For years, I had heard about James Nestor's book, "Breath." I heard podcasts where he was interviewed, and as someone who meditates every morning and For years, I had heard about James Nestor's book, "Breath." I heard podcasts where he was interviewed, and as someone who meditates every morning and has practiced yoga several times a week for more than 15 years, I had heard about the importance of breath so much it was like white noise in my brain. Nestor's book intrigued me. His interviews on various podcasts were good So, I was more than mildly interested. I knew I would dive into it 鈥� at some point. But what sent me looking for the book weeks ago was a discussion about the frustrating world of creativity.
In a wide-ranging discussion about writing, well-known North Carolina author Wiley Cash talked about how he gleaned some breathing techniques from Nester's book to calm in his monkey mind and help focus him on his writing. It was simply a passing reference in a conversation that lasted more than an hour. But I knew then it was time. I wasn't disappointed.
I knew I would like "Breath" because of what I learned through yoga and meditation. But what I didn't expect was how Nestor gave what would seem to be a mundane subject a real sense of tension and drama and downright surprises that made you turn the page. Nestor is quite the storyteller, an incredibly talented writer. He spent a decade digging into the research on breathing and delivers a captivating narrative brought by life by the characters he discovered and his own deep-dive into what he discovered. He became his own test subject, a guinea pig if you will. Nestor puts you at his hip and he jets around the world to talk to the key figures he found through his research, and as a reader, what you come away with is pretty astonishing.
Did I discover something I could use like Wiley did? Oh sure. But I also discovered something I didn't expect -- the art of narrative nonfiction and how to breathe life (pun intended) into a subject that would seem to be incredibly mundane. And that is why we read books, right? That sense of discovery. That's what makes it fun....more
Like many I expect, my wife Katherine and I went to see "A Complete Unknown." I liked it. Sure, I would imagine some of the scenes were pure fiction -Like many I expect, my wife Katherine and I went to see "A Complete Unknown." I liked it. Sure, I would imagine some of the scenes were pure fiction -- I mean, did Johnny Cash really meet up with Dylan at Newport and did Pete Seeger really pick an axe and try to cut the cable to end Dylan's electric set in March 1965? Who knows. But it made for a fun film, one that opened a cinematic window into a tumultuous time not unlike ours today.
So, when I saw the film pulled from Elijah Wald's 2015 book, "Dylan Goes Electric," I put my name immediately onto a list at our local library. I was far from alone. I had to wait four months before "Dylan Goes Electric" was available. I then dove in. I liked it. But ....
First of all, I am no Dylanologist, like my good friend, Scott, a college professor who teaches a course on Dylan. So, I found myself poring through page after gate that felt like walking through mud. Elijah Wald did some incredible research to unearth a snapshot of that time when Dylan was young and unknown. But like many nonfiction writers I've read, I found him going into a lot of rabbit holes about tertiary characters to reveal a more comprehensive picture. That kind of deep dive research is needed, and if I was a Dylanologist, I would be hungry for those kind of details. But I am not, and the way I see it, that kind of research helps you write with authority and gives you an insight of what to leave in and -- what to leave out.
In the end, "Dylan Goes Electric" was a struggle for me. I ended up speed-reading through parts to get to Dylan passages because I had to get it back to the library to avoid a fine and get it for the next person on the list. And for me, that is no way to read a book, any book. ...more
I've always enjoyed novels by Wiley Cash. I've read everything he's written, and of course, what I enjoy is that he sets his novels in a place I know I've always enjoyed novels by Wiley Cash. I've read everything he's written, and of course, what I enjoy is that he sets his novels in a place I know well -- North Carolina. His third. novel, "The Last Ballad," left me a bit disappinted. Didn't grab me like his last two, "A Land More Kind Than Home" and "The Dark Road to Mercy."
Maybe it was because he based "The Last Ballad" on a dark chapter in the history of his hometown, Gastonia, NC, and he felt hemmed in by facts that always are stubborn. But with "When Ghosts Come Home," Cash let his imagination do jumping jacks without the worry of history or facts. What he came away with was quite the page turner in a usually sleepy part of North Carolina, a small town on the coast known as Oak Island.
