"Scottsboro" Winner Announced

The drawing for my copy of Scottsboro attracted 13 entries and I've used the random number generator shown in my sidebar to choose a winner. (Anyone wanting a random number generator of their own, by the way, can go to the website noted on mine and get a widget for their own blog page. It does come in handy for this kind of giveaway.)

Anyway, the winner picked by that bit of software is: Megan!

Megan, please send me your mailing details and I'll get the book out to you - hope you enjoy it.

Book Giveaway Reminder - One More Day

Just a quick note this afternoon to remind everyone that you have about 24 hours to throw your name into the hat for a chance at a free copy of Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman. You can leave a comment here or at the original thread if you want to enter. About this time tomorrow afternoon, I'll use my handy, dandy random number generator to choose a winner. As of right now, there are only ten entries, so anyone entering will have a very good chance at winning the book.

For a quick look at the book itself, see the review posted directly below the original post I referenced above.


Photo: Ellen Feldman, author of Scottsboro

Killer Summer

Although I have been a fan of Ridley Pearson’s work for a long time, Killer Summer was my introduction to his Sheriff Walt Fleming series. Now, having read this third novel in the series, I plan to go back to the first two books to get a better understanding of how Walt Fleming came to be the man he is.

Walt is the sheriff of Sun Valley, Idaho, and although he does not have to contend with a lot of violent crime, being sheriff of an enclave of some of the wealthiest people in the country comes with its own special problems. At times, Walt feels more like a combination baby sitter/politician than he does a peace officer. So when a large group of wealthy wine connoisseurs gathers in Sun Valley for an event culminating in the auctioning of three bottles of wine believed to have been gifted to John Adams by Thomas Jefferson, it is pretty much business-as-usual for the sheriff.

True, Walt’s personal life is not what it could be. The father of twin daughters, he now has to contend with the fact that his soon-to-be-ex-wife is living with one of his own deputies. As if that embarrassment were not enough, Walt, who barely has the time to be with his daughters, knows that he also needs to find time for his seventeen-year-old nephew, Kevin. The sudden death of Kevin’s father has left the boy without a male role model in his life and Walt’s sister looks to him to fill that gap.

Things begin to get complicated when the private security agent hired to bring the three John Adams bottles of wine to Sun Valley becomes the victim of a heist-gone-bad. Walt Fleming and his small group of deputies are left with the unenviable task of solving the attempted theft of the valuable wine while simultaneously guarding that same wine until it can be delivered to the winning bidder later in the week.

Walt soon begins to suspect that not all is what it seems to be regarding the bottles of wine and their current owner. Just when things start making a bit of sense to the sheriff, however, the situation careens out-of-control and he finds himself searching frantically for a hijacked airplane that may have fallen from the sky and the two teens, one his own nephew, feared to have been taken hostage by the hijackers at take-off.

Killer Summer is a quick-paced, but rather complicated, thriller that requires a little extra attention from the reader if the crime at its heart is to be completely understood as Pearson reveals it layer-by-layer. Readers might be tempted to rush to the book’s cliffhanger ending, but that would be a mistake. They should, instead, take a deep breath and make sure not to speed past any of the story’s important details. They will be happy that they did.

Rated at: 4.0

Galveston's Rosenberg Library Re-Opens Two Floors to Patrons

It is still painful to look around Galveston and remember what the city was like before Hurricane Ike devastated it in September 2008. Such massive destruction of property makes for a very slow recovery, but Galveston is making great progress in getting things as close to "normal" as they ever will be again.

This week comes the good news that the city's Rosenberg Library, housed in a 105-year-old building, is ready to open two floors to patrons. Details are from the Houston Chronicle:

Almost 10 months after Hurricane Ike flooded its ground floor with more than seven feet of water and dealt a knockout punch to its electrical system, Galveston's venerable Rosenberg Library will take a big step toward normality today when it reopens its second floor and mezzanine.

The areas house the bulk of the library's collections and a 45-unit computer lab. For the first time since the September storm, library patrons will be able to check out books without 24-hours advance notice.

The Rosenberg, now 105 years old, was inundated by saltwater, which destroyed ground-floor air conditioning, telephone and electrical equipment. Executive Director John Augelli estimated repairs cost about $4 million.

[...]

The first floor, which previously housed the children's collection and the Wortham Auditorium, likely will remain closed for at least a year, he said.

Augelli said the library had too much money invested in real estate to consider abandoning the historic structure. In years before the hurricane, the library installed a new roof and launched a multimillion-dollar project to reinforce tons of decorative stonework in jeopardy of crumbling from the building's exterior.

Augelli said about $2.5 million of the repair cost will be covered by insurance; the rest by grants, donations and payments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Having struggled with my own insurance company for four months after Ike over how much the company owed me for a new roof, I can imagine the hassle that must be going on with the insurers of the Rosenberg Library. That makes their progress especially nice to see.

Mid-Year Report (Two Weeks Late)

Well, I've been back from Kentucky for almost two weeks but I'm still finding it difficult to get back into all my old routines. I'm not reading nearly my usual number of pages per day, nor am I posting to Book Chase quite as regularly as I like to do. There's just something about having the old routine broken up for a week that's making it difficult for me to get back on track.

Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that I upgraded to one of the new "smart phones" last weekend and I'm more wired in than ever before in my life. It allows me to be more in touch with friends and my two blogs, but it sure tends to cut down on reading time. Gotta fix that.

As of this week, I've read 70 books and have reviewed 69 of them, so I'm close to being where I hoped to be at mid-year (maybe 5 books or two weeks behind what I hoped for at this point). I do find it interesting that 41 of the 70 books I've read in 2009 are review copies. Normally, that might concern me, but not this year. I've been careful to accept only review books that I know I would have chosen to read anyway if I had seen them in a bookstore or a library. My only concern is that, by picking up the pace with review copies, my nonfiction reading seems to be suffering since most of what I'm offered is fiction.

I find that limiting myself to books that interest me works better for all concerned because it keeps me excited about my reading and doesn't result in me giving a bad review to the work of a first-time author or one who has gone to the expense of self-publishing a book. At the same time, though, I'm finding that my average rating has gone down a bit because I'm giving far fewer "fives" than I have in past years. I'm not sure why that is, honestly.

It's been a fun first half of the year but now I need to get back on pace for a good second half. I love to set reading goals and targets - keeps me from getting lazy.

(Photo is of my granddaughter who is, I'm happy to report, a real reader.)

Amazon Drops Price of Kindle

In a move lifted right out of the Marketing 101 textbook, Amazon announced yesterday that it is dropping the price of its basic model Kindle to $299. The company seems to have caught up with demand to the degree that it has inventory to spare and is willing to bet that its bottom line will increase more by selling more units at the new, lower price than by selling fewer units at a higher price.

According to Information Week, the price change was announced very quietly:

The price change was made quietly too -- the company posted an ad for the Kindle 2, at the new price, on its home page.

The stock market didn't react much to the change; Amazon shares rose Thursday by 74 cents to close at $78.10, up less than 1 percent.

Amazon launched its first version of the Kindle in November of 2007 for $399 and later dropped the price to $359. The Kindle 2 -- which has longer battery life, more storage, and turns pages faster -- was introduced in February.

Prices for the Kindle DX, which has a 9.7-inch screen instead of a 6-inch screen, remain unchanged at $489.

Book publishers are concerned that Amazon might use the lower price to squeeze their profits because the Kindle is so dominant. Amazon could also raise book prices for users.

I'm kind of waiting for that other shoe to drop, too. It would be probably be risky for Amazon to raise e-book prices just when the company drops the price of its reader - but if any company would try to pull that one off, it just might be Amazon.

Book Giveaway - Scottsboro: A Novel

As I mentioned before leaving for Kentucky on June 23, I made my 1000th Book Chase post a few days ago (this is post 1,012 in way of context). Book Chase had been in existence for almost exactly 29 months when I reached the milestone. Anyway, as promised, I would like to give away the last book I reviewed in order to mark the occasion.

Take a look directly below for my thoughts on Scottsboro: A Novel and, if you think you might enjoy the book, send me a comment saying so. One week from today, I will use a random number selector to choose the winner. This one is easy - just throw your name in the hat.

I appreciate you guys.

Scottsboro: A Novel

When, in 1931, nine young black men were pulled off a train in rural Alabama and accused of raping two young white women who happened to be on that same train, no one could have imagined the ultimate outcome. Earlier, the young men had drawn attention to themselves by tossing some white boys off the moving train and, subsequently, the train was halted by a group of vigilantes seeking revenge for that insult. The two white women aboard the train were just a bonus to the mob, an excuse for a quick lynching that the young black men would barely escape.

Ellen Feldman recounts this real life event largely through the eyes of Ruby Bates, one of the young women who falsely accused the young black men of raping her and her friend Victoria Price. Feldman alternates between the first person accounts of the real life Ruby and fictional reporter Alice Whittier in order to explain the events of the fifty years following the original arrest of the nine Scottsboro boys. Interestingly, and very effectively, the Scottsboro boys themselves remain largely in the background – as they did for most of the lawyers, reporters, judges, Communist Party members, NAACP members, and others who were happy enough to exploit the plight of the boys for their own gain.

It was, of course, impossible for any of the nine accused rapists to receive a fair trial in Jim Crow era Alabama. Even after Ruby Bates recanted her original testimony and a new trial was granted to one of the defendants, a new jury returned the same guilty verdict and death sentence. No matter how many juries or courtrooms heard the evidence against any of the nine, the result was invariably the same because, as Feldman makes clear in the novel, no white person could vote anything other than guilty if he wanted to live in the state of Alabama after the trial.

Feldman uses the relationship between reporter Alice Whittier and accuser Ruby Bates to get at the heart of how this kind of thing happens. Ruby, an impoverished part-time mill worker whose family barely sustained itself during the Great Depression, was desperate for cash money. She and the more aggressive Victoria Price were part-time prostitutes who enjoyed the men and attention as well as the extra cash they received from selling themselves. Ruby was a follower, directed by Victoria to give false testimony, but she was no fool. She gained fame by changing her testimony to favor the defense and, for a while, was able to turn that fame into a new life in New York City supported by those seeking freedom for the Scottsboro boys.

