John's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 13 May 2025 10:05:28 -0700 60 John's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Oregon Fever: An Anthology of Northwest Writing, 1965-1982]]> 1081463 Charles Deemer 0964340895 John 2
These provide seven sections culling both paragraphs and full-length pieces. Those on the ecological impacts of overpopulation and environmental devastation, unfortunately, remain relevant over two generations later, given the fragile watershed of the Willamette and, as two eyewitness essays, one from and one after Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980, the Ring of Fire within which the Cascades nestle.

Other entries are rather ephemeral, decrying in Don Berry's critique the "oatmeal mind" ca. 1965 and so pre-granola and long before Antifa and liberated zones of black-bloc blow-ins, or Rick Rubin (note not the hirsute NYC-to-Malibu Def Jam guru) on the neglected Westside of the former Stumptown. Art Chenoweth manages, however, prescient observations about urban-rural divides, marginalized elderly, and the relentless suburban sprawl, which haven't dated in their argument despite dated data.

Overall, less "literature" than a casual browser might anticipate from the small (if not self-published) press, but a useful representation of the Northwest's foremost city not destroyed by fire and/or quake. I think too many pieces didn't merit commendation, but as the editor, Charles Deemer likely had his personal recollections, friendly ties, and intimate knowledge to pick and choose as he wished. But if you look for a wider exposure to the writers whom Berry laments get left out of Left Coast conversing, then as now, the Oregon Literature Series texts from the mid-90s might suit your tastes (OSU Press). ]]> 2.00 Oregon Fever: An Anthology of Northwest Writing, 1965-1982
author: Charles Deemer
name: John
average rating: 2.00
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/13
date added: 2025/05/13
shelves:
review:
As the subtitle explained, this collects highlights from the Sunday supplement to Portland's paper, The Oregonian. It'd expanded from a garden and home orientation towards poetry (none included, which may be a blessing), current events, social issues, local lore, human interest, humor, and sports.

These provide seven sections culling both paragraphs and full-length pieces. Those on the ecological impacts of overpopulation and environmental devastation, unfortunately, remain relevant over two generations later, given the fragile watershed of the Willamette and, as two eyewitness essays, one from and one after Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980, the Ring of Fire within which the Cascades nestle.

Other entries are rather ephemeral, decrying in Don Berry's critique the "oatmeal mind" ca. 1965 and so pre-granola and long before Antifa and liberated zones of black-bloc blow-ins, or Rick Rubin (note not the hirsute NYC-to-Malibu Def Jam guru) on the neglected Westside of the former Stumptown. Art Chenoweth manages, however, prescient observations about urban-rural divides, marginalized elderly, and the relentless suburban sprawl, which haven't dated in their argument despite dated data.

Overall, less "literature" than a casual browser might anticipate from the small (if not self-published) press, but a useful representation of the Northwest's foremost city not destroyed by fire and/or quake. I think too many pieces didn't merit commendation, but as the editor, Charles Deemer likely had his personal recollections, friendly ties, and intimate knowledge to pick and choose as he wished. But if you look for a wider exposure to the writers whom Berry laments get left out of Left Coast conversing, then as now, the Oregon Literature Series texts from the mid-90s might suit your tastes (OSU Press).
]]> <![CDATA[Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family]]> 19250145 On the last hot day of summer in 1992, gunfire cracked over a rocky knob in northern Idaho, just south of the Canadian border. By the next day three people were dead, and a small war was joined, pitting the full might of federal law enforcement against one well-armed family. Drawing on extensive interviews with Randy Weaver's family, government insiders, and others, Jess Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and led the government to treat a family like a gang of criminals.

This is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge: the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man in the FBI, and left in its wake a nation increasingly attuned to the dangers of unchecked federal power.

]]> 603 Jess Walter John 4
I couldn't recall how these verdicts went, so this was nearly a courtroom thriller. Not my usual choice, true-life or imaginary crime, but Financial Lives of the Poets, Citizen Vince (and to a lesser extent, his two Caroline Mabry detective installments), and Cold Millions all've been favorably reviewed by me recently, so I finally got (wait list, tends to be the norm for Walter's oeuvre) to Ruby Ridge. Although fact, it opens as if fevered fiction, powerfully evoking Armageddon as surviving members of a plywood (!) cabin precariously perched atop (alas, once) pristine vistas resolve to resist (pre-hashtag) "ZOG."