I know that town well, and Cash setting the novel in the mid-1980s was a ncie time capsule to revisit, a time before cell phones, AI and divisive politics. Just plain old evil and greed.
Cash, who teaches creative writing at UNC-Asheville, is a master at his craft. And in "When Ghosts Come Home," he was at the time of his creative game. A joy to read. And quite the twist at the end. When I finished, I closed the book and went, "Damn."
Then I turned to the acknowledgements to glean something of how he came up with such a sordid, yet realistic tale of who we are. That's where I read this, addressed to his two young daughters: "Your mom and I hope to leave something of ourselves behind for you, and we hope to leave it behind in a less dangerous world."
I picked up Ray Bradbury's classic from 1962 when I spotted The Atlantic cover right before the election. It showed an illustration from the back of TI picked up Ray Bradbury's classic from 1962 when I spotted The Atlantic cover right before the election. It showed an illustration from the back of Trump riding toward DC with a dilapidated U.S. Capitol on the horizon. I mean, that cover was scary. When I looked inside for an explanation, the artist wrote about using "Something Wicked This Way Comes" as a backdrop. So, I read it. I blazed through it. And I found it to be an excellent allegory of our present-day state of politics and America.
It reminded me of George Orwell's "Animal Farm." Except this time, the pigs were replaced by carnival performers Bradbury called "freaks" and how they stole people's souls by luring them into an evil carousel or a maze of mirrors. But beyond that it was an excellent example of stellar writing. Turn to any page. Any page. You'll see how Bradbury used inventive verbs and vivid descriptions to create scenes as captivating as any painting by Matisse.
And even with a book that came out more than six decades ago, it still felt fresh. Quite the read. And always will be....more
My most impactful book I've read in years. A bigger review to come. After finishing it right before daybreak, gotta process this.My most impactful book I've read in years. A bigger review to come. After finishing it right before daybreak, gotta process this....more
I can't remember how I found out about this book. I think it was referenced in Andrew McCarthy's memoir, "Brat: An '80s Story," and when I saw our libI can't remember how I found out about this book. I think it was referenced in Andrew McCarthy's memoir, "Brat: An '80s Story," and when I saw our library had it on the shelves, I thought why not. And it was the quite the surprise.
I didn't know a thing about Hendra. All I knew was what I read on the book's inside flap. A British writer. A satirist. The guy helped create the National Lampoon, played the band manager in "This Is Spinal Tap" and worked with comedians who became household names in the 1970s. You know, Belushi and Chase and Carlin.
When I dove into his book, Hendra unveils in unflinching detail how he lived 鈥撯€� fast and loose in a fog of drugs and alcohol. After I finished "Father Joe," I wanted to find out more about him, and I read that Hendra was accused of sexually molesting a daughter from his first marriage. That damning revelation came out in NY Times right after the publication in 2004 of "Father Joe" when it became a bestseller. Hendra's daughter claimed that her dad didn't tell everything.
When the story ran, the NYTimes ombudsman at the time wrote: "I can't imagine an accusation more serious, a transgression more detestable. If her story is true, Tony Hendra deserves punishment far greater than humiliation in the pages of The Times. As an editor, the verities of the profession might have led me to publish this article. But as a reader, I wish The Times hadn't."
If I knew that, would I have picked up "Father Joe"? Maybe. But I would have missed reading a memoir that really moved me. When I finished "Father Joe" on an early Saturday morning and closed it, I said to myself "What a beautiful book."
Hendra's book is all about his 40-year friendship with a Benedictine monk named Father Joe, and it illustrates how a relationship between two people who are decades apart in age can heal. But what really grabbed me was the writing. Man, Hendra can write. Here's his opening sentence:
"How I met Father Joe. I was 14 and having an affair with a married woman."