Scottsboro is a clear snapshot of an era of American history during which racial minorities had few rights in the South, a time when poor whites, economically no better off than their black neighbors, marked their own place in society by demonstrating to those neighbors that they were racially superior to them. By telling her story through the eyes of one of these desperately poor whites, Ellen Feldman makes what happened, in the context of its times, almost understandable.

What happened in Scottsboro makes for sad reading, a story without a happy ending, but sometimes it takes a novel like this to remind one that it all happened to real people, people with simple hopes and dreams, people who were victims of their times, accused and accuser, alike.

Rated at: 4.0

Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music

Greg Kot’s "Ripped" offers a clear look at how the old school recording industry, primarily the major record labels, committed group suicide by allowing the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to attack the customers who put money into its various corporate pockets. The dinosaurs managing the major labels failed to recognize the multitude of potential benefits offered by the new digital technology of the internet, insisting instead that it was to be business as usual for them. Very few big labels or their CEOs survived the mass suicide, and the misguided fools at the RIAA are steadily wiping out the few survivors.

Ready or not, and the labels were certainly not ready, “a new generation of bands and fans empowered by personal computers and broadband Internet connections…forged a new world of music distribution that seized control from once all-powerful music and radio conglomerates.” Suddenly, even the most obscure regional bands could find a market for their music, and just as suddenly, that music was largely available on the internet free of charge. Rather than embracing the new technology, however, and offering its back catalogs and new music for sale in the new mp3 format at a reasonable price, the industry panicked and decided to have the RIAA try to kill song downloading through lawsuits and other nasty intimidation methods.

The labels, of course, were trying to protect CD sales, a goldmine format in which it resold its back catalog to longtime music fans for the third or fourth times. Many consumers had purchased the same music in multiple formats over the years already, vinyl albums, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs, and when the opportunity to get music at little or no cost presented itself, they jumped all over it. Most downloaders felt little guilt about “stealing” music from the labels and, instead, saw the opportunity as a kind of payback from the label for all the money already wasted on overpriced CDs. It did not help the labels that so many of the new CDs being marketed contain only one or two decent tracks and ten “fillers.” Now the consumer was doing the “ripping” rather than being “ripped off” by the labels.

The music industry is hardly recognizable today and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Independent labels and even independent artists are doing better on their own today than when they were dependent on the major record labels and radio conglomerates to give them any exposure. The industry may not like it, but radio stations, record labels, and television channels such as MTV and CMT do not move many recordings these days. Much more important to this generation is word-of-mouth, internet buzz, music blogs, and bands and singers that market themselves through the new technology.

It has never been better for independent and regional bands willing and able to do it for themselves. No longer are they tied to record company contracts from which 90% never made a dime, in the first place. No longer is their future in the hands of business types who care little about the music and see it all as some interchangeable product whose artistic value is purely coincidental.

"Ripped" explains well how it all happened and where the industry may be heading. The second half of the book does focus, however, a bit too much on individual bands that either have fought or embraced the new world in which they find themselves. This portion of the book becomes overly repetitive at times, and offers more detail about some of the bands than most readers will care to wade through, but anyone interested in the music business as it works today will do well to add "Ripped" to his library.

Rated at: 4.0

The Winter Vault

The Winter Vault is a complex, passionate novel about loneliness, destruction, replication, personal loss, and memories of one’s roots, and it requires high levels of patience and concentration if one is to absorb everything that Anne Michaels is trying to say. It is neither a plot-driven nor a character-driven novel and, in fact, those are its weakest elements. Rather, it is a philosophical novel filled with rambling monologues, lessons, and meditations that often have little to do with plot. Further, the book’s main characters, although they can be memorable, often have more the feel of actors being brought on stage simply to make an author’s points than the feel of real, breathing people.

It is 1964 and Avery Escher is in Egypt to save Abu Simbel’s Great Temple from the floodwaters soon to be released by the new Aswan Dam. He is there to oversee the dismantling of the centuries-old Temple so that it can be reconstructed some sixty feet higher in a cliff where it will be safe from the flooding. His wife, Jean, who witnessed a similar event in Canada when ten villages were sacrificed to the waters of the new St. Lawrence Seaway, is in Egypt with Avery, whom she met when he worked the Seaway project.

Jean is saddened by what she sees in Egypt, the displacement of the Nubian people whose government is happy enough to sacrifice them for the greater good of the country. As trainload after trainload of these people are relocated and their ancestral villages are destroyed and flooded, Jean realizes that she and Avery are part of something destructive rather than something positive. When a personal tragedy forces her to return to Canada, she finds that her feelings about her life and marriage have changed and she decides to live alone.

The second half of the book sees Avery largely fading into the background while Jean tries to put her life back together with the help of her new friend, Lucjan, a Polish immigrant who, as a boy, survived the World War II destruction of Warsaw. In Jean, Lucjan has finally found a woman with whom he can share his detailed memories of those days, including how disoriented he was when he first walked the streets of the uncannily accurate replication of the old city completed after the war.

The two halves of The Winter Vault share a common theme but their plots and characters are so different that they read like two novels under one cover. Anne Michaels has published several poetry collections and the prose of The Winter Vault, only her second novel, is often as striking as her poetry. Unfortunately, however, some of her extended passages continue to be vague and distracting no matter how much attention and time a reader gives them. It should also be noted that the decision not to use quotation marks or chapter breaks in this 336-page novel may tempt some readers to abandon it well short of its final page. Those who persevere will, however, have much to think about when they finish The Winter Vault.

Rated at: 3.5

Michael Jackson: Book Lover

I have paid very little attention to the hoopla about Michael Jackson's death. I was out of town the week he died, and didn't turn on a television set for the six days I was away from home, so I managed to miss the worst of the media blitz about his tragic end. Frankly, though, I found the man to be kind of creepy and not too many years after his "Thriller" period I began to ignore him. So the last thing I thought I would be posting about today was something relating to Michael Jackson.

What caught my attention was the comment from Jackson's lawyer, Bob Sanger, about Jackson's reading habits and personal library.

"He loved to read. He had over 10,000 books at his house."

[...]

"And there were places that he liked to sit, and you could see the books with his bookmarks in it, with notes and everything in it where he liked to sit and read. And I can tell you from talking to him that he had a very - especially for someone who was self-taught, as it were, and had his own reading list - he was very well-read. And I don't want to say that I'm well-read, but I've certainly read a lot, let's put it that way, and I enjoy philosophy and history and everything myself, and it was very nice to talk to him, because he was very intellectual, and he liked to talk about those things. But he didn't flaunt it, and it was very seldom that he would initiate the conversation like that, but if you got into a conversation like that with him, he was there."

The complete column at Seattlepi.com recounts some of Jackson's bookstore visits and how he was known to bring a van full of kids to bookstores and let them buy whatever they wanted. I love the fact that Michael Jackson was a reader and that he saw giving books to children as something positive but my lasting impression of the man will be that of one who lived a sad and somewhat twisted existence right up to the day of his death...just another wasted life.

Photo Tour: Rosine, KY, and Bill Monroe Home Place

Rosine, KY, the birthplace of bluegrass music is about a 40-minute drive from Owensboro and the International Bluegrass Music Museum. Despite my attendance at the ROMP festival for the last four years, I have found it difficult to make it to Rosine. ROMP ends late on a Saturday night and the Bill Monroe home in Rosine does not open its doors to the public before 1:00 p.m. on Sundays - timing that does not work out for someone who has over 900 miles of driving to do that day.

This year, however, it was so hot in Owensboro that three of us decided to make the drive to Rosine one morning, opting to hit Yellow Creek Park a little later in the day when things might be a bit cooler (fat chance, that, as it turned out).

The Rosine Barn Jamboree is sure to catch your eye as you drive into town. The barn is right next door to a little general store and cafe that should not be missed either. The store is a great place to get directions to the Bill Monroe Home Place and something cold to drink on your way out to the house. The cemetery in which Bill and much of the Monroe family is buried is just a few hundred yards from the interesection in which the store and Barn sit.

This is a close-up of the circular plaque on the left side of the Rosine Barn Jamboree building:


Just a couple of miles from the general store is this sign marking the way to the old Monroe home, my favorite "dangerous curve" sign of all time:


A few hundred feet down the winding road pictured on the sign will bring you to the Bill Monroe Home Place, the house Bill lived in for much of his life. Monroe was born in a log cabin on the site of this home but the cabin burned to the ground when he was five years old and by 1918 the family was living in this "Cumberland home." The home was fully restored in 2001, by salvaging about 80% of its original wood, and it contains personal furniture, pictures, and other items that belonged to the Monroe family.

The home includes a living room, kitchen, three bedrooms and a back porch on which the family took many of its meals. Bill had the smallest bedroom to himself, his five brothers shared a larger bedroom, his parents had one to themselves, and his three sisters slept in the living room.





This is the scene just off the back porch of the home:


Photos from the Rosine cemetery, including the burial spot of Bill Monroe and much of his family:







And there you have it. Rosine, KY, the birthplace of Bill Monroe and bluegrass music is simply not to be missed. It took me four years to finally get to Rosine but I plan to go back again next year for a more "informed" look around the home place and cemetery. Now that I know what's there and what to expect, a second visit will probably be even better than the first one.

One side note about a nice surprise we got in the general store - Bill Monroe's daughter sitting at a table in the little cafe part of the store, and along side her were the legendary Tom Gray and his wife.

Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir

Anyone calling himself a serious mystery fan probably owns at least a handful of Lawrence Block books. Block is best known for his Matt Scudder series, of course, but he has also had success with a mystery series featuring burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr. This time around, though, Block offers a memoir focusing on his years of as a competitive racewalker (competitive only in the sense that Block competed against himself to improve his own previous distance and time records).

While many of Block’s readers will have used running and walking as favored forms of exercise, few of them are likely to have taken those sports to the level described in Step by Step: A Pedestrian Memoir. Shortly after he gave up drinking, Block surprised himself by taking up jogging as an outlet but he soon concluded that jogging just for the sake of jogging made little sense to him. Rather, he came to feel that he was in training for something specific: a race against the clock and himself. In 1981, well into his forties and by then having switched from running to racewalking, Block finished 40 races, five marathons among them.

Then he stopped – and for 22 years he did not enter another race. But, living in New York, Block never completely stopped walking and he even devotes a portion of Step by Step to the three months in 1991 he spent on the 650-mile pilgrimage over the Spanish Pyrenees he shared with his wife. Block is a compulsive man, and when he took up racewalking again after the turn of the century he picked up right where he left off two decades earlier – and then some. No longer content with a mere handful of marathons per year, he was soon competing in “ultras,” races of at least 24-hour duration during which runners and walkers completed as many miles as possible.