If you know that slur, you may find this account matches your level of understanding. Not that I went in ignorant, but a slight flaw--for admittedly very much in the minority me--was that the farrago of "fake news," warped Scriptures, racist and antisemitic yet weirdly philo-Hebraic interpretation, and half-cocked proto-Zion Masada-like defiance fermenting a bitter mental brew, is all but skimmed over by Walter. Maybe just as well. Add machismo, home canning, guns, turkey hot dogs, delusion, back-to-nature Jesus Freaks, and--as I'd been spooked at age 12 during this same OPEC-Watergate-Godspell-"bring our POWs home" early '70s malaise--Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic oddball bestseller.

In Iowa (for far fewer Westerners are truly natives, take it from one who is born and bred past the Rockies), the young Weavers and sidekicks glom onto this post-hippie, denim homeschooling mom and leather biker dad mishmash; their autodidactic mindsets and heartland fears drive them up into the mountains. Their backstory settled, joined by jittery, boastful, well-armed misfits from the prairie or plains, they conspire against conspiracy while concocting their blurred, blustery, bad-ass, bozo, bizarre, bitchy Identity Movement; as extremists, it's riddled with scammers, informers, and rivals.

Walter evokes this emerging contrarian counterculture deftly. When the standoff, showdown, and sorry shootout transpire, and the latter half shifts to trial, he shows how savvy showboat for the defense Gerry Spence pivots charges so that the FBI, using dubiously improvised "under fire" rules of engagement, may be the truer, or false in deep-state truthiness (I update terms), bad actors vs. pre-# Resistance. Their assault, fueled by hearsay, if you bought it use it armory, and trigger fingers, stuns.

Walter remains attentive, in his reporter's stance (this originally appeared 1995, well-timed post-Waco + Oklahoma City, unfortunately: an afterword updates findings and fates), to our fundamental and formidable question: how fast or furious can those who rush in to rule over us for a greater good and public safety intrude on individuals bent on self-damning, self-imposed, self(ish?)-interests to go it alone? Where does "get off my lawn" and Second Amendment cross into damage, danger, death?

P.S. There's tragedy for another sequel in a subplot of a Good Sam bystander, seeing good in us all, caught up in this frenzy as cautionary tale. As harrowing as the fate of main characters, yet a slight, offstage victim. The lesson of this peripheral walk-on figure, who never stirred up hate, haunts me...]]> 4.22 1995 Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/12
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves:
review:
As I type this, my library informs me that So Far Gone, Jess Walter's newest novel, is in; a 24-week wait, a caper about a Christian militia in Idaho and the culture clash with, inevitably, a gentler guy leaning towards the author's "Co-Exist" sensibility. So Walter's stint on his hometown Spokane paper, as Randy Weaver and his accomplice were tried across border in Boise, shows how a generation ago, he already was well, uh, prepped, for this assignment. Sprawling narrative, if paced and plotted.

I couldn't recall how these verdicts went, so this was nearly a courtroom thriller. Not my usual choice, true-life or imaginary crime, but Financial Lives of the Poets, Citizen Vince (and to a lesser extent, his two Caroline Mabry detective installments), and Cold Millions all've been favorably reviewed by me recently, so I finally got (wait list, tends to be the norm for Walter's oeuvre) to Ruby Ridge. Although fact, it opens as if fevered fiction, powerfully evoking Armageddon as surviving members of a plywood (!) cabin precariously perched atop (alas, once) pristine vistas resolve to resist (pre-hashtag) "ZOG."

If you know that slur, you may find this account matches your level of understanding. Not that I went in ignorant, but a slight flaw--for admittedly very much in the minority me--was that the farrago of "fake news," warped Scriptures, racist and antisemitic yet weirdly philo-Hebraic interpretation, and half-cocked proto-Zion Masada-like defiance fermenting a bitter mental brew, is all but skimmed over by Walter. Maybe just as well. Add machismo, home canning, guns, turkey hot dogs, delusion, back-to-nature Jesus Freaks, and--as I'd been spooked at age 12 during this same OPEC-Watergate-Godspell-"bring our POWs home" early '70s malaise--Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic oddball bestseller.

