What are you reading the week of December 9, 2023?

I'm about two thirds of the way through The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. It's an unsettling book that has strong parallels with today.

Currently working on The Age of Wood. The Mimicking of Known Successes and With Their Bare Hands will come after that.

I'm in the early chapters of Jo Nesbo's latest thriller, Killing Moon. I'm also listening to Without a Prayer: The Death of Lucas Leonard and How One Church became a Cult by Susan Ashline. This fills the part of me that has always been curious about cults. This bunch sounds awful - terrible people preying on gullible parishioners.

>1 fredbacon: The other day while walking around in Manhattan's West Side neighborhood, I passed by an apartment building with a plaque on it that said Hannah Arendt had lived there. I'm enjoying seeing these interesting historical plaques as I explore NYC. Not far from me is the building that George Gershwin lived in for many years!

I'm reading and very much enjoying a novel from 1946 called Those Other People by a writer named Mary King O'Donnell. It's sort of a day-in-the-life novel with our view shifting among many characters as they go through their days. It's from the days when the French Quarter, especially in its back end, was still a working class neighborhood, just on the eve of WW2. It's taking me through many places I have vivid memories of from my days of living in the Quarter when I was in my 20s, about 40 years after the events of the book. Nicely written though sadly a forgotten book.

Enjoying this audio via Libby ~

A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem
by Manda Collins
Series: Ladies Most Scandalous, #1

Vacuuming in the Nude: And Other Ways to Get Attention
Peggy Rowe
4/5 stars
Peggy Rowe is the mother of Mike Rowe host of Dirty Jobs. She is also a talented writer and has written other books. She talks of her life with her family. This was very enjoyable and I look forward to reading her other books.

I'm reading Nita Prose's The Mystery Guest, the follow-up to The Maid. It's entertaining.

Man of Shadow & Mist by Michelle Griep
Christian historical fiction novel
North Yorkshire 1890. Rosa Edward, who works in her father's subscription library, meets the mysterious Sir James Morgan. James has returned from Transylvania (part of modern Romania) and it wasn't by choice. Malicious rumors fly about him. The pair must prove local superstition and false accusations wrong.

Just started The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride. So far, interesting characters.

I'm still reading and loving Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde.

>6 JulieLill: I have seen that book but not read. I like to see Mike when he is on TV.

I finished There Will Be a Short Interval. Anticipation of a possible impending death, compels SJ to review his life and be struck by his inability to comprehend or feel closeness to family or colleagues, to recognize his failures and aloneness while also realizing that his will to live was fueled by the ecstasy of the simple beauty of the world.

The Edge of the Earth – Christina Schwarz
4****

The book jacket synopsis hints at danger in a remote location, not just from the elements but an unexpected presence hiding in the wilderness. But this is so much more than a thriller based on isolation and the fear of the unknown.

Trudy is a highly educated woman, able to argue philosophy (Kant, anyone?) or play a Mozart sonata. Everyone expects she’ll marry her childhood friend, Ernst, and settle down to an upper-middle class life in Milwaukee. But then she meets Ernst’s cousin, Oskar, and everything changes. Oskar is a dreamer with training as an engineer. He’s intent on inventing the next BIG thing and Trudy is caught up in his dreams. He takes a position as an assistant lighthouse keeper on a remote promontory on the California coast, thinking he’ll have plenty of time to work on his invention. So, in fall of 1898 the newlyweds set out to make their own future. Things don’t go as they expected.

Trudy is a wonderful character. She’s intelligent, but also observant and not afraid of some hard work. When the lighthouse keeper’s wife suggests (demands?) that Trudy serve as a schoolteacher for the keeper’s children, she takes on the challenge. But the children have much to teach her as well.

Oskar, on the other hand, is a real piece of work. I guess I can understand how his enthusiasm and apparent drive to make a real impact on the world could have seduced her, but how could Trudy keep forgiving him and supporting him when his true colors became evident. I saw the climactic scene coming a mile off, though I still enjoyed reading it and seeing how Schwarz would craft this denouement.

The character that most surprised me was Euphemia (Mrs. Crawley). She was a rock, a pillar of strength, and when push came to shove, she supported and helped Trudy, her children, and Helen. She loved her brother, yes, but she recognized his failings and ultimately would not make excuses for him. Brava.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong
Digital audiobook read by the author
3.5*** (rounded up)

A young Vietnamese man, now living in America, writes a letter to his mother who cannot read. In it he relates a short family history –his grandmother, mother and himself – and pours his heart out to the woman he calls both a mother and a monster. He tells of his grandmother Lan’s life as a sex worker during the Vietnam War, which resulted in her pregnancy. Her daughter, Rose, named for a flower, later gave birth to a son, whom they call “Little Dog” hoping to trick demon spirits who might otherwise harm a cherished child. They come to America full of hope, but meet with harsh reality: language barriers, poverty, and discrimination.