The world of competitive racewalking Block describes is an interesting one, and anyone familiar with “fun runs” will easily identify with the aches and pains he has to overcome in order to get himself to so many starting lines. However, the most memorable part of the book is Block’s frank take on his reaction to the aging process when, try as he might, he could no longer set “personal bests” in the events he entered. The realization that time would make no exception in his case threw him into a depression so deep that he lost not only the desire to racewalk, but maybe even the desire to write again.

Although Step by Step is autobiographical, it is not long on details, something the more rabid fans of Lawrence Block will regret. No one, however, can quarrel with the frank way that Block describes his addictions, his compulsive personality, and his personal battle with a crippling bout of depression seemingly triggered by the aging process. Lawrence Block has a life’s work to be proud of whether or not he ever writes another word. If he decides to take Matt Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr into a well-earned retirement with him, he can look back in pride. After all, life is a road best covered step by step.

Rated at: 4.0

A Person of Interest

Recently widowed, Felicia Fontenot has moved back into her childhood home in order to care for her elderly mother and she finds that not much has changed in the old neighborhood. Her mother’s neighbors are older than she remembers them but they are still keenly aware of what is happening on their street. Felicia is quick to notice one change, however - her first serious boyfriend, Luther Jackson, now lives with his wife and little boy directly across the street from her mother.

One morning, soon after her arrival, Felicia looks out her bedroom window to discover that the Jackson house has become a crime scene. Luther, out all night, has come home to find the badly burned bodies of his wife and son. Someone has murdered them, and it soon becomes obvious that Luther is the most logical suspect. Felicia refuses to believe that the man she loved so many years before could have had anything to do with the brutal murders of his own family and, when Luther’s aunt asks for her help, she decides to do whatever she can.

As the official investigation proceeds, and things begin to look worse and worse for him, Luther refuses to offer more than a minimal defense for himself. Felicia, puzzled by Luther’s silence, but still determined to prove his innocence, is dismayed to find that everything her own private investigator turns up makes it seem more likely that Luther is guilty of the murders.

Ernest Hill uses alternating chapters from the points-of-view of Felicia and Luther to tell his story, rarely bringing the two of them into contact with each other. In fact, Luther, who seems almost determined to sabotage his own defense, is just barely aware of the time and money Felicia is spending on his behalf. Felicia, ever the optimist, is as determined to save Luther as he seems determined to doom himself.

And that leads to my problem with the novel. I cannot decide if Luther Jackson is one of the most unlikable characters I have encountered lately or if he is just one of the most unbelievable. I think, actually, that he is a bit of both. His passiveness in the face of all that has happened to him is irritating; his refusal to defend himself in order to hide a personal secret (a rather common one) is not believable. Throw its way over the top melodramatic ending and stereotypical characters into the mix and A Person of Interest becomes a major disappointment despite its promising early chapters.

Rated at: 2.0

Day Three at ROMP 2009

ROMP 2009 moved to Yellow Creek Park yesterday for its final two days, two of the hottest days I've ever experienced in Owensboro. The temperature supposedly hit 96 degrees yesterday and the humidity is very high - a bad combination for folks staying outdoors for 10 or 12 hours, many of those hours in direct sunlight.

It appears that the heat may have kept some of the locals from coming out this year because the crowd appeared smaller than in past years, especially early in the day. Here is a look at the park as folks gradually trickled in for the performances:






That's the legendary Bobby Osborne (with Rocky Top X-Press) in the last two pictures, of course. The crowd enjoying Bobby's music was considerably larger than it appears to be from these photos because most people were farther back, taking advantage of the shade line offered by the trees in the park.

Today's events include appearances by The Dixie Bee-Liners, The Special Consensus, Grasstowne, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and The Dan Tyminski Band. It will be another hot day - but a good one. There's just no such thing as a bad day at a bluegrass festival. I make my drive back to Houston on Sunday and will have a whole lot more next week to say about my four days in Owensboro.

Still Alive

The RiverPark Center - on the Ohio River, Owensboro, KY - Concert center for much of ROMP 2009 Bluegrass Music Festival

Just a quick note to say that I'm still alive.

It has been non-stop music for the last two days and by the time I get back to the hotel there's barely time to recharge batteries for the camcorder, digital audio recorder and camera before it''s time to crash for about six hours of sleep. That hasn't left much time for reading or writing but the break is doing me good - I'm recharging my own internal battery, too, I think.

I'm writing this note over a quick breakfast at Panera before heading out for 12 more hours of music - this time all of it outdoors in bright sunshine and 95 degree heat.

Thanks for checking in while I'm out. (More detail (including pictures), for those interested, can be found at Bluegrass & Honky Tonks.)

Road Trip - The Drive

A few miles down the highway from Texarkana, Arkansas

The driving went so well yesterday that I decided to drive straight on through rather than to break the drive into two days. I ended up driving 933 miles, arriving in Owensboro just over 15 hours after I left my driveway. I've made this drive four times now and, for whatever reason, drivers seemed more laid back and willing to drive the speed limit than ever before. In the past, I've seen a few crazy ones on the road who seem determined to lead each little pack of vehicles they encounter - regardless of the fact that there's always a new pack just ahead of them. That didn't happen this time.

I also noticed there were far fewer truckers on the road yesterday than in previous years. I-40 is usually packed with them; this year they didn't seem to be nearly so numerous and that helped to keep things moving at the speed limit - and just beyond it. Maybe the economy really is having an impact on truckers.

It's still early in the morning but the music starts at 11:00 when a bunch of regional bands begin the festivities across the street from the Museum at Woodward's Cafe. Six bands are scheduled to perform up to about 5:00 and then there's a two-hour break before the big show with Mike Snider, Marty Stuart, and the Del McCoury Band.

Everything is indoor's until Friday when the two days at Yellow Creek Park start - and it is Hot, with a capital "H." And Humid deserves a capital of its own. Reminds me of home.

I didn't get much reading done - just 26 pages all day long, and that was before I left home. I'm well into Lawrence Block's memoir about his walking expereriences and I'm enjoying the book more and more. It started off a bit to slowly and, for just a couple of seconds, I was tempted to toss it aside. I'm happy that I didn't.

I plan to have lots of pictures, and some video, about the festival. Most of it will probably not be on Book Chase, however. If you're interested in that kind of thing, take a look at Bluegrass & Honky Tonks, my second internet home. Hope to see some of you there - now it's off to get this day started for real...

Road Trip - On the Road Again!

Just a quick note to tell everyone that I will be "on the road again" beginning tomorrow morning. I'm heading back to Owensboro, KY, for four glorious days of bluegrass music presented by the International Bluegrass Music Museum there.

I plan to get in a lot of music, a little reading, and some blogging while I'm away. Much of the blogging is likely to be on my other blog, Bluegrass & Honky Tonks, but I won't completely disappear from here either because I'm dragging at least half a dozen books with me and hope to actually finish a couple of them.

I won't arrive back in Houston until June 29 so things will be a little ragged for a while. I feel sort of like this little guy:




BTW, the Kate Atkinson review I posted this afternoon was my 1000th post on Book Chase and that is a great excuse for a book giveaway. I'll think about it this week and we'll do something when I get home.

When Will There Be Good News?

When Will There Be Good News? is Kate Atkinson’s third Jackson Brodie novel and in it, as she did in the first two Brodie novels, Atkinson successfully keeps several seemingly unrelated plot lines in the air long enough to bring them all together at the end for another of her rousing climaxes. Kate Atkinson is one hell of a juggler - she never drops anything.

The book begins on a rather normal day for a small town mother and her three young children, a day during which something will go terribly wrong, so wrong that only one of the four will survive it. Flash forward some thirty years and sixteen-year-old Reggie Chase, who looks more like twelve and has no one to look after her, is happily taking care of Dr. Joanna Hunter’s toddler son every day while the doctor works at the local clinic. Reggie gets along so well with Dr. Hunter and her baby that she feels the Hunter family to be a replacement for the one she no longer has.

Joanna Hunter, although she does not know the truth about Reggie’s personal life, thinks of Reggie more as a friend and younger sister than as an employee. The same, however, cannot be said for Joanna’s husband, Neil, a man so concerned with his business affairs that he barely acknowledges Reggie’s existence unless he needs her to cover his absence by staying longer into the evening with the baby.

Retired detective Jackson Brodie, in the meantime, is unwittingly hurtling toward his own personal chaos in Edinburgh, an accident that will put him out of commission and wondering who he is for a goodly portion of When Will There Be Good News? In Edinburgh, Brodie’s former love interest, DCI Louise Monroe, recently promoted and recently married, is beginning an investigation into the business affairs of Dr. Hunter’s husband while trying to locate the recently released prisoner responsible for destroying the young Mason family thirty years earlier.

So there you have it: one family already destroyed, a self-sufficient teen looking to replace the family she herself recently lost, a conscientious doctor married to an unscrupulous businessman, an Edinburg DCI charged with investigating that businessman, and Jackson Brodie headed their way in a rush. Jackson Brodie plays a smaller role in When Will There Be Good News? then his fans will expect in a “Jackson Brodie novel,” but what happens when he does finally come front and center will not disappoint readers of the two previous Brodie books.

Kate Atkinson has a way of creating characters, no matter how eccentric they may be, that take on lives of their own. Her characters, even the minor ones, are so finely developed that they become real and memorable. However, the real fun of one of Atkinson’s Brodie novels comes from watching her pull so many loose threads together in a way that makes perfect sense by the end of her story. She manages a complex plot as well as anyone, and I am looking forward to “Brodie 4” and her next juggling act.

Rated at: 4.0

Bad News for Kindle Owners?

I might have some bad news for Kindle owners. If this report from paidContent.org turns out to be correct, Amazon will have to raise the average price of Kindle books substantially if the business model is going to work in the long term.

We think Amazon’s strategy, however, is to raise electronic book prices over time, while simultaneously influencing the book publishers to accommodate at least a partly electronic book model.” A suggested new price point that could “dramatically” increase margins for publishers and Amazon: $12.50.

The analysts argue that by raising the average price by $2.51, Amazon’s margins could increase from 6 percent to 20 percent on the sale of an e-book. That, they say, is “comparable to its physical book business” since Amazon would only have to sell 1.7 e-books to match the profits from the sale of a hardback, instead of 7.