In Iowa (for far fewer Westerners are truly natives, take it from one who is born and bred past the Rockies), the young Weavers and sidekicks glom onto this post-hippie, denim homeschooling mom and leather biker dad mishmash; their autodidactic mindsets and heartland fears drive them up into the mountains. Their backstory settled, joined by jittery, boastful, well-armed misfits from the prairie or plains, they conspire against conspiracy while concocting their blurred, blustery, bad-ass, bozo, bizarre, bitchy Identity Movement; as extremists, it's riddled with scammers, informers, and rivals.

Walter evokes this emerging contrarian counterculture deftly. When the standoff, showdown, and sorry shootout transpire, and the latter half shifts to trial, he shows how savvy showboat for the defense Gerry Spence pivots charges so that the FBI, using dubiously improvised "under fire" rules of engagement, may be the truer, or false in deep-state truthiness (I update terms), bad actors vs. pre-# Resistance. Their assault, fueled by hearsay, if you bought it use it armory, and trigger fingers, stuns.

Walter remains attentive, in his reporter's stance (this originally appeared 1995, well-timed post-Waco + Oklahoma City, unfortunately: an afterword updates findings and fates), to our fundamental and formidable question: how fast or furious can those who rush in to rule over us for a greater good and public safety intrude on individuals bent on self-damning, self-imposed, self(ish?)-interests to go it alone? Where does "get off my lawn" and Second Amendment cross into damage, danger, death?

P.S. There's tragedy for another sequel in a subplot of a Good Sam bystander, seeing good in us all, caught up in this frenzy as cautionary tale. As harrowing as the fate of main characters, yet a slight, offstage victim. The lesson of this peripheral walk-on figure, who never stirred up hate, haunts me...
]]> Moontrap 501831 Trask in Don Berry's trilogy of novels set in the Oregon Territory, Moontrap is a book of remarkable beauty and power about a man caught between his vivid past and an uncertain future. The year is 1850, a transitional period in the new Oregon Territory, with settlers and lawmakers working to subdue the untamed, uncivilized region. Johnson Monday, a former mountain man, has been living on a bend of the Willamette River near Oregon City with his Shoshone Indian wife for seven years, struggling to make a place in settled society. One summer morning, Monday's old friend Webster T. Webster, a raucous, unrepentant trapper, arrives for an unexpected visit. With his earthy humor and stubborn adherence to the simple life, Webb leads Monday through adventures that flirt dangerously close to lawlessness, while helping him to rediscover his moral center. Through defiance, triumph, and tragedy, Moontrap follows Johnson Monday as he comes to realize that relinquishing the stark honesty of mountain life for the compromises of civilization is too high a price to pay. Nominated for a National Book Award and winner of the Spur Award of the Western Writers of America for best historical novel, Moontrap recounts the conflict one man faces in keeping with his old ways or forging a new life. The OSU Press is proud to reissue this richly comic and intensely poignant portrayal of pioneer life in the Northwest.]]> 315 Don Berry 0870710397 John 0 currently-reading 4.12 1962 Moontrap
author: Don Berry
name: John
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America]]> 58268351 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | Winner of the New Deal Book Award

An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression—and employed some of the biggest names in American letters

The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious—and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of hard-up writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a series of guidebooks to the then forty-eight states—along with hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns—while also gathering reams of folklore, narratives of formerly enslaved people, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.

All this was the singular purview of the Federal Writers� Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration founded in 1935 to employ jobless writers, from once-bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. The FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America in words and soon found itself embroiled in the day’s most heated arguments regarding radical politics, racial inclusion, and the purpose of writing—forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself.

Scott Borchert’s Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the experiences of key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We observe notable writers at their day jobs, including Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel; Zora Neale Hurston, the most widely published Black woman in the country; and Richard Wright, who arrived in the FWP’s chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory courtesy of the WPA. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, and other future literary stars found encouragement and security on the FWP payroll.

By way of these and other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad and inclusive self-portrait of America at a time when the nation’s very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book’s lessons are urgent and strong.]]> 386 Scott Borchert 0374719055 John 4
That last phrase indicates the difficulty. Combining archival investigations, synthesizing previous publications primary and secondary, Borchert addresses, fittingly, neither academics nor specialists, but rather everyday readers curious, as our forebears when the devastating impacts struck of a greedy, global economic implosion, about how those among us lived, where they looked, and what they saw.