And then Hendra is off, galloping through the pages and giving us a glimpse of his childhood, his career, and his many missteps. Some are funny; some are not. By page 270, Hendra ends his memoir with this:
"In the end his knowledge came from his bottomless supply of love, a poor, bedraggled, overburdened old word, but in Father Joe's hands, revitalized. For Joe, love was a cure, an emollient, a diagnostic tool, a stimulus, a reward, a nutrient, a guarantor of health and peace. He was the living breathing proof that love will teach you everything you really need to know, even if you choose to live outside the world and its supposedly limitless stocks of knowledge and information.
Father Joe was the human incarnation of Blake's vision: You can find eternity in a grain of sand."
Father Joe died in 1998. He was in his 90s; he had cancer. His death prompted Hendra to write the book. Hendra died in 2021 of ALS, a death sentence of a disease. He was 79.
As for his daughter's allegations, Hendra responded with this: "I can only just categorically deny this. It's not a new allegation. It's simply not true, I'm afraid."
A classic he said/she said. As a former journalist who worked in daily newspapers for nearly three decades, I have seen my share of those back-and-forth dispatches. I've written them, too. They are always damning every way you look at it. Hendra's is no exception. As for his memoir, "Father Joe," I come away from it with a feeling of why I read in the first place. You get a glimpse of someone's life or a particular time in history. But if you're lucky enough, you come away with what can help you in your own life. And the lesson here? Friendships matter.
"Father Joe" reminds me of that great quote from the French writer Marcel Proust: 鈥淟et us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.鈥�
True. Despite his daughter's allegations -- and whether if it's true or not 鈥撯€� Hendra gave us all a gift with "Father Joe." It's a necessary reminder of our humanity, of why we live....more
My friend Rob and I have been in a book club together for nearly 20 years, and we've read all kinds of stuff together. A few weeks ago, he called and My friend Rob and I have been in a book club together for nearly 20 years, and we've read all kinds of stuff together. A few weeks ago, he called and told me he had to step away from our book-club crew for a few months because he had to concentrate on taking care of his ailing mother. Then, he asked, "Hey, have you read 'Being Mortal'?" When I told him I hadn't, he responded, "Jeri, that book changed my life. It gave me the insight I needed to know what I need to do for my mom."
Now, Rob is some kind of astute reader. He's a CFO of a local marketing company, a guy who loves numbers and keeps top-shelf whiskey in his office. When he reads a book he likes from our book-club crew, he'll read the author's past works just to get a feel of what they're like before we gather. That's right, before. So, when he mentioned Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal," I picked it up from our local library.
Immediately, I was reminded why I didn't read it when it first came out. "Being Mortal" was released in 2014, the same year my mom died. Her health declined slowly over a five-year period, and I was not in the headspace to read "Being Mortal" when it caught everyone's interest.
But time has a way to soften grief a bit. So, after Rob's comment and hearing Gawande on Krista Tippett's podcast "On Being," I dove in.
It's quite the emotional read because of the stories Gawande brings up. When Gawande wrote "Being Mortal," he was a endocrine surgeon and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The stories he raises in "Being Mortal" come from the 200 patients he interviewed for his book. Through story, Gawande showed how death -- and how it's treated here in the United States -- affects patients as well as their families and friends. Just everything.
So, "Being Mortal" is a tough read. But it's such an important read. It tells the back story of how assisted living communities, nursing homes and palliative care came to be as well as why more people today die in hospitals rather than their homes.
That's the nuts-and-bolts, give-me-the-facts side of the book's importance. The more impactful side, though, is what "Being Mortal" offers all of us. It can provide some solace as we face our final years, final decades on this earth.
We're all living longer and trying to live longer, and we 鈥撯€� or someone we love 鈥撯€� will face death at some point in our lives.. In "Being Mortal," Gawande gives us an emotional blueprint of how we can face our last days in the best way possible and how others we love can do the same. He does that through story. That includes the story about the death of his father.
In the book's epilogue, Gawande writes:
"We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or ind breaks down, the vital questions are the same:
-- What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? -- What are your fears and what are your hopes? -- What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? -- And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?
A few paragraphs later, Gawande adds:
"If to be human is to be limited, then the role of caring professions and institutions -- from surgeons to nursing homes -- ought to be aiding people in their struggle with those limits. Sometimes, we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the larger aims of a person's life. When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric. When we remember it, the good we do can be breathtaking."