Of course, this may or may not really happen. How much faith do you have in research analysts these days? They haven't been right much lately as far as I can tell. I also have to wonder if Amazon is really willing to tick off so many customers just when the Kindle is picking up steam and seems to be actually having an impact on overall book sales.

Would an increase of $2.51 per book cause you to buy fewer Kindle books, or is that below the tipping point for you?

Seven-Year-Old Writes Book to Help His Friend

One seven-year-old author and his family have put the self-publishing concept to good use. Drake Senseney, a student at Woolmarket Elementary School (Mississippi), decided to write a book to raise money to help a fellow student, Lexi Moore, who is being treated for T-cell lymphoma. And, despite not being able to sell his book at the local Wal-Mart, Drake has managed to raise about $2500 for his friend.


(Lexi and Drake at his book presentation)


The Sun Herald (Biloxi-Gulfport) has the story:

Lexi was excited that she was recently presented a copy of the book, “The Basketball Game,” by Drake himself.

“Guess what he let me do?” she asked. “He let me kiss him on the cheek.”

The two met at Woolmarket Elementary School.

Wanting to help his friend, Drake said he one day thought of writing a book. That was about three months ago.

So far, sales of the book have raised about $2,500 for Lexi. Several fundraisers for are being held this weekend.

To write the book, Drake’s mom, Dee Dee, said, “He had me make him a page on the computer. He did all the typing (hunt and peck method), and I had to show him how to do the clip art.”

Shea Williams, 20, Drake’s cousin, also drew a couple of pictures for the book.

The book sells for $1 because Drake insisted that his friends couldn’t afford more, Dee Dee Senseney said.

Some kids really do get it.

Tesco's Embarrassing Father's Day Display

I'm not sure what word best describes British grocery chain Tesco's decision to include one particular book as part of its special Father's Day book display.

Should I call it ironic, or should I call it stupid, that someone in charge at Tesco think's it's a good idea to include a book about a man who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and had 7 children with her in a display of books that should especially appeal to British fathers? I think I'm leaning toward stupid, especially after reading the company's explanation for how this all happened.

The Telegraph has all the ridiculous details:

Tesco has hit back at the complaints, saying it would smack of censorship to remove certain books because some people found them offensive.

A spokesman said: "It's a book about a true crime and fathers and people in general are interested in things like this, books about the war, serial killers etc.

"It's not a vulgar or grotesque book. It's a serious book about a very serious crime.

"It would be touching on censorship if we removed it. Where would we draw the line? Would you like us to go through every DVD we sell removing those that some may find offensive?

"Tesco are comfortable selling this book. Crime fiction and non-fiction are very popular. This was a high-profile case that occurred in recent times.

"I wouldn't be comfortable buying it as a Father's Day gift, but I wouldn't want to tell other people not to. No-one is being forced to buy it."

However, the supermarket chain later changed its policy.

“It was never our intention to cause offence to any of our customers. It was placed there by mistake and has been removed," a spokesman said.

As can be seen from from the last sentence quoted above, someone with a bit of common sense actually does work in Tesco management - they found that person just in the nick of time, don't you think? As far as I'm concerned, though, the damage is done - all that chatter about censorship and then claiming it was all a big mistake smacks of simple butt-covering. Maybe the PR manager needs to be sacked?

(Photo is of Josef Fritzl, the despicable man whose crimes are featured in the book in question.)

Best Intentions

Lisa Barkley and her husband, Sam, are struggling to maintain their toehold on the upper income lifestyle they enjoy on New York’s East Side with their two young daughters. If their impending fortieth birthdays were not bad enough, both are facing a crisis of sorts in the workplace. Lisa’s PR firm has just been taken over by an aggressive Chicago firm and she senses that she is being squeezed out of the picture. Sam, a journalist, known for his exposés, is desperately searching for his next big story because he has an editor interested only in what Sam has done for him lately. Their money worries have become so distracting that Lisa is even starting to doubt that her husband loves her as much as he once did.

Things begin to get complicated after Sam reluctantly agrees to a reunion dinner with Lisa, Lisa’s best friend, Deidre, and Deidre’s old college boyfriend, Jack. Jack, in from Boston for a job interview, has not seen the three New Yorkers in several years and he seems determined to charm his old friends, especially Deidre. Jack’s re-entry into their lives, has come at a time when all of them are emotionally vulnerable, Sam and Lisa because of their financial worries, and Deidre because she is terrified that she will never marry and have a child if she reaches her fortieth birthday as a single woman.

Jack has come along just when stirring the pot can be a dangerous thing for his friends – and stir the pot, he does. Deidre finds herself trying to choose between Jack, and the future he seems so ready to offer her, and her current lover, Ben, a man who can barely bring himself to discuss his feelings about their relationship. Lisa is caught in the middle after Jack asks her help in finding out, on the sly, if Deidre still has a romantic interest in him, and Sam is reminded of just how much he has always disliked Jack.

Try as she might, Lisa cannot completely shake the nagging doubts that she has about her marriage and whether Sam might be involved in an affair. All the signs are there, and she is becoming more and more consumed by the thought that her world is falling apart. She is not the least bit prepared, however, for the great shock that will soon have her second-guessing everything she thinks she knows about her husband and her best friends.

I have not experienced much in the way of chick lit (I’m not even sure whether or not the term “chick lit” is considered a derogatory one) but I found Best Intentions to have a higher level of literary quality than the few others of that genre I have read in the past. Emily Listfield describes the lifestyle of upper-income New Yorkers, both the pros and the cons, so well that the city almost becomes another character in her story.

This is chick lit with a twist, a more literary approach to the usual story about relationships and feelings, all of it cloaked within a mystery that almost destroys its main characters when Lisa learns the hard way that even the best of intentions have a way of backfiring.

Rated at: 3.5

Hakeem, Mr. Brown and Superman

The New York Daily News has another of those "feel good" stories that I love so much.

It seems that a New York City special education student by the name of Hakeem Bennett won a national essay contest in which he wrote about his real-life hero, his favorite teacher. That teacher, Matthew Brown, is vision-impaired and Hakeem admires and loves the teacher for the way he does his job so well despite his handicap.

But the coolest thing about this story is that, as contest winners, Hakeem and his teacher will be featured in a Superman comic book - and Hakeem and Mr. Brown got their first look at the comic this week. Take a look at the newspaper article for a plot summary and some other great pictures from the comic itself. This has to be a great thrill for a thirteen-year-old boy - and his teacher.

The Turnaround

The Turnaround, set deep in the heart of Washington D.C., is the story of six teenage boys, three of them white and three of them black, who have their lives forever changed on what should be just another day in the summer of 1972. Alex Pappas knows that he and his two friends, Billy Cachoris and Pete Whitten, have no business going into a black neighborhood looking for trouble but he cannot force himself to say the words that might stop Billy from driving them there.

After the three very briefly confront three black boys roughly their own age, Billy races them away in his father’s car only to find a turnaround barrier at the end of the street from which he had planned to escape the area. Still hoping to get away cleanly, Billy turns the car around but finds his only escape route blocked by the three neighborhood boys he is fleeing. In just a matter of seconds, one of the three white boys is shot dead and another is badly beaten and scarred for life. Two of the young black men are sentenced to long prison sentences a few weeks later and Alex Pappas begins the long process of putting his life back together.

Flash forward to 2007 and Alex is running the same family diner he worked in as a boy. He is a happily married man with one surviving son but is still deeply grieving the recent loss of his other son in Iraq. Every time he looks in a mirror Alex is reminded of “the incident,” as he calls it, so when a chance encounter at Walter Reed Hospital leads to contact with one of the black men involved in it, Alex agrees to meet with him to discuss their shared past.

The Turnaround is a novel about redemption and second chances, a character-driven story about six young men who randomly cross paths just long enough to make the biggest mistake of all their young lives. One of them paid the ultimate price and did not survive that day, two went to prison, and three of them had to pick up the emotional pieces and get on with their lives as best they could. Over all, The Turnaround is an inspirational story about personal loyalty, family ties, friendship and the mellowness and peace that sometimes come with age.

The novel does verge on over sentimentality at times, especially as regards its improbable sugar-sweet ending, but the level of brutality and violence exhibited by some characters saves it from reading more like a fairy tale than a crime thriller. As usual, Pelecanos has filled his novel with memorable characters, not the least of which is the city of Washington D.C. itself. Reading a George Pelecanos novel is almost like walking the streets of Washington D.C. at night – not, having now read Pelecanos on several occasions, something I am ever likely to do again.

Rated at: 3.5

The Texicans

Even after its admission to the Union, Texas was a dangerous place for those staking a claim to a new life there. Life, already tough enough for the small farmers and ranchers working so hard simply to survive from one season to the next, was complicated by the presence of Comanche warriors unwilling to give up their tribal lands without a fight. Sudden, violent, death was still common enough to scare away all but the hardiest, or most desperate, of settlers.

Nina Vida’s The Texicans is the story of a handful of accidental Texans, a group with little in common who met in Texas for the first time and banded together for their common good and protection. Vida’s approach of describing this colorful period of Texas history through the experiences of its poorest, and often most desperate, settlers rather than through those of the state’s wealthier, well-known leaders gives the reader a strong sense of the odds faced by anyone seeking a fresh start in the state.

Joseph Kimmel, a Missouri schoolteacher bored with his job, comes to Texas to settle the business affairs of his recently deceased brother, a San Antonio storekeeper, but does not intend to settle in the state. Joseph, though, is the kind of man who cannot resist helping those in need, especially if he is their only hope. Before long, he finds himself responsible for the well-being of an assortment of new Texans who will change his life as deeply as he changes theirs.

Kimmel may have come to Texas with no plan other than to do right by his brother, but he somehow winds up with a ranch unlike any other in the state, one at which Mexicans, freed blacks, escaped slaves, Indians and immigrant Texans are treated as equals, partners, and neighbors. Among the castoffs living on the ranch is Aurelia, a young Mexican woman who finds herself suddenly widowed when her brute of a Texas Ranger husband dies in a skirmish against a band of Indians. Kimmel will remain infatuated with Aurelia his entire life despite his marriage to Katrin, the young Alsatian woman he marries in order to save her from the Comanche leader who wants her for his own. Kimmel also offers refuge to Luck, a runaway slave who once stole his horse and left him stranded in the wilderness, and to a family of four ex-slaves (father, mother and two young sons) abandoned on the trail by their owner when the father seems certain to die from a badly fractured leg.