However, as a signal of these literary dashes to sketch ordinary people, Borchert races past the one-off creative anthology American Stuff (except for Richard Wright's standout piece excoriating Jim Crow; see my review): Stuff's a few hits but too many peon-praising pink polemical (and tellingly, imbalanced towards both coasts of their "progressive" majority constituencies, same as it ever was maybe since the Roaring Twenties?) duds. The suitably named Dies Committee by the end of the militantly radical Thirties aimed to kill off the dyed-Red, as it castigated what we'd tint a dark-indigo "deep/blue-state" enterprise; maybe too much content in Borchert delves into its hearings; wisely he saves any parallel Congressional investigation comparisons in later years for his nuanced afterwords.

There, I liked his juxtaposing Fisher and Zora Neale Hurston. Both soured on their New Deal gigs and the ideology promoting the socialist statist system. This necessary caution against otiose reliance on the work ethic of another guy and gal may usefully cause us, full of tax-and-spend demands, to look at self-help, grassroots, entities. Yet, Capital Big Tech-Pharma-Military-Corporate-Silicon-Chains rule us. Nobody's winning major office taking out subsidies doled out to movers and shakers high up.

Thus, as Mangione and Kipen agree, the intentions of FDR and his top-down bailout policies, angled, concurrently, to promote the proletariat, the little folks, ma + pa stores, and the down-and-outs. The Guides--although researchers, editors, and scribes drank, goldbricked, double-dipped (with such as Wright and other soon-to-be lionized, or faintly roaring, tipsy colleagues typing on-the-off-clock manuscripts on the taxpayer's pre-Roosevelt thin Liberty dime), agitated, slept, and/or sat down on strike--remain a testimony. Of a nation's idiosyncratic, polyglot, immigrant, rural, small-town, odd, ornery, funny, urban, quirky, roadhouse, rambling--in the best sense--diverse and inclusive ideals.

P.S. My uncle Jack, my namesake, before he was KIA Saipan 1944, cleared fire breaks for another NDA scheme, the Civilian Conservation Corps, out West. I wish he'd lived to tell me his tales thanks to the less-lethal, more life-saving, enterprise that our much-reviled "entitlements" afforded his younger self. Given both my father's father and my wife's grandfather took their lives early in the Thirties, the naysayers then as now against publicly-funded "handout" policies for a greater good may take pause.]]> 4.28 2021 Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America
author: Scott Borchert
name: John
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves:
review:
Ever since David Kipen's lively introductions to the various 2010s reprints of California WPA guides mentioned the Federal Writers Project's NYC manager Jerre Mangione's memoir-history The Dream and the Deal (1972: see my review), I've wanted to learn more. So I on GR critiqued Tim Woodward's bio on irascible Idaho intellectual Vardis Fisher, who beat the nation's capital, as the first (and only) of FWP contributors to (basically) self-author an American Guide. After, they tended to emphasize or diminish the individual, as a collective employment scheme for Depression writers, of varying skills.

That last phrase indicates the difficulty. Combining archival investigations, synthesizing previous publications primary and secondary, Borchert addresses, fittingly, neither academics nor specialists, but rather everyday readers curious, as our forebears when the devastating impacts struck of a greedy, global economic implosion, about how those among us lived, where they looked, and what they saw.

However, as a signal of these literary dashes to sketch ordinary people, Borchert races past the one-off creative anthology American Stuff (except for Richard Wright's standout piece excoriating Jim Crow; see my review): Stuff's a few hits but too many peon-praising pink polemical (and tellingly, imbalanced towards both coasts of their "progressive" majority constituencies, same as it ever was maybe since the Roaring Twenties?) duds. The suitably named Dies Committee by the end of the militantly radical Thirties aimed to kill off the dyed-Red, as it castigated what we'd tint a dark-indigo "deep/blue-state" enterprise; maybe too much content in Borchert delves into its hearings; wisely he saves any parallel Congressional investigation comparisons in later years for his nuanced afterwords.