In 2022, Gawande became the assistant administrator for global health at USAID. His book, "Being Mortal," issues a clarion call of how all of us need to rethink how we view our final days as well as the final days of those we love.
After my wife Katherine and I watched the film, "Brat," she ordered the book. I was glad of that because I had requested the book at our local libraryAfter my wife Katherine and I watched the film, "Brat," she ordered the book. I was glad of that because I had requested the book at our local library years ago and stayed on the waiting list for months -- only to never get it. So, after she finished it 鈥撯€� she liked it 鈥� I got started.
It's a quick read, and like any memoir, Andrew McCarthy writes in a chronological fashion of how his acting life started and how his life became an emotional rollercoaster fueled by alcohol. He's quite open about how his alcohol affected his life and presents a wars-and-all look at a point when he was part of the 1980s zeitgeist with such films as "Pretty in Pink," "St. Elmo's Fire," and "Less Than Zero."
What struck me is how much luck was involved in his rise. He went from a student struggling at NYU, a teenager who felt he was too scrawny, and landed a plum part in "Class," his first film. He stumbled forward through the rest of his acting life into roles that got him on billboards, theater marquees, and posters.
McCarthy essentially caught lightning in a bottle -- and he grabbed a fistful. But here's where the book really grabbed me.
McCarthy can write. He also wasn't afraid to write about his own stumbles. He didn't make excuses. He wrote candidly about his own misgivings, his dysfunctional family and how his own failures both professionally and personally led him to where he is today. And on every scene from his 216-page book, I can so understand how he feels.
See, McCarthy and I are the same age. When I was a senior at the University of South Carolina, I had the movie poster "Pretty in Pink" on my campus apartment wall right above my couch. There it was, McCarthy, Jon Cryer and Molly Ringwald staring at me as soon as I walked through the door of the place I called the "Bird's Nest."
I got the poster from the college radio station where I once DJed for two years. It's not because I loved the movie. I loved its music, for sure. But I liked the film because it was a snapshot of my generation, something I rarely saw.
By this time, I had seen "St. Elmo's Fire" in the theater when it came out in the summer of 1985. I was interning for USA TODAY in central Florida, working at a weekly newspaper. I felt so alone along the Florida Space Coast. I lived alone. I was an eight-hour drive from home, away from everything that was familiar to me. So, all I did was work, go for long runs along the Indian River after work, bike to the beach, read "Less Than Zero" and "Delcorso's Gallery," and listen to my own mix tapes that contained tunes by Howard Jones, REM, The Smiths, Joe Jackson, The Pretenders, and the Psychedelic Furs on my boom box in my room.
That summer is a blur. But one thing I'll always remember was this:
After I saw "St. Elmo's Fire," I sat on the hood of my car in the theater parking lot. I sucked down a few beers and talked to a girl from the newsroom who was my age. We had just met, and we talked about what the movie meant and what we hoped our future would look like. The movie wasn't all that great. But its sensibility of young adults searching for who they were resonated with me. I was them; they were me. I was the moody writer wondering where I fit in my new world of newspapers. I was McCarthy -- or at least his character, except without the cigarettes But after reading "Brat: An '80s Story," I realized he was my doppelg盲nger. I was him; he was me.
In my 20s, I drank too much and wrestled with anxiety, feeling like an imposter as I charged headlong into journalism trying to find my way. I did. I stayed in daily journalism for nearly 30 years. Today, I'm a married father of two and writing still pays my bills and stokes my creativity. As I read "Brat: An '80s Story," I time-traveled back to my 20s and every one of my senses vibrated. In my mind, I catapulted myself back to a time when I was the college journalist, the college radio DJ who saw alcohol as a necessary crux to deal with life, fuel the party, and mask the insecurities I felt for the future.
Just like McCarthy.
So, I gave "Brat: An '80s Story" gave four stars. It's subjective, of course. But like what all good books do, whether fiction or nonfiction, "Brat: An '80s Story" helped me understand once again my own past and how McCarthy -- or what he represented 鈥撯€� fit into it.
