Monday, December 25, 2023 ~~ Books & More Books
THOUGHTS
Merry Christmas to those friends who are celebrating. I hope Santa was very, very good to you all this year. And to those who aren't celebrating, I'm sending you a plain, unadulterated Merry and the hope that you enjoy the peace and quiet of the day.
I have friends who go around making a big to-do when people wish them Merry Christmas without knowing if they celebrate it or not. I could care less. I respond with a smile and a generic response and move on. It is the thought that counts. Why rain on their parade? Life is too short and I have more important things in life to be Grinchy about.
Like drivers. Why is it every time I get on the highway I comment that today's drivers drive as if they were playing a video game -- zigging in and out, almost taking my bumpers off and all as if there were no consequences for a mistake on their part.
Yes, you are right, we were on the road again this week. We took that long drive to Philadelphia. It was Pop's birthday and we were there to celebrate; he even let us pay for his birthday dinner -- which is a hoot since he paid for every other meal we ate together. We long since stopped making a fuss over who should pay; it is his joy to take his family out to dinner. This was my first visit since Mom died and all things considered, he is doing great. He is much more up-beat and I can feel that a burden has been lifted. He is back making art and getting ready to put a couple of pieces in the community "Artists Among Us" show. He makes art for his own amusement; sometimes it even turns out to be really good.
OUGHTTOBIOGRAPHY
Still working on the "Necessary Roughage" icon.
TICKETS
Not until February I think.
THE BOOKS
Being on the road it was a bad week for reading. Then there was a problem with a book I chose. All in all, not enough reading took place this week!
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
This is the book I chose to read as the book that would take me over the top of last year's count. Readers here have raved about this one and reviews and articles all mention this one. I was so psyched. Then I started listening and I just could not get into the book. Some of it was the narrator. Some of it was RL getting in the way of my concentration. Finally, after 5 days of trying and the arrival of two holds, I decided to put the book aside for now and to move on. But I am bound and determined to return to this one after I read the two holds, maybe in the new year.
No rating
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James MacBride
With the finish of this book, I have read more books this year than in any previous year. Woo hoo!
As I opened the book, I realized that the hotel where I sat was a 20 minute ride to where this book was set. All I had to do was get on the nearby highway heading north and exit at Pottstown. It used to be a mill town but since the closing of the factories it is slowly becoming another commuter town housing the urban sprawl of Philadelphia. Growing up, this was one of the many towns on the local map but a place that we never went. We had no reason to go there, no family or friends to visit. As the book went on, it continued to name places I do have a connection to -- the town where both my brother and brother-in-law live, the home town of one branch of my family -- where Uncle Jake owned a corner grocery and Uncle Charlie another barely a block away and Uncle Ben was the greenskeeper at a local country club/golf course (the club is still a going concern).
Then I decided to Google to see if there was still a synagogue in the town. Turns out there is. DH went to school with the current rabbi, who is the widow of the father of a women I went to school with -- yes, her step daughter was older than she. Even more interesting is that currently the synagogue shares the building with a Black church, notable because the plot of the book revolves around the connection between the Blacks and the Jews living on Chicken Hill, both peoples despised by the local KKK (and yes, in the 1930s the Klan mentality was rampant and institutionalized even in the North). Regardless, Pottstown is Anytown, USA.
As for the book itself, oh my, was that delicious! I loved it. McBride is an old school storyteller spinning a simple yarn full of interesting characters all of whom have their own story. McBride's prose is simple but lyrical and the message is one of hope. The nasties get their just desserts and the righteous are rewarded. This one was so good that I am considering getting my own copy so that I can read it again and again. And bravo to narrator Dominic Hoffman, who got all the Yiddish and Hebrew right.
4.5 stars -- and I hope they don't make a movie out of it.
I have been trying not to think too much this week. It only gets me into trouble.
The only thing I want to comment on is the cover. How many different ways can I say that I like the Miss Silver series, knitting needles not withstanding? I do want to say that the cover really does not fit the material yet it was so typical of the competition.
A one-hit-wonder.
The book itself was a disappointment, even more than the narration, because it started off so good and then just completely fell apart at the end. It ever so badly needed two things: a ruthless editor and an author who listened to his editor — and my sympathy is with the editor. The book was full of riches, stories of pre-War Poland, of the Soviet gulags, of the antisemitism of everyday life, of escaping to America (and still facing antisemitism, racism and prejudice), of being a brilliant mathematician never recognized by her peers because she was a woman, of hardship, disappointment and anger, of revenge. But, the author wanted to tell all of his stories, whether they fit in the plot or not. He didn’t know how to, where to end the book and just kept meandering on and, trying to tie up every single loose end whether it needed tying or not. Kind of like this paragraph.
Okay, finally an Inspector Bonaparte that I did not like. My notes say that the premise was interesting but that it was disjointed and lacked verisimilitude. Too much disbelieve needed to be suspended. Maybe that is why less than a week and five books later I can’t even remember what the story was about. Still, I just bought a few more of this series, because all authors have bad years.
These two volumes were nowhere as good as the first two but I did walk away with one new author to devour — and a whole bunch more not to bother with.
“Fethering is on the south coast, not far from Tarring…”
“This is dedicated to the one I love…”
Thank you, Moonlight Reader. I missed this one way back when.
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DH, on the downhill slide into the end of the business year, has had a full schedule most days this month, giving me plenty of uninterrupted quiet time for reading. In fact, it was a recording break month: more books and more hours than any previous month. Of course, most of it was fluff of one sort or another -- but enjoyable fluff (which, if you have never read the label on the jar, is mostly sugar).