There, I liked his juxtaposing Fisher and Zora Neale Hurston. Both soured on their New Deal gigs and the ideology promoting the socialist statist system. This necessary caution against otiose reliance on the work ethic of another guy and gal may usefully cause us, full of tax-and-spend demands, to look at self-help, grassroots, entities. Yet, Capital Big Tech-Pharma-Military-Corporate-Silicon-Chains rule us. Nobody's winning major office taking out subsidies doled out to movers and shakers high up.

Thus, as Mangione and Kipen agree, the intentions of FDR and his top-down bailout policies, angled, concurrently, to promote the proletariat, the little folks, ma + pa stores, and the down-and-outs. The Guides--although researchers, editors, and scribes drank, goldbricked, double-dipped (with such as Wright and other soon-to-be lionized, or faintly roaring, tipsy colleagues typing on-the-off-clock manuscripts on the taxpayer's pre-Roosevelt thin Liberty dime), agitated, slept, and/or sat down on strike--remain a testimony. Of a nation's idiosyncratic, polyglot, immigrant, rural, small-town, odd, ornery, funny, urban, quirky, roadhouse, rambling--in the best sense--diverse and inclusive ideals.

P.S. My uncle Jack, my namesake, before he was KIA Saipan 1944, cleared fire breaks for another NDA scheme, the Civilian Conservation Corps, out West. I wish he'd lived to tell me his tales thanks to the less-lethal, more life-saving, enterprise that our much-reviled "entitlements" afforded his younger self. Given both my father's father and my wife's grandfather took their lives early in the Thirties, the naysayers then as now against publicly-funded "handout" policies for a greater good may take pause.
]]> Trask 501823 348 Don Berry 0870710230 John 0
It starts slowly, and it forces you to slow down and settle in for a nuanced examination of the conflict in 1848, as the title character seeks to open up a prize portion of Killamook flat land for grazing, no matter what the natives have to say, vs. President Polk and the white settlers about to stake claims. (That spring, nobody that far north knows yet of a fateful discovery at Sutter's Mill a few days away.)

Berry presents the standoff and capitulation evenly, as the tribes find themselves outmatched by the rapacious ambitions and grasping desires of Americans. But Berry eschews stereotypes. Trask, with a Chinook-speaking indigenous wife, is fluent too, and he's an experienced trapper who'd come to the coast long before. We get very little backstory, but this only heightens verisimilitude, as he's taciturn.

To Berry's credit, there's no romanticized or demonized stock figures. Skin colors vary, shades of moral ambiguity blur, and motives for confrontation stem from customs, culture clashes, and pride. Since this appeared two-thirds of a century ago, I'd hazard Berry takes admirable pains to present fairly the predicaments which all sides found themselves caught up in, as pressures to colonize supposedly open expanses, pushed by politics of far distant economic and diplomatic entities, proved largely indifferent to those in the vanguard, who had to look their predecessors in the eye, across a fire, and translate why they'd demanded what was neither theirs to seize nor theirs to homestead.

Lust for acquisition remains, a fundamental flaw. As thousands amass to venture west, those already there can only wait. Nobody can hold back the forces of capitalism, lumber, livestock, or immigration.

The narrative takes hold by about 40% in, after disaster strikes. Suffice to say that Trask gets caught up in meddling between rival native factions, and winds up going on a "vision quest" which he's not prepared for spiritually. Or even, despite his veteran status as a backwoods frontierman, physically.

Berry conveys the power of "take it easy" as a mantra, if a decade before the Eagles' catchy hit song. The terror of the cold, the fog of hunger, the fear of freezing, and the collapse of comprehension all gain memorable descriptions. This impels me to seek out the next installments, Moontrap and To Build a Ship. All inspired by Barry's parallel non-fictional study, A Majority of Scoundrels, about the explorers who first encountered the peoples who'd preceded them near the Pacific and in the Rockies.]]> 4.04 1960 Trask
author: Don Berry
name: John
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/10
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves:
review:
Nearly 5 stars, deducted only as the denouement feels schematic, but as Jeff Baker's afterword to the OSU Press 2005 rpt. justifies, the best Oregon novel to at least match, maybe surpass, Berry's better-known early Sixties peer Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, which appeared three years after Trask. I'd aver Trask presciently anticipates the rise in consciousness of that decade's awareness of "Indian" rights, and the countercultural advocacy, despite pandering, of righteous causes of justice.