So many sentences hit home. But here's one. From page 209. McCarthy wrote:
"... in a great many ways acting saved my life. When I stepped onstage as the Artful Dodger all those years ago, I light went on inside me that has never gone out. I came close to extinguishing it through alcohol, but my subsequent recovery, like a crucible, has only changed its form and added another hue to its flame. And yet, among a certain generation of people, the work I did as a young man will forever burn brightest. And it's not just the work: maybe now, more importantly, it's the memory of the work that's so valuable to people. Because in the memory of those movies exists a touchstone of youth, of when life was all ahead, when the future was a blank slate, when anything was possible."
Dave Kindred's "My Home Team" came to me out of the blue.
I got a box in the mail months ago, opened it, and I saw it was a gift from Ted, my forever Dave Kindred's "My Home Team" came to me out of the blue.
I got a box in the mail months ago, opened it, and I saw it was a gift from Ted, my forever friend a few of us call "Sweet Daddy Pop." We grew up together and got arrested together for doing lame-brained moves as teenagers. He was one of my groomsmen, I was one of his, and we have continued our friendship with our other forever friend, Scott, our other groomsmen, by hitting some music festivals somewhere every year. Anyway, Ted sent me a copy of "My Home Team" after he and his wife Robin read it. Taped to the inside was this message from Ted: "This book has you written all over it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. From SDP."
Sweet Daddy Pop was right.
Dave Kindred is a legendary sports columnist who has won his share of big-time awards for writing about Super Bowls, the World Olympics, World Series games, the Masters' golf tournament and Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion. Ali called him "Louisville." Dave had penned columns for The Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, National Sports Daily, Sporting News, Golf Digest and ... let me take a breath ... the Louisville Courier Journal.
This book is about all that. But really, "My Home Team" is about his latest beat. With pen in hand, paid with a box of Milk Duds every game, he wrote about the Lady Potters at Morton High. They were a basketball dynasty in Illinois. Dave called them, "The Golden State Warriors with ponytails," a phrase that ended up on the back of T-shirts.
Dave had retired from journalism and moved back to where he grew up in the dot-sized town of Atlanta, Illinois. There, he realized he wanted to be a reporter. And there, he also fell in love. He married his high school sweetheart,Cheryl Ann Liesman. They got married, had a son, got a passport through big-city journalism to see the world and retired to a farm. Dave couldn't put down the pend and notepad. He and Cheryl went to see the Lady Potters play, and Dave decided he wanted to write about their team in the way any columnist does -- with personality, verve, humor and the gift of turning a phrase.
Of course, Dave Kindred can write. And it's fun to hear about his stories about Ali and a newspaper world that really doesn't exist anymore. But where Dave's book goes from a fun read to an impactful read is when Cheryl suffers a stroke and the Lady Potters become not just an avocation, but a light in a life shrouded in the darkness of grief.
Dave writes:
"A couple of years in, maybe three or four even, I understood my real reason for writing about the Lady Potters. They kept me alive. Not in the sense of giving me a reason to live. But they made it possible for me to believe I existed. People I loved were gone. The newspaper work I loved was gone. I refused to be gone, to be disappeared.
"I wrote golf for Golf Digest, I wrote a dual biography on Ali and Cosell, and I was deep into a book on the Washington Post. I refused to go gentle into that good night. Damned right, I would write about girls basketball.
"It was fun, and grandmas stayed up late to read that stuff, and a buddy with a master's degree in education said, "Man, are you ever helping these young ladies lay foundations of high self-esteem that are so going to be important. I'm in awe." All good. Not my purpose, but good. My purpose was unbecoming. The writing was proof I existed. "
In June 2021, four months after their 59th wedding anniversary, Cheryl died. In his acknowledgements, Dave writes: "I am a reporter trying to write better than I can. I needed help on this one. I leaned on a woman I met outside Mrs. Brak's English class when we were seventeen. She is beside me now. I love you, Sherri."