Vuong uses a nonlinear storyline but weaves an intricate tapestry from Vietnam to Connecticut, incorporating his thoughts on war, racism, drugs, love, and culture. The author is a poet, and this novel has the ethereal feel of poetry, with some passages so beautiful as to take my breath away, and others so raw with pain as to make me wince, even cringe.

Vuong narrates the audiobook himself. I cannot imagine anyone else doing a better job of it.

>14 BookConcierge: My wife and I both absolutely loved this book. One of the best I've read over the past few years.

I've just finished Those Other People by Mary King O'Donnell, first published in 1946. Those Other People is a wonderful and unjustly forgotten novel about people living in close proximity on a block of St. Philips Street, at the back end of New Orleans' French Quarter. O'Donnell gives us a day in the life of an ethnically mixed but constantly interacting cast of characters. Although she was writing about the French Quarter she knew, for us it's a trip back in time to the days when the French Quarter, and especially towards its back end (closer to Esplanade and further from Canal Street and the Quarter's tourist center) was still an ethnically mixed working class neighborhood. One character builds skiffs in his workshop; another has a small auto body shop. Rubbing elbows with each other daily are an immigrant Italian couple, a Filipino family, a black couple, and a white Protestant family, including realtor Merlin Webster (who owns most the this property) and his wife, as well as Merlin's unmarried sister Leah and their younger sister, Maudie. Maudie is married to Victor Peralta, employed as a writer by the WPA. His elderly mother lives with them, as well. Other strangers are brought into the narrative along the way, as O'Donnell's lens moves gracefully if somewhat fitfully around the city and through her characters' live.

I've a longer review up on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be Voroshilovgrad by Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan.

From the library: Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J.Jefferson Farjeon
Published in 1937 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics collection in 2014.
During the height of a snow storm, train passengers take shelter in a nearby house. But nobody home!

Infinite Country – Patricia Engle
Book on CD performed by Inés del Castillo
4****

From the book jacket: Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Columbia. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north.

My reactions:
Engle has crafted a story of immigration and emigration, of oppression and prejudice, of hopes and dreams, and of the bonds of family.

The storyline moves back and forth in time from current-day adolescent Talia, to her young parents’ first meeting and falling in love, the their struggles in the USA, how they came to be separated, and how Talia, a US born citizen, wound up in Columbia with her father rather than in New Jersey with her mother and two siblings. Engel also switches narrators, so we get snippets of the story from Talia, her mother Elena, her father Mauro, her sister Karina, and her brother Nando. We see the sacrifices made by parents for the sake of their children, but also the hurt and feelings of abandonment suffered by the children separated from a parent.

Inés del Castillo does a very fine job of narrating the audiobook. She really brought these characters to life.

The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urrea
Digital audiobook read by the author.
5*****

From the book jacket: In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, through a place called the Devil’s Highway. They entered a desert so harsh and desolate that even the Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it. For hundreds of years, men have tried to conquer this land, and the desert has stolen their souls and swallowed their blood. Along the Devil’s Highway, days are so hot that dead bodies naturally mummify almost immediately. And that May, twenty-six men went in. Twelve came back out.

My reactions:
This was a horrifying episode and Urrea’s reporting of it in this book earned a nomination for a Pulitzer. He handles the details of the journey with competing emotions: hope, outrage, compassion, frustration, despair. He is honest about what happened and fair when reporting both the positions of “The 26” and of the Border Patrol agents.

Urrea has spent time in this landscape, and he writes poetically about the colors of the desert at dawn, the flora and fauna, the beauty of this incredibly dangerous place. I could feel the searing heat (just writing about it now, I keep reaching for my water bottle), the grit in my socks, the pain of a cactus spine in my finger. The author’s detailed descriptions of the effects of such heat on the human body are clinically accurate … and horrifying to imagine going through.

I found these two video interviews with the author:
(short video about Devil’s Highway) https://billmoyers.com/content/luis-alberto-urreas-change-of-heart/
Longer expansive interview with Urrea about his background and his work: https://billmoyers.com/segment/luis-alberto-urreas-border-crossing-journeys/

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author. I cannot imagine anyone else doing a better job of the narration.

The new thread is up over here.