The Texicans covers twelve years in the life of Joseph Kimmel and those closest to him during an exciting period of Texas history (1840s-1850s). Their stories represent both the harsh realities of life in Texas during this period and the romantic notions often associated with those years. Nina Vida, however, does not allow her plot to be dominated by its romantic elements. Her characters come to Texas for different reasons, and they have varying degrees of luck once they get there. Some are more successful than others are; some are happy, some not; some become rich men, others do not survive for long.

The Texicans perfectly captures the spirit and desperation of the times and, through the eyes of its diverse set of characters, shows what a crapshoot 1840s Texas was. Some won, some lost, and most were happy just to break even.

Rated at: 4.0

7th Grader Reads 503 Books in Nine Months

Seventh grader Demarcus Porter received a special medal from his teacher at the end of the school year, a well deserved award to recognize his outstanding reading feat. (Read the whole story here at the Truman Democrat.)

Porter, a Truman, Arkansas, student read an astounding 503 books during the school year, over 50 books a month, more than a book every day of the school year.

"I knew I was going to win," Porter said. "It gave me an excuse to read."

His reading list included all seven books in the Harry Potter series along with Twilight and Eragon series and several graphic novels in the Narto series to name a few.

He even read a history of China which he said was about "three inches thick."

Porter said he got most of the books from the school library but also would find a good comfortable chair to read in whenever he was at Barnes and Noble in Jonesboro.

"They have a little section there where you can read books," Porter said. "I'd read my favorites there."

Porter said he enjoys all types of books but especially likes history and old joke books the best and stories with a moral point to them.

Apparently, Demarcus is also an athlete and he will be spending his summer getting into football shape, costing him some reading time, but he plans to keep his mind in shape at the same time by continuing to be a regular reader.

Congratulations, Demarcus. You have a bright future ahead of you, young man.

Where This One Belongs

I abandon something in the range of 6 to 12 books in an average reading year but I seldom mention them by title or tell why I made the decision to toss them aside. Every so often, however, one of those books will irritate me so much that I decide to document exactly why I tossed it in the trash. My recent experience with Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream is one of those cases.

The Terror Dream is Faludi’s attempt to make sense of America’s reaction to the 9-11 murders. Granted, she has her facts pretty much in order; the problem is how she twists those facts to the degree that her book becomes little more than an attempt to transform the attack on the United States to an attack on feminism. According to Faludi, America had a “nervous breakdown” of sorts after the attacks and reverted to a relationship between the sexes that confined women to the roll they played in 1950s America.

Yes, men were the ones cast almost exclusively in the roll of heroes. Yes, women were usually portrayed as victims needing the protection of men, including some portrayals of females in the military. Yes, most editorialists and other media commentators in the 9-11 aftermath were men, and women in those jobs were largely ignored or even ridiculed. People, male and female, alike seemed comforted by an image of America from a safer period, a time when men like John Wayne were national heroes. No argument from me on any of this – it did happen.

What I quickly grew bored with, and then irritated by, however, is Faludi’s rather selfish insistence upon making this huge national tragedy into some kind of personal insult to her and her feminism-dominated cohorts, as if nothing else matters and no good at all came from the country’s temporary retreat from feminism and what is its often shrill message. I got through about 30% of the book before Faludi’s constant whining and shrieking about Fox news, President Bush and his team, and conservative commentators and publications got on my nerves. To be fair to Faludi, she did point out that this message was not being communicated strictly by conservative outlets. However, the worst of her dripping sarcasm was most often directed at Bush and conservatives, especially as regards the whole Bush White House team.

When I looked ahead in the book and noticed that the remaining 70% was more of the same, I gave up. How anyone can read this repetitive nonsense for 368 pages is beyond me. How I made it through almost 120 pages of it is also beyond me now that I look back.

I recommend this book only to the most radical of feminists, to whom this will be a red meat message. Others should beware.

Lost Boy

Brent Jeffs is part of a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) royal family. The FLDS is a splinter group that, decades ago, broke away from mainstream Mormonism over the issue of polygamy, and Brent’s grandfather Rulon Jeffs became the church’s prophet in 1986. His son (Brent’s uncle), Warren Jeffs, an incredibly evil man who almost destroyed Brent’s family, succeeded Rulon Jeffs in that all-powerful position.

Lost Boy is Brent’s eye-opening account of what it was like to grow up in that cult under the leadership of his uncle. Brent Jeffs was raised in a polygamous family, one that included three sister-wives and something like twenty brothers, sisters, half-brothers and half-sisters. His mother was the first to marry Brent’s father but she eventually lost her family leadership role when a younger, more aggressive wife became her husband’s favorite. That her husband’s second wife was her own blood sister made the loss of stature and affection even more difficult for Brent’s mother to accept. The second wife would be followed by a third, this time a sixteen-year-old, but his mother’s younger sister would maintain her hold on Brent’s father for years to come.

Brent vividly describes the frustrations involved in growing up inside a polygamous family, the petty jealousies and rivalries between the wives and the children and the constant struggle to get the attention of a father who could not possibly pay adequate attention to the emotional needs of all of his children. It was this lack of parental awareness that allowed Warren Jeffs to get away with sexually abusing Brent and two of his older brothers when each was around the age of five.

Warren Jeffs, during the period in which he abused the boys, was the most dangerous kind of pervert there is: a pervert with absolute power over his victims and their families. His power to excommunicate church members, a process in which they would lose their homes and their jobs before being forced to live in a world for which they were unprepared, made his crimes not only possible, but easy.

The book’s title, Lost Boy, refers to the several hundred teenage boys Warren Jeffs kicked out of the community because he saw them as rivals for the hands of their young female peers, girls and young women Warren and his followers wanted to add to their own collection of wives. Many of the excommunicated boys, such as Brent himself, turned to drugs and alcohol to survive the world into which they were suddenly tossed. Some of the least prepared, usually the ones with no family members already on the outside, were forced into male prostitution in order to survive on their own.

Brent Jeffs, despite his tough transition, found the courage to confront his Uncle Warren Jeffs in a courtroom. He survived his early years, seems to be doing well these days, and Lost Boy is his very personal story of the horror he faced as a child. Surprisingly, however, the book is written in such a dry style that it is difficult to emotionally bond with the author despite his willingness to share his deepest secrets. The writing is straightforward to the degree that it becomes flat and somewhat repetitive at times, a tendency that slows down the pace at which one expects a story like this one to be told. But this is an important story and Brent Jeffs must be commended for having the courage, first, to stand up to the pervert who so deeply damaged him and his family and, second, to share his story with the rest of us.

Rated at: 3.0

Book Smell in a Can

Confession time, guys. How many of you can honestly say that you've never stuck your nose deep inside a brand new paperback and sniffed that great "new book" smell? Come on now, be honest. I'll readily admit that the smell of a new paperback book is almost as enticing as the smell of a new car for me - and it comes a whole lot cheaper.

With tongue-firmly-implanted-in-cheek, I bring to your attention a product I missed when it was introduced this past April 1. It's called "Smell of Books" and it comes in an aerosol spray can that's being marketed to all those new e-book readers out there. It comes in five scents, but I think that real bookworms will most enjoy either "New Book Smell" or "Classic Musty."

How can real readers possibly resist this sales pitch?

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.

Smell of Books™ is compatible with a wide range of e-reading devices and e-book formats and is 100% DRM-compatible. Whether you read your e-books on a Kindle or an iPhone using Stanza, Smell of Books™ will bring back that real book smell you miss so much.

Now, dear readers, for the bad news: You are already too late. "Smell of Books" was born on April 1, 2009 and as of June 10, 2009 is long, long gone.

Introducing the Smell of Books

Smell of Books Under Attack by Authors Guild

Smell of Books Recall Announced

(Sorry, I love this kind of thing and couldn't resist posting about it.)

Writers: How NOT to Self-Market Yourself

I mentioned Sunday afternoon that I was making progress in the four books I'm currently reading. One of those, The Texicans, a novel about life in the wide open spaces of Texas during the 1840s, caught the eye of one reader and she decided to comment.Now I love comments, and I try to answer all of them, but sometimes they do surprise me. This is one of those cases.

The comment I'm showing below was made by a writer/poet, someone I've never heard of but will not forget anytime soon. In this day of writers largely having to market themselves if they want to sell what they produce, this is a wonderful example of how NOT to do it:

I think Texas is the most horrid, hideous place on earth. Texas is despised worldwide for it's racism, it's sickening love for the death penalty, it's violence and all the morons and braggarts who live there. If there were any justice at all, a huge hangman's noose would drop from the sky and choke the life out of this evil state. Florida is just as bad. I hope a giant hurricane blows it off the planet. Thinking people should have nothing to do with another Texas Braggart Book.

The irony associated with this comment from California is that the author of The Texicans is herself a Californian, not another "Texas Braggart."

Wow.

Border Songs

I lost count of how many times the novel Confederacy of Dunces popped into my head as I read Jim Lynch’s Border Songs, but I do not mean anything even remotely negative about Border Songs when I say that. Lynch’s new novel has a certain Confederacy of Dunces vibe about it that will appeal to fans of that memorable John Kennedy Toole novel of almost thirty years ago – and that is a good thing.

Unusual physical specimens, big men generally perceived by their friends and families to be of the hapless misfit variety, anchor both novels. And as Toole did for his Dunces hero, Lynch surrounds Brandon Vanderkool with quirky characters and plops the lot of them into a unique part of the country – two countries, actually – a little rural community living on both sides of the Washington/British Columbia border.

Brandon Vanderkool, six foot eight and so dyslexic that he speaks parts of his sentences backward in times of stress, is a loner whose father pushes him from the family’s small dairy farm into a job with the U.S. Border Patrol. Suddenly, Brandon is responsible for protecting the very border along which he has spent his entire life and, to everyone’s surprise, he turns out to be a natural. As a passionate bird watcher, he is so finely attuned to the comings and goings of the local bird population that he almost unconsciously senses when something is out of place. That sense of place allows Brandon to become one of the stars of the Border Patrol, a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to stopping illegal aliens and pot from crossing the border from the Canadian side. Brandon’s duties with the Border Patrol, though, bring him into daily contact with people he has known all his life, many of whom who still ridicule him out of habit and find it difficult to accept his new position of authority despite all his success.

