October, 2020 Readings: "I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.” (W.S. Merwin)

Still reading Ullrich's Hitler bio but I also have two promising thrillers awaiting my attention, THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones and THE CHAIN by Adam McKinty.

STARVE ACRE, an atmospheric little chiller by Andrew Michael Hurley.

Not entirely convincing but a good portrait of grieving, isolation and the mind-altering affects of losing a child.

Give it three stars out of five.

Finished All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The best thing about the book is the cover. A bit too saccharine for my taste.

Tried Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel prize winner. The writing is impressive but the audiobook version is a bit confusing. Will come back later, maybe.

Ended up starting By Night in Chile by Bolaño. Read this one a while back. Bolaño will surely cleanse the taste buds.

Finally closed the book on HITLER: ASCENT 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich.

Drawing on the latest archival evidence, a biography of evil that will stand the test of time. Hitler fleshed out, granted a human face, the monster unmasked.

Looking forward to picking up the second volume, once I recover sufficiently from this one.

Highly recommended.

Zipped through CAGNEY BY CAGNEY.

James Cagney is my all time favorite actor and his autobiography is just like the man himself--scrappy, no-nonsense, entertaining.

No big disclosures, a memoir that doesn't dish much dirt but does inform us that his independent spirit was entrenched at a very young age. His mother was something else.

>4 CliffBurns: Does Ullrich pass comment on the premise of Kimberley Cornish's The Jew of Linz, that there is evidence for Hitler and Ludwig Wittgenstein having been in the same class at school?

That was not mentioned, as I recall.

What a fascinating historical footnote that would be if true.

Cornish bases their premise on a class photograph which supposedly shows both.

Incidentally, that would only give me four degrees of separation from Hitler. I once worked for a man called Matthew Toulmin, whose father was Professor Stephen Toulmin, Emeritus Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Boston, who did his Ph.D at Cambridge in the early post-war years under Wittgenstein, who...

Read Jules Feiffer's LITTLE MURDERS this afternoon.

A play influenced by various political assassinations that rocked America in the 1960s.

Some funny bits and I liked the gunshots ringing in the street outside, creating atmosphere for the neighborhood. Snipers prowling the rooftops, killing without motivation.

I'd like to see the movie version, directed by the magnificent Alan Arkin and starring Elliot Gould (another favorite).

Definitely would fall into the category of "cult film".

THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, a horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones.

Well-drawn, authentic characters...but the problem with most horror novels I read is that they aren't believable and their far-fetched nature makes it difficult for me to care about what happens. And so I am not moved emotionally.

I have no doubt that this book will appeal to many horror/dark fantasy mavens and will likely pull in an award or three.

Maybe my suspension of disbelief needs a safety net under it.

Or, more likely, I should stop reading this particular genre. Clearly, I have issues with it.

Currently listening to the audiobook version of The Door by Magda Szabo, a novel about the relation between a Hungarian writer and her housekeeper. Not sure how the novel is going to turn out but the housekeeper has got to be one of the most interesting fictional characters I've encountered in a long time. Wonderfully read by Sian Thomas.

Bruce Chatwin's THE SONGLINES.

My first Chatwin, but it won't be my last.

Fascinating depiction of the very unique relationship aboriginal people have with the land in Australia. Their lives and entire spirituality revolves around the topography and geography of that island-continent.

Chatwin's experiences and meditations made this one hard to put down.

Highly recommended.

THE CHAIN, a highly lauded thriller by Adrian McKinty.

Clever premise, which sustains the first half of the book, but then the novel descends into pure formula.

Competent, but unsurprising and rather generic.

Finished a charming children's book, THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE HORSE, by Charlie Mackesy.

Hints of A.A. Milne and "Pooh-isms" throughout. A beautifully illustrated little tome, consider it as a possible gift for 6-10 year olds.

Recommended.

Fair And Tender Ladies –Lee Smith
5*****

Ivy Rowe is born around the beginning of the 20th century in the mountain cabin where her parents have settled. She is in the middle of a pack of eight children and we learn about her life through the letters she writes, beginning at age 12 to a pen pal in Holland, or to her teacher, and continuing through her long life as she writes to her friends and family over the decades.

What a marvelous character! Ivy is curious and adventurous, intelligent if lacking education, forthright, determined, and self-reliant. She makes mistakes and deals with them. She finds love in the wrong places and then with a good man. She observes the workings of the world as it changes around her but remains true to her tiny corner and her mountain ways. She raises children – her own, her neighbor’s, her grandkids. She helps her neighbors, advises her siblings, dares to dream big, and resolves to live well and true to herself. And through it all she writes these wonderful letters, full of all the emotions of life – joy, despair, hope, dejection, enthusiasm, resignation and love, always love.

The landscape is vividly portrayed and practically a character. I’ve driven through some of these mountain areas in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina, but even if I had never seen them with my own eyes, I think I would have a clear picture in my head based on Smith’s descriptions. I could hear the bees buzzing, smell the fragrance of a summer meadow, feel the leaves crunch underfoot on an autumn afternoon, or smell the smoke from a chimney fire welcoming me home on a cold winter evening.

Smith also uses a vernacular dialect throughout. However, Ivy’s language (and spelling) improve as she grows from a 12-year-old with limited education to a grown woman who loves to read. There were a few times when I really had to stop to think before I could puzzle out what a word was. For example, Ivy mentions “hunting sang” and continues writing about “sang” … and it wasn’t until she mentioned that it’s only the root, “which looks like a headless man” that I finally realized that she was talking about ginseng. Still, I really enjoyed the colloquialisms Smith used, which gave a definite Southern flavor to the text.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE (no touchstone?), a short story collection by Raymond Carver.

Haven't read Carver since back in the 1980s (he used to be considered the "god" of American short story writers).

Most of this collection was annoying, the stories poorly formed, the resolutions nonexistent. The title story was okay and a couple of other pieces but the book left me underwhelmed. Some of the tales were featured in the Robert Altman movie "Short Cuts" (which I've always considered over-rated).

Not for me, I'm afraid.

Last book of October, Hari Kunzru's RED PILL.

Remarkable, literate, intelligent novel--an obscure author receives a fellowship to a literary retreat in Berlin and, basically, loses his mind while abroad.

It's "The Matrix" meets "The Tenant". Isolation and fear combine to destroy the narrator's tenuous hold on reality. He's father of a young child and filled with foreboding toward the future that is hurtling toward him. Too many things beyond his control. He sees signs and portents everywhere and disappears down a rabbit hole ion search of an underlying truth.

Timely, wise novel, bound to end up on my "Year's Best" roster.

Don't miss this one.

>17 CliffBurns: Loved Kunzru's White Tears, so I'll have to check this one out!