It starts slowly, and it forces you to slow down and settle in for a nuanced examination of the conflict in 1848, as the title character seeks to open up a prize portion of Killamook flat land for grazing, no matter what the natives have to say, vs. President Polk and the white settlers about to stake claims. (That spring, nobody that far north knows yet of a fateful discovery at Sutter's Mill a few days away.)

Berry presents the standoff and capitulation evenly, as the tribes find themselves outmatched by the rapacious ambitions and grasping desires of Americans. But Berry eschews stereotypes. Trask, with a Chinook-speaking indigenous wife, is fluent too, and he's an experienced trapper who'd come to the coast long before. We get very little backstory, but this only heightens verisimilitude, as he's taciturn.

To Berry's credit, there's no romanticized or demonized stock figures. Skin colors vary, shades of moral ambiguity blur, and motives for confrontation stem from customs, culture clashes, and pride. Since this appeared two-thirds of a century ago, I'd hazard Berry takes admirable pains to present fairly the predicaments which all sides found themselves caught up in, as pressures to colonize supposedly open expanses, pushed by politics of far distant economic and diplomatic entities, proved largely indifferent to those in the vanguard, who had to look their predecessors in the eye, across a fire, and translate why they'd demanded what was neither theirs to seize nor theirs to homestead.

Lust for acquisition remains, a fundamental flaw. As thousands amass to venture west, those already there can only wait. Nobody can hold back the forces of capitalism, lumber, livestock, or immigration.

The narrative takes hold by about 40% in, after disaster strikes. Suffice to say that Trask gets caught up in meddling between rival native factions, and winds up going on a "vision quest" which he's not prepared for spiritually. Or even, despite his veteran status as a backwoods frontierman, physically.

Berry conveys the power of "take it easy" as a mantra, if a decade before the Eagles' catchy hit song. The terror of the cold, the fog of hunger, the fear of freezing, and the collapse of comprehension all gain memorable descriptions. This impels me to seek out the next installments, Moontrap and To Build a Ship. All inspired by Barry's parallel non-fictional study, A Majority of Scoundrels, about the explorers who first encountered the peoples who'd preceded them near the Pacific and in the Rockies.
]]> To Build a Ship 326787 To Build a Ship, Don Berry explores the extent to which a man can betray himself and his morality for a dream or obsession. It's the story of a handful of settlers who take up land on the beautiful Tillamook Bay in the early 1850s--defiant dreamers battling the wilderness. With forested mountains at their backs and the open sea as their sole road to trade, they are suddenly isolated from the outside world when the only captain who would enter their harbor dies. With the survival of their new settlement threatened, they decide to build their own schooner. At first the challenge brings out the best in the men, but the tension of their gigantic purpose overtakes them. Obstacles accumulate and complications mount: a death, a murder trial, trouble with restive Indians, and finally a travesty of justice. Excitement, shock, and gripping drama mark this story of men pushed to the point of madness as they see the Morning Star of Tillamook slowly take shape on the wild Pacific shore. Don Berry's novels about the Oregon Territory are as rich and compelling today as when they were first published more than forty years ago. These new editions of Trask, Moontrap, and To Build a Ship include an introduction by Jeff Baker, book critic for The Oregonian.]]> 224 Don Berry 0870710400 John 0 to-read 3.96 1977 To Build a Ship
author: Don Berry
name: John
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Majority of Scoundrels: An Informal History of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company]]> 501830 432 Don Berry 0870710893 John 0 to-read 4.09 1971 A Majority of Scoundrels: An Informal History of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company
author: Don Berry
name: John
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe's Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II]]> 216726824 In 1945, Budapest, once one of the cultured twin capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire, became the site of the last great, brutal city siege of WWII--now brilliantly recreated in this new history.
Although Hungary was a German ally in 1941, two years into World War II, it was still possible for Allied prisoners of war, French and Polish refugees, spies of every kind, and the city’s large Jewish population to live freely and openly, enjoying the cafes and boulevards that made Budapest one of the great European capitals. While the other multicultural centers of Europe had fallen to the almost all-consuming conflict, Budapest remained intact, a shining reminder of what middle European high culture could be.