Border Songs is a character driven novel and Jim Lynch has populated his little international community with some good ones. Brandon’s father, Norm, whose dairy herd is desperately ill, is shocked and even a little embarrassed by all the attention Brandon is getting around town. Norm, by nature a dreamer and a worrier, is also terrified at how rapidly Brandon’s good-natured mother is losing her memory. Madeline Rousseau, to whom Brandon still imagines he has a special bond, grew up within sight of Brandon’s house but on the Canadian side of the ditch separating the two countries. Now, though, she works for a major pot smuggler and she and Brandon are on different sides of the border in more than one sense.

Madeline’s father, a retired professor, stays busy these days yelling anti-American slogans across the ditch at Norm and trying to replicate great inventions of the past by meticulously recreating the original step-by-step research of the actual inventors. Then there is Sophie, the newly arrived masseuse and gossip collector who video tapes interviews with willing customers and seems to be the only person on either side of the border who has the big picture.
Border Songs is a comic look at life on an international border, in this case, a border that is nothing more than a drainage ditch serving the two countries it divides. It is a clear reminder that, while borders are important and necessary, their effects are sometimes absurd, especially when seen through the eyes of those who live so near them.

Rated at: 4.0

In Progress - A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

I'm multitasking, as usual, this Sunday afternoon, watching my favorite last place baseball team stink up the home park again and messing around on the internet when the mood strikes. If I were really into this multitasking thing I would pick up one of the four books I'm reading right now.


All four of them, as it turns out, are review copies but they are very different books in style and subject matter. For instance, I'm about halfway through Nina Vida's The Texicans, her 2006 novel about the early days of Texas (1840s) and I'm enjoying it more and more - a great way to read a book. Her central characters are all very ordinary people, no big name heroes involved, most of them, in fact, from near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Unless the second half of the book falls flat, and I will be surprised if it does, this one will earn a high rating.




Then there's The Winter Vault, by Canadian author Anne Michaels. This novel tells the story of a Canadian couple working in Egypt to dismantle and reconstruct an ancient temple before it is flooded by the waters of the new Aswan Dam (1964). I'm just over a third of the way through this one and, frankly, I am finding it difficult to get very emotionally invested in the story. The married couple, to this point, are the only main characters and neither of them particularly appeal to me so far. This is one of those relatively long books, 341 pages, without chapter breaks, a characteristic that always bothers me. I find myself looking for natural "breaks" in the narrative and when they don't come, I grow frustrated with having to read longer than I intended. So far, this one has earned about a 3.5 from me but I hope it "clicks" later on. There's still time for that to happen but it's taking me longer to read than I expected it to take because I really don't look forward to picking it up - not a good sign.



I'm about 20% of the way through Emily Listfield's Best Intentions and I'm still not sure what to think about it. The main character, her husband, and a couple of their friends have been well introduced to this point and I find them to be believable. I think there's a murder down the road for one of the main characters but I have no idea what kind of story this will turn out to be. Is it a murder mystery? Or have I stumbled into another bit of Chick Lit? Only time will tell, but I have enjoyed it so far and it's one I look forward to picking up.





Finally, there's Lost Boy by Brent W. Jeffs, his personal story of growing up as part of one of the most prominent families in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His grandfather and an uncle were, in fact, two prophets of the church. Brent's story is a tragic one involving child abuse, drugs and alcohol, and broken families. It is definitely a story that deserves to be told but its style is more than a little dry despite the fact that Jeffs had the help of writer Maia Szalavitz in putting it together. I'm at least 80% of the way through this one and will have a formal review up sometime in the next few days. I will say now, though, that this insider's look at the sociology of polygamy is eye-opening.

Book-Writing Is a Tough Way to Make a Living

"In short, book-writing is a worse-than-ever means to a livelihood, and mass-market renown is disappearing as a concept, fractioning into a million niches. Ultimately the only good reason to write books remains what it probably always was: The compulsion to try to entertain, persuade or make meaning is irresistible, and the process absorbs you like nothing else. If it doesn't, there's no reason to bother." - Elisabeth Eaves, Forbes magazine editor

Eaves said this after attending BookExpo America last weekend. Sadly, she is describing a continuing trend in two different worlds with which I am somewhat familiar, books and music. I've come to know quite a few writers and musicians over the last decade, and I've seen how hard they have to work to create their own "big breaks." Record labels and book publishers are not spending the money, nor are they willing to allow the time, that it takes to nurture the next generation of author and musician superstars. Rather, they are milking the same old stuff as long as it sells and are placing the burden of breaking into either industry entirely on those who, in the past, counted on publishers and record labels to provide publicity and advertising.

These days, many of my favorite writers and musicians have "day jobs" and they continue to do what they love only because its who they are. They are writers and they are singers first - and they always will be.

I salute them and, more importantly, I thank them for giving me so much pleasure by sharing their talents despite all the obstacles they face in today's economy.

Dumb Criminals Should Not Steal Books

Don't let anyone kid you, crime does pay. Some criminals, especially, it seems, politicians get away with their crimes for years. Some are never caught; others are caught with cash-filled freezers in their Washington D.C. apartments and still escape justice. I suppose that proves how special congressional criminals are.

But when it comes to the rest of us, a successful criminal career generally comes only to those with a little more intelligence than the common street thug or armed robber. This fact of life has apparently just been learned by two young Louisiana women who have been accused of stealing some 4,000 books from Barnes & Noble bookstores in two states and reselling them to a New Orleans college book reseller.

Nola.com has the details - including pictures of the two women dumb enough to bring all the stolen books to the same college bookstore. I have to say that Chimes Textbook Exchange was awfully slow in figuring this scam out, though. Did they think these two were taking classes around the clock, seven days a week and actually owned all those books, even multiple copies of the same textbooks?

Authorities say Vatter, 33, of Metairie, and Tabora, 23, of Kenner, have admitted to stealing books from at least seven Barnes & Nobles stores in Louisiana and Mississippi - an estimated 4,000 books worth $325,000 since August, according to Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office incident and arrest reports. The two took their stolen tomes to Chimes, where they received 30 to 50 percent of the cover price.

[...]

"It's really fortunate that they tried to sell those books to us. If they sold them all over the place, we would have never known and they never would have been caught," he said.

Vanessa Tabora told detectives all the books she and a partner stole were resold at the same New Orleans book reseller...

So these two were stealing 15-20 books a day, books that had an average value of $80, and were able to hit Barnes & Noble for something like 4,000 books in all. It appears that they are smart enough to beat whatever theft prevention system (including employees) is in place at B&N, but stupid enough to bring all the stolen books to the same book reseller. And that decision was very, very stupid, indeed.

You are not congressional material, ladies.

Fifteen Sticky Books

This week’s Booking Through Thursday suggests the following: “Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”

That’s exactly the way I approached this – making a list of books in less than 15 minutes and then taking a few more minutes to explain why these books are the ones I chose. It was much easier than I thought it would be, and I think that doing it quickly is what makes it an accurate representation of some of the key books from my years of reading.

· Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry – This Pulitzer Prize winner is arguably the classic western of all time and is destined to be the book that keeps McMurtry in print forever. Who can forget Gus, Call, and the rest of the crew?
· To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – This is another modern classic, one that made a huge impression on me as a young reader and is the book chosen by the city of Houston for The Big Read 2009.
· Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – one of my all-time favorites despite the way Dickens caved in to his critics and changed its ending.
· Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – Another one that had a great impact on me as a young reader because of how easily I could picture myself under similar circumstances.
· Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle - I picked this one up in paperback in Nashville while there on a three-day pass during Army basic training at Ft. Campbell, KY (1968). I read the whole thing on the bus back to Ft. Campbell and had to sneak it into the barracks and hide it for four more weeks because books were forbidden to us during basic and I couldn’t bear to part with it. I still have that paperback, in fact.
· Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart by Joyce Carol Oates – This is the book (1990) that convinced me that Joyce Carol Oates is a national treasure, one of the most talented and important novelists of my lifetime.
· The Greatest Game Ever Played by Jerry Izenberg – Game Six of the 1986 National League playoffs between the Houston Astros and the New York Mets, and I was there for all 16 innings. I am even quoted by name in this one, so how can I ever forget it?
· Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin – My lifetime admiration of Abraham Lincoln went up another notch when I read this one about Lincoln’s idea to appoint his three biggest rivals to his first cabinet. Goodwin makes this one read almost like a novel.
· Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson – This is the most complete, and easiest read, one volume history of the four years of the American Civil War that I’ve ever found – a great combination.
· Deliverance by James Dickey – I read the book before seeing the movie, thank God, and couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Its story of four city boys who find out the hard way that the world is not what they think it is.
· From Here to Eternity by James Jones – Jones, a WWII veteran, wrote what I still consider one of the best novels ever written about that war. I don’t have fond memories of the movie, but the book is one of my favorites.
· Life of Pi by Yann Martel – Just when I thought I had this one all figured out, everything changed and it became a whole different book.
· Resistance by Owen Sheers – I love alternate history (when it is done seriously) and this is one of the best alternate histories I’ve read in years. It is completely believable, one of best “what ifs” about WWII I’ve ever read.
· This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust – This history book explores America’s 19th century ideas about death and it puts the massive death toll of the American Civil war into perspective.
· In Cold Blood by Truman Capote – Probably the first “true crime” book I ever read, one that I will always remember because of how Capote was able to mix elements of the novel with elements of nonfiction, effectively creating a whole new genre.

Koko Taylor Dead at 80

The legendary blues master, Koko Taylor, is gone. She died from complications resulting from the surgery she had about two weeks ago - but she will live forever.



She was one of the best in the business and I'll be listening to her music today - and a long time in the future.

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret

Imagine the shock and confusion author Steve Luxenberg felt when he discovered that his elderly mother was not really the only child she had claimed to be for his entire lifetime. Luxenberg, after all, grew up knowing how proud his mother was to have been an only child, something of which she often spoke at family gatherings. It was only by chance that Luxenberg and his siblings learned that they, in fact, had an aunt whose existence they had never suspected.

