "Help Me, Rhonda" by the Beach Boys, "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra, "Up, Up and Away" by the 5th Dimension, "Close to You" by the Carpenters, and most of the early recordings by the Tijuana Brass, Monkees, the Union Gap, and Grass Roots all have in common? The same drummer, Hal Blaine. "How could this be?" you might ask. While some of the acts above obviously needed back-up musicians, other were supposed to be self-sufficient bands playing their own music. Was Blaine in all of the music groups above? The answers to these questions are found in the new history The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret by Kent Hartman.

The unofficially-named Wrecking Crew were a couple of dozen or so studio musicians whom record producers used to improve the singles that they were releasing in the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. While well paid by the standards of the era, most were never credited on album covers or in the press. Particularly with groups like the Beach Boys, Byrds, Doors, Association, Grass Roots, and Union Gap, the record company marketers and the groups themselves did not want it known that they had had help making their records sound good. Fans might have been disappointed to learn the boys in the magazines were not really playing on the records.

In The Wrecking Crew, Hartman tells a fairly chronological story about what went on in the recording studios around Los Angeles with a few side trips to London, New York, Chicago, and Nashville. Each chapter is named after a song, such "The Limbo Rock" or "Classical Gas," and recounts the unfolding of musical discovery against studio politics. Central characters include Blaine, Glen Campbell, Phil Spector, Jimmy Webb, and Carol Kaye, the sole woman in the Crew.

I could hardly put The Wrecking Crew down, but I am a Boomer who was enthralled with the music described. With so many names, it will be a tough read for someone from a younger generation. Still, there is a lot to learn for anyone and a nice list of songs in the appendix to help. I'm sure they are all on You-Tube.

Hartman, Kent. The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret. Thomas Dunne Books, 2012. 292p. ISBN 9780312619749.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

What role does expectation play in a reader's satisfaction with a book? I only read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen because my book club chose it for April. I knew it was well received by book critics and popular with the reading public at large, but it had not made my to-read list. I'm not sure why as I have enjoyed memoirs of women who radically changed their circumstances, including The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball and Claiming Ground by Laura Bell. I think I anticipated not liking an everything-is-a-joke tone but was pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed Janzen's humorous story telling and rich language.

Others in the book group expected more from Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and were disappointed. They found they could not understand why Janzen remained so long in an abusive relationship when she was so smart and had the means to withdraw. Several thought she was unkind in descriptions of others, including family. Some even distrusted her account. So many memoirs have been exposed as false lately that this is inevitable.

The story rang true to me, as I know people who never act to improve their situations, holding on to hopeless relationships until the others leave. As for being unkind, I would not wish to be assessed by Janzen, but i think she is as critical of herself, and I think there is merit in telling the story as she does. I hope friends and family will forgive her. Maybe they shake their heads and say Rhoda is just being Rhoda.

Through humor and self-exposure, Janzen tells a story that both entertains and philosophizes. Entering her world for several evenings is time well spent.

Janzen, Rhoda. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home. Henry Holt, 2009. 241p. ISBN 9780805089257.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson is one of the finalists that did not win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year. None of the finalist did, which is what has stirred a debate. What has not risen, at least in the libraries that I monitor, is an interest in the book. I found it on the shelf in my library and see numerous other copies just sitting in the libraries around the Chicago suburbs. That's too bad, for it is quite a good book.

Some of the Pulitzer board seems to have thought Train Dreams too small to win a big prize. I'd counter that their prize for poetry often goes to very thin books and that the language of narration in Train Dreams is superb - almost like poetry. Of course, the quality of narration is all in the eye of the individual reader. Train Dreams was also first published in The Paris Review in 2002, which may have turned some board members against it.

I like historical fiction and entered the world of the Idaho Panhandle in the early 20th century willingly. Men were still working in lumber camps, hauling trees with horses, and floating them down rivers. If they could not afford a train ticket, losing their money to gamblers or prostitutes, they walked days to get home after the camps break. Winters were severe and forest fires deadly. People were lost and never found. In this land, Robert Grainer faced a great family tragedy. Hardly anyone noticed him as he spent most of his time in the woods.

Whether Train Dreams should have won the Pulitzer Prize is not really worth debating. What I hope is that readers notice and enjoy this excellent novella.

Johnson, Denis. Train Dreams. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. 116p. ISBN 9780374281144.

Andy Young at Friday at the Ford

What is gypsy jazz? Chicago musician Andy Young answered that question for about sixty listeners at Thomas Ford Memorial Library's March 9 Friday at the Ford concert. Gypsy jazz or gypsy swing is music that rose in clubs in 1930s Paris. Director Woody Allen included some pieces in his recent film Midnight in Paris, one of which Young played on hammered dulcimer accompanied by guitarist Al Tauber. Hammered dulcimer is not an instrument usually associated with tunes that may make listeners think of old French films, but Young's interpretations delighted our appreciative audience, including some children awe-struck with the hammering.

We already knew Young for his Celtic music, some of which he performed on the dulcimer, tin whistle, and Irish flute. Andy and Al kept our feet tapping with an abundance of reels, some of which were nameless. It was good pre-St. Patrick's Day listening.

Since the concert, I have been listening to his latest CD L'Accroche-Pieds, which mixes Celtic tunes and gypsy jazz in a measure similar to the concert. The CD features a number of other musicians and even includes the sound of Irish step dancing. It is mostly cheerful music good for home or mobile listening. You can learn more about Andy Young at his website.