A few pages in, you see Dave's dedication: "For Cheryl, forever and a day."
The morning I finished this book, I sent a text to Ted: "Finished. And dammit, Ted, I effin' cried when I closed "My Home Team' this morning. In his acknowledgements, Kindred writes: "I am a reporter trying to write better than I can." Man, I so get that. Ted, Sweet Daddy Pop, thank u for this gift."
Ted responded: "There was clearly a reason I thought of you when i read it. Robin did too."
Like Dave Kindred, I'm a journalist, a columnist. I've watched my own newspaper world crumble. After 28 years as a daily journalist, I knew I had to leave. I had two kids to put through college, and I found job security and better pay in higher education. Today, I write about one of fastest growing universities in the country. But like Dave Kindred, I also write about what moves me. In the fall of 2017, I started a blog after writing about my son's high school football team for two years. Just like Dave Kindred.
Writers write. We write to breathe. In Dave's case, he wrote and found out that these teenage girls, these Golden State Warriors in pigtails, stopped him from stumbling into a dark well of despair. They were his light, and they became an example of what writing can do.
It can heal, and that is a mighty powerful thing. ...more
Over the past month, I went on a Tom Piazza jag. I read his novels "City of Refuge" and "Auburn Conference." "City of Refuge" details Hurricane KatrinOver the past month, I went on a Tom Piazza jag. I read his novels "City of Refuge" and "Auburn Conference." "City of Refuge" details Hurricane Katrina through the lens of two residents -- a lower Ninth native and an alt-weekly editor; "Auburn Conference" was an imagined literary confab in 1880s featuring some of the biggest literary minds at that time ... and well ... as all time. I mean, Whitman and Twain and Melville and Stowe and Douglass and Dickinson. A lot of wow there.
I loved "City of Refuge" because New Orleans figures big in my personal history, and Piazza knows the city. He's not a native. But he's lived there for years, after being the principal writer of HBO's "Treme" and penning the book, "Why New Orleans Matters," he knows the streets and the nuances.
So, yeah, I gave "City of Refuge" four stars. I'm a former editor of a alt-weekly, and the scenes Piazza painted did ring true. As for "Auburn Conference," I gave it three. Maybe 3 1/2
Some of my book-club buddies gave it four. Oh, I understand. It was quite the romp. Piazza got the idea during a long drive from Virginia to New Orleans in 2018, and depending where Piazza left from, that's at least a 10- to 12-hour drive. And it was a novel idea. It was right after the mid-term elections, a time when our country felt so uncertain -- and still does. And Piazza's concoction of this imagined conference comes at a time when America was young, still smarting from the Civil War.
Piazza did his some kind of research for "Auburn Conference." He read the books of these literary giants. But he also plowed into their speeches, journals, letters, and comments about them by their friends, family, and contemporaries. From that he got great details, like the fact that Frederick Douglass had a violin that he liked to play in quiet times, or that Melville wrote poems about roses late in life.
Then, he wrote. About that, Piazza says:
"At some point you have to shift from being yoked to a preexisting set of facts and accept that you are creating a new being, a fictional character. The research is there to serve the characters, not the other way around. The Auburn Conference isn鈥檛 a historical tract. As soon as you put recognizable personages into a work of fiction, they become imagined characters. As a fiction writer you have to claim that authority for yourself.鈥�
Oh, I liked it. Really did. It's funny, with laugh-out-loud momentss. And what Piazza showed that what they struggled that imaginary weekend some 140 years ago -- What's it like to be an American -- felt very present-day.
But "Auburn Conference" didn't move me like "City of Refuge." But that's OK. A writer with a great imagintion, I'll read time and again. That's why book clubs work. I never would have picked up this book without someone saying, "This is our next book!" But I found "City of Refuge" through "Auburn Conference." And I found a writer I know I'll always enjoy.
Piazza's narrator, an adjunct college professor who arranged the conference, ended the book this way: "Whitman, Twain, Melville, Douglass, Stowe ... I have their voices in my ear, and I cannot get rid of them. I still believe in America. God help me 鈥撯€� I still believe in America."...more
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