Beth Luxenberg was in poor health by the time her children learned that she had a sister only two years younger then herself. Beth mentioned to a doctor that her little sister had been institutionalized at the age of two. Her children, assuming that Beth had no real memories of the little girl and believing that the age at which they were separated explained Beth’s claim to be an only child, decided not to confront her with their knowledge of her sister’s existence. That decision would be regretted by Steve Luxenberg long after his mother’s death.

Beth Luxenberg died in 1999, unaware that her children knew of the secret she had kept hidden from them for so many decades. However, within six months of his mother’s death, Steve Luxenberg was able to give his aunt a name, Annie, and he was beginning the research that would allow him to expose an astounding family secret (and a couple of less astounding ones), a secret his mother had hoped to take with her to the grave. Luxenberg discovered that Annie, rather than having been institutionalized at the age of two, had grown up in small family apartments with his mother and their parents. He was stunned to learn that, in fact, Annie had not been institutionalized until she was twenty-one years old and Beth was twenty-three.

Why had his mother worked so hard to keep Annie’s existence from her own children? Had his father known of Annie? Why was Annie placed in a state institution and what happened to her? These questions would lead Steve Luxenberg, longtime Washington Post reporter, on a search that would rewrite his family history.

Annie’s Ghosts is, at heart, a mystery but it is also a strongly written memoir in which Steve Luxenberg shares his experiences of being raised by a woman determined to keep the existence of her sister from her children. In his quest to find the truth, Luxenberg introduces numerous family members and friends, many of whom are able to add bits and pieces to Annie’s story. This is non-fiction, though, and much of Annie’s story seems lost forever despite Luxenberg’s determined research, including a trip to the European village from which his family immigrated to America.

Luxenberg, in an attempt to understand his mother’s motives for hiding her sister from her own family, includes a brief history of America’s twentieth-century mental-health movement and the country’s attitude about mental illness. What he learns about Annie’s treatment, and how different her life might have been if she had been born just 25 years later, is both heartbreaking and instructive.

Annie’s Ghosts is a well-written account of Steve Luxenberg’s meticulously researched attempt to return Annie Cohen to the family that almost lost her memory for good. That he learned as much as he did about a woman he never knew existed, one whose past is barely documented, is amazing. Annie’s Ghosts is not a particularly easy read – but it is well worth the effort.

Rated at: 4.0

More Than Books Get Stolen from Libraries

One library seems to have found out the hard way that it had more to lose than books and computers. Fox News 44 reports on the Proctor, Vermont, librarian who took the art right off the wall...took it to auction, in fact:

A librarian in Proctor has resigned after auctioning off a valuable painting owned by the Proctor Free Library.

Police say head librarian Mary Brough admitted taking "Curly Locks," a 26-by-33-inch Jessie Wilcox Smith painting that for years hung on the wall in a children's section of the library. The 1912 painting was sold for $96,600 to a Massachusetts auction house.

And she thought she could get away with this? What is her husband really saying?

Chinese Book Thief Really, Really Likes to Read

From ChinaDaily comes a story about a man who loves books more than anything else in the world. I hope Chinese authorities cut the guy a little slack.

A man who was arrested for trying to steal books in Chongqing municipality confessed on Monday that he stole 1,565 books in the last three years.

Surnamed Liu, he said he felt his crime was just a bad habit but the hobby costs several bookstores 37,000 yuan ($5,417) in losses.

After guards stopped him on Monday, he told police he wanted to read them, not to sell them.

"I have no money but like reading very much, so I stole the books," Liu said.

Good luck, Mr. Liu. I suspect you're going to need it.

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Mark Levin begins his bestseller, Liberty and Tyranny, with the premise that conservatism equates to liberty and liberalism to tyranny – although he almost immediately substitutes the word Statist for liberal. That is certainly starting a book off with a bang, but the rest of Liberty and Tyranny, in which Levin rationally makes his case, proves him to be up to the challenge sure to come from readers who disagree with his choice of words.

(Full Disclosure: I believe myself to be a fiscal conservative and a moderate on social issues, even drifting over to the liberal side on some issues such as support for gay marriage. My chief concerns of the moment, other than the imminent bankruptcy facing this country, all relate to keeping the country safe from terrorism or to our current immigration policy, a policy sure to result in the balkanization of American society not too many years down the road. I say all this to allow that, going in, I knew I would likely agree with Levin’s case for the merits of Conservatism.)

Levin differentiates between the Conservative and Statist points-of-view in several key areas: Faith, the Constitution, Federalism, the Free Market, the Welfare State, Environmentalism, Immigration and Self-Preservation. He reminds the reader that this country’s founders considered the greatest threat to personal liberty to be “an all-powerful central government, where the few dictate to the many” – the obvious preference of the modern Liberal/Statist and a goal to which the current administration is supremely dedicated. Seldom in United States history have so few believed that they have the right (and, unfortunately, the power) to interfere so intimately in the lives of so many.

Sadly enough, both major political parties in this country seem to have abandoned the Conservative principles that made the country great, the very principles upon which the founders based our constitution. Make no mistake – George W. Bush did not govern as a Conservative, despite his claims to the contrary. These days, Conservatives, at election time, generally find themselves choosing between what is, in their judgment, the lesser of evils, a choice not always as obvious as one would hope in an age where the major parties are so much alike - and so thoroughly dominated by their corrupt leadership.

Levin ends Liberty and Tyranny with what he calls “A Conservative Manifesto” in which he enumerates ten things “the Conservative will have to do if the nation is to improve,” including: eliminating the progressive income tax, limiting Supreme Court judicial review power, applying anti-trust laws to the National Education Association, stopping “chain immigration,” fighting against a nationalized health system, and demanding that all public servants strictly uphold the Constitution.

The book also introduced me to an Abraham Lincoln quote with which I was unfamiliar, a quote to which, as a fiscal conservative, I am particularly drawn, “Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” Or, to put it in modern terms, assuring that his own shall be safe from the Statist who wants to confiscate it and redistribute it to “the houseless.” God help us.

Rated at: 4.0

Newspaper Clipping Sunday

A baker's dozen of Odds and Ends from all over for you this morning:



Audio book sales are down a whopping 47% according to publishers. This makes me wonder if e-book sales are eating into the sale of audio books or if all those free audio book downloads local libraries make available are the real culprits.

One national charity's "blue boxes" seeking book donations are crippling local library books sales across the country. Good or bad? You decide.

On the pleasure of re-reading favorite books - "The point of reading outward, widely, has always been to find the books I want to re-read and then to re-read them. In part, that’s an admission of defeat, an acknowledgement that no matter how long and how widely I read, I will only ever make my way through a tiny portion of the world’s literature." Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times

Declining Book Sales Cast Gloom at an Expo - and the beat goes on. I don't think a 1.5% overall decline in book sales means it's time to push the panic button. After all, the industry still sold over 3 billion books and, thanks to higher prices, net revenues actually rose by 1%.

The ever-brilliant Hugo Chavez is distributing 2.5 million copies of three books to the poor of Venezuela although they would probably much prefer something more appropriate, like food or clothing. The subject of the books will not be much of a surprise to those who regularly follow the antics of this bozo.

An unusual friendship and letter exchange creates a brand new little reader

President and Mrs. Obama to host National Book Festival in September. Thank you very much, Laura Bush.

British textbook risks angering Muslims with its take on Islam's attitude toward women. I am so sick of this kind of thing and wish that publishers and booksellers would stop treating Islam any differently than they treat Christianity and other relgions. Giving in to threats from thugs is like paying money to blackmailers - it never ends.

Are comic books turning into soap operas? Well, I agree with Archie; I would have chosen Veronica, too.

How to bind a book. Who knew it was a 36-part process?

Why e-books aren't cheaper. It's all about fixed costs - and Tina Brown (as I saw on Book TV yesterday) is already ticked off that Amazon sells them for as little as $9.99.

Taking a book vacation - cheap, relaxing, instructive - the perfect vacation for those who can't leave home

Books still rule at Book Expo 2009, as indicated by this article Searching for eBooks at Book Expo 2009. Let's hope the book industry doesn't destroy itself the way that the music industry did itself by ignoring all this new technology.

James Patterson Sets Record for Selling His Name

Tom Clancy was the first writer that I noticed farming out his name to books largely, if not completely, written by others. Of course, Tom's name was always in a huge font and the grunt who did all the real work had his name on the cover in much smaller print. Clancy did pretty well with that business model but James Patterson has taken it to new levels of absurdity.

And now the Guinness World Record people are recognizing just how greatly Patterson has abused his reading public by marking him as the official world record holder for "Most Entries on the New York Times Best-Seller List." According to GalleyCat, Patterson (or someone using his name to sell books) has placed 45 books on the list, 31 of them going all the way to number one.

All this proves to me is how easy it is for junk writers to dominate bestseller lists while better writers struggle to sell a few thousand copies of their work. In an age dominated by reality television, made-up junk sports, and rap music, I am not at all surprised by this. A bit sad, maybe, but not surprised.

When Ignorance is Bling...uh, Bliss

That great philosopher and wise man, Kanye West, has been quoted over on seattlepi.com in a statement that displays both his remarkable intellect and his willingness to share his brilliant insights with all the chumps in the world (the rest of us):

"Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed," West said. "I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph.

"I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life," he said.

As the article points out, Mr. West has recently "written" a book of his own. I've seen it. I think my 7-year-old grandson could write a more meaningful book.

Kanye West: Ignorance preaching to the ignorant. Priceless.

A "book" of 52 pages, many of them blank or containing absurd amounts of "white space," a book requiring the help of a ghost writer... makes me wonder if Kanye West is a "proud non-reader of books" simply because he doesn't know how to read a book.

If Only I Could "Unread" I Am Charlotte Simmons

Booking Through Thursday this week asks the flip side of last week's question (A Second First Time). This week the question is:

Is there a book that you wish you could “unread”? One that you disliked so thoroughly you wish you could just forget that you ever read it?

I'm sure if I thought about it very long, I would probably come up with at least half a dozen dogs that I would prefer to "unread." I'm going to go with the first one that flew into my mind, though, because I really don't think I can top it no matter how long I think about the question. Interestingly, I found this question over at C.B.'s blog where he chose Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities as the book he wished he had never opened. I don't have as low an opinion of that particular Wolfe book, but I find it kind of funny that my choice turns out to be another of Tom Wolfe's novels: I Am Charlotte Simmons.


I am not going to bother with much of a description of the novel's characters or plot. I'll just say that it is a pointless story about modern university life and it is peopled by some of the most despicable characters to ever come together in one book. The point is that there is no point to this novel. The only reason I kept reading, and this is a long book, is that I figured someone like Tom Wolfe just had to have something literary in mind and that it would click with me "any page now." Never happened and, when done, I realized I had just finished reading a poorly written piece of soft porn. The book is garbage - and I only wish I could get those wasted hours back. Tom Wolfe owes me big time.

One Good Turn

That One Good Turn does not always lead to another is a harsh fact of life that several of Kate Atkinson’s characters learn the hard way in this, her second Jackson Brodie novel. Their experience is, in fact, more one of no good deed going unpunished.

None of the festival crowd trying to negotiate the streets of crowded Edinburgh is quite prepared for the case of road rage unfolding in front of it over what is, after all, only a very minor traffic incident. One driver, though, emerges with baseball bat in hand and seems anxious to start swinging it. As the violence escalates, some members of the crowd, including Jackson Brodie, ex-policeman and retired private detective, are moved to do the right thing, choices that do not go unnoticed by the maniac with the baseball bat.

Upon the arrival of the authorities, the crowd quickly breaks up and all the witnesses go their own way with the exception of Martin Canning, a rather effeminate writer of throwback mysteries, who accompanies the road rage victim on an ambulance ride to the hospital. A Kate Atkinson novel is never simple, though, and when the psychopathic driver decides to hunt down the witnesses to his road rage, Atkinson begins to juggle half a dozen plotlines that seem, at first, to have little to do with one another. Atkinson develops each plotline on its own, fully developing her characters along the way and, as she did in Case Histories, gradually overlaps the characters to tell a story bigger than the sum of its parts.

Atkinson peoples One Good Turn with a colorful assortment of characters, all of whom will have their lives changed forever because of a random traffic accident that has nothing to do with any of them. Jackson Brodie, feeling a bit emasculated by all the money he inherited from a former client, is in the city because Julia, also from Case Histories, is there to perform in a festival play. Gloria, wife of sleazy homebuilder and thug Graham Hatter, witnesses the accident while on an outing with a flighty friend of hers. Newly promoted police detective Louise Monroe learns that her 14-year-old son and his friend were thrilled by the violence they witnessed. Throw a few illegal alien Russian women, a circus, a mistaken-identity murder, a dumb-as-a-post psychopath, and a disappearing drowning victim into the mix and things tend to get a bit wild.

Be advised that, as usual in a Kate Atkinson novel, the reader must pay strict attention to all the characters and their goings-on in order to appreciate the intricate plot that Atkinson weaves. No snoozing allowed.

I thoroughly enjoyed One Good Turn but Atkinson does stretch “coincidence” to its breaking point often enough that I have to limit its rating to four stars.

Rated at: 4.0

How Not to Die

I watch so little television that I was completely unaware of “Dr. G’s” Discovery Health channel program before I began to read How Not to Die. The book’s title, though, caught my eye and, when I read that Jan Garavaglia is a chief medical examiner in Florida who “presides over” some 1,100 autopsies every year, I was hooked. I figured there could be no one more qualified to offer advice on extending one’s life than someone like Garavaglia who is intimately familiar with the unnecessary failings of the human body.

Granted, much of what Garavaglia offers is common sense advice that we have all heard before, but the doctor’s approach of illustrating her points with shared personal and work experiences makes what she has to say memorable - if not entirely new. How Not to Die is divided into chapters on all of the usual suspects when it comes to causes of early death: fear of seeing a doctor, adverse reactions to prescription medicine, auto accidents, medical mistakes, obesity, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, smoking, and general accidents.

Dr. Garavaglia uses a conversational tone, one that her television fans are likely to recognize, to make her points but most chapters also include a summary table or two to restate all the main points. I used the tables both to reinforce Garavaglia’s most important thoughts and to make sure that I had not missed anything in my reading. For example, the book includes a three-page table titled “Don’t Ignore These Symptoms” listing some twenty-three symptoms for which a person should always seek medical attention, a particularly helpful table for men who tend to “tough it out” rather than see a doctor until things become even more serious for them.

Part of the fun in reading a book like How Not to Die comes from the surprising statistics and facts the books often include, and How Not to Die does not disappoint in that regard. Consider these examples:

· Between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die every year from medical errors, more than from car wrecks, AIDS or breast cancer
· Over 65% of all traffic accidents happen at or near intersections
· Heart attacks are the biggest killer of travelers and the attacks usually come during the first two days of a vacation
· Vacations generally extend a person’s life expectancy; men who take frequent vacations are 30% less likely to die of heart disease and women are 50% less likely to do so
· Heart attack victims who also suffer depression are four times more likely to die within six months of their attacks than victims not suffering from depression

How Not to Die is perfect for those needing a little extra motivation to get them started on the kind of lifestyle that will allow them to remain active well into their eighties and beyond. It is all pretty simple, really, and Dr. Garavaglia even makes it sound like fun.

Rated at: 3.5

Memorial Day 2009 - Houston, TX

My father during World War II (third from left)

This is just a short clip showing a small fraction of the markers honoring the Houston-area veterans buried at Houston National Cemetery - about 8 miles south of my house. I was happy to see that several hundred people were at the cemetery this morning to honor these men and women. Houston National Cemetery is a 420 acre cemetery housing the remains of almost 68,000 veterans (at the end of 2008). I'm sure that number is growing rapidly since approximately 900 World War II veterans die somewhere in this country every day, many of them from this area. My 87-year-old father is a surviving World War II veteran, having spent three years in Europe (1943-45) during which he saw fighting all the way from the beaches of Normandy to Leipzig, Germany.



Let us never forget what these men and women went through to defend the rest of us. I particularly feel bad for the Viet Nam veterans because of the generally horrible way they were treated when they returned to American soil - thanks to despicable people like that media darling, William C. Ayers and his fellow scum. (Yes, I admit to hating this man and everything for which he stands now or ever in his past. The fact that he escaped prison on a technicality is one of the most shameful things that happened during that era - and, just as shamefully, he still gets away with murder today.)

The Last Paradise

As the twentieth century began, Galveston Island was home to a boomtown with a seemingly unlimited future. For good reason, the city called itself “Wall Street of the Southwest,” a title its citizens felt secure to claim because of Galveston’s number of large banks, cotton merchants and brokers. Most importantly, Galveston Bay formed a natural harbor that allowed Galveston to have become the largest city in the state of Texas, home to some 42,000 citizens.

It is at this point that Michael Kasenow’s debut novel, The Last Paradise, begins. Rather than telling Galveston’s story through the eyes of its wealthiest citizens, however, Kasenow decided to do so from the point-of-view of the racially diverse bunch inhabiting a lively Galveston neighborhood called the Alleys. The Alleys is home to former slaves, prostitutes, gamblers, alcoholics and other down-and-outers of all stripes.

Starting his story at a deceptively slow pace, Kasenow introduces a host of characters that readers will long remember. The character around whom the book is centered is drifter Maxwell Hayes, a man who, despite having experienced the worst that life can throw at a person, still knows right from wrong and is willing to defend those unable to defend themselves. Newt Haskins, Maxwell’s best friend, is a former Yale man and card shark who works on the docks with Maxwell. Maxwell, despite himself, is fond of prostitute Fanny Brown, a woman willing to sell herself if it means that her son Cody will be able to afford college one day.

Despite what the rest of the city is like, in the Alleys blacks and whites mingle freely and skin color is not a big issue. Jake Bishop, a black man who works with Maxwell and Newt, wants nothing more than to see his son and two daughters make more of themselves than he was allowed to make of himself. As the book opens, young Jake is preparing to leave Galveston for his first year’s schooling, still trying to choose between becoming a doctor or a schoolteacher.

These are just some of the characters that readers will come to know. There are numerous others, including the delightful Catholic nuns who run the orphanage, a happily in love, but mentally handicapped couple, corrupt businessmen, deadly policemen who double as Klan members, and other colorful hangers-on who frequent Maxwell’s favorite saloon.
The Last Paradise is a frank look at how those at the bottom of the economic ladder were exploited by those at the top in turn-of-the-century America. Life is not easy in Maxwell’s world but those who inhabit it along side him are surprisingly happy with their day-to-day existence right up to the point that others decide to remind them of how powerless they really are. Just when their little community suffers a mortal blow, and it seems that things cannot possibly get any worse, the famous Galveston hurricane of September 8, 1900 strikes the island.

Michael Kasenow’s description of the storm and its aftermath is haunting, especially knowing that Galveston was almost destroyed again in 2008, this time by Hurricane Ike. What Kasenow describes is so gut wrenching and horrible that the reader begins to feel like a storm survivor in search of loved ones. It is only when all the book’s characters are finally accounted for, in fact, that readers will feel ready to learn what life has in store for the survivors.

The Last Paradise, filled with humor, drama, tragedy and colorful characters, is a worthy piece of historical fiction. Michael Kasenow tells the story of a city that would likely be much different today if not for the storm that almost destroyed it 108 years ago.

Rated at: 4.5

Barnes & Noble Loses Less Than Expected

I saw a few days ago that Barnes & Noble lost approximately $2.7 million during the first quarter of 2009, a scary number to a guy like me but less than the bookseller was expected to lose by those supposedly in the know. Digging into the details a little, it seems that both store sales and online sales are slipping for B&N, so the company's problems may be growing as the marketing of books continues to evolve.

Is the Kindle starting to impact B&N's online sales? I don't own a Kindle but I do have a first generation Sony eReader and I can truthfully say that I still, after all this time, much prefer owning a hard copy of a book - even the ones I might be disposing of later, or maybe, especially of the ones I am not all that sure I will want to keep. I know that I can get some cash back, or another book in trade, for a hard copy I own, something that seems impossible (or illegal) with e-books. But maybe I'm one of the exceptions to the rule and Kindle and eReader really are starting to impact the online sales of B&N and Borders.

The bigger problem that I observe when I go to Barnes & Noble is that so many people seem to be there to drink coffee, while trashing a few magazines and newspapers, or to do high school or college homework research. I seldom see those same folks at the cash register when I'm checking out. And, too, it seems that it's mostly bestsellers and other books by "hot" authors that are going out the door when I'm around despite the tremendous number of square feet devoted to publisher back lists. I really, really hope that stores like B&N and Borders survive forever, but I'm starting to wonder what they will look like in another ten years - or if they will even exist (remember Crown books?).