In September 1944, three months after D-Day, life in the city seemed idyllic. But under the guise of peace existed an undercurrent of tension and anxiety: British and American troops advanced from the west and Soviet troops from the east. Who would reach the capital first? By mid-October 1944, Budapest had collapsed into anarchy: death squads roamed the streets, the city’s remaining Jews were funneled into ghettos, Russian shells destroyed city blocks, and everyone struggled to find food and survive the winter.

Using newly uncovered diaries and archives, Adam Lebor brilliantly recreates the increasingly desperate efforts of Hungary’s leaders to avoid being drawn into the cataclysm of war, the moral and tactical ambiguity they deployed in the attempt, and the ultimate tragedy that befell Hungary and, in particular, its Jewish population. Told through the lives of a glamorous aristocrats, SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish school student, Hungary's most popular singer and actress, and a housewife trying desperately to keep her family alive, the story of how Budapest is threatened from all sides as the war tightens its noose is highly dramatic and utterly compelling.]]> 457 Adam LeBor 1541700600 John 3
It makes in LeBor's telling (he necessarily relies on translation assistance, lacking Magyar fluency). It integrates many personal narratives, testimonies of witnesses and survivors, as well as the doomed heroes such as Hannah Szenes and many others forgotten. Among them Pál Teleki, although his story gets jumbled a bit when LeBor begins the Arrow Cross imposition of cruelty early on too suddenly...

I must admit disappointment. The backstory of a teenaged George Soros, who's been alleged to have assisted via the unenviable Jewish Council system--so cynical in its composition, engineered by a mind utterly devoid of compassion in its manipulation of desperate men and women driven by fear and greed, rationalization and bargaining to buy their own survival at the price of their souls--won't be found in these otherwise densely researched pages, unless I missed it in my Kindle doublechecking.

This episode, embedded within the dark elements shadowing this tragic tale, would appear necessary for any reader wondering about one of the world's leading influencers of politics, social causes, and self-titled "progressive" causes. It's not stereotyping or prejudice that causes me to mention this gap.

For as LeBor otherwise engages with commendable diligence to those caught up in horrible decisions, unjust demands, failed schemes, and hopeless consequences, the apparent lacuna in this instance, to me at least, crucial to our own comprehensive and complete comprehension of Hungarian agency in what Eichmann called blood for goods (as in the "gold train" skullduggery alleged late in the conflict) puzzles me. Perhaps another ŷ reviewer may enlighten me, and I am open to correction here.

P.S. In my online ed. among sources is listed: "Soros, Tivadar, Maskerado: Dancing Around Death in Nazi Hungary (Edinburgh, 2000)." But György's father Tivadar (aka the Esperanto Teodor Švarc, the family changed their surname from Schwartz in 1936 to an Hungarian one to evade being singled out) isn't otherwise included in the text itself. The Soros clan were from Budapest and George was b. 1930.]]> 4.00 2025 The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe's Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II
author: Adam LeBor
name: John
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves:
review:
Having a longtime interest in both Hungary and in Judaism, and with friends overlapping both these identities, I anticipated this with enthusiasm, despite the grim topic. The convoluted Horthy regime, in this way maybe similar to its fascist Romanian neighbors before and during much of WWII, shows the difficulty of holding out against the Nazis, negotiating with their Allied enemies, dealing with a homegrown nativist force fundamentally antisemitic, and extorting the wealth and labor of captive innocent people persecuted and compromised into unwilling collaboration under fanatical militants.

It makes in LeBor's telling (he necessarily relies on translation assistance, lacking Magyar fluency). It integrates many personal narratives, testimonies of witnesses and survivors, as well as the doomed heroes such as Hannah Szenes and many others forgotten. Among them Pál Teleki, although his story gets jumbled a bit when LeBor begins the Arrow Cross imposition of cruelty early on too suddenly...

I must admit disappointment. The backstory of a teenaged George Soros, who's been alleged to have assisted via the unenviable Jewish Council system--so cynical in its composition, engineered by a mind utterly devoid of compassion in its manipulation of desperate men and women driven by fear and greed, rationalization and bargaining to buy their own survival at the price of their souls--won't be found in these otherwise densely researched pages, unless I missed it in my Kindle doublechecking.

This episode, embedded within the dark elements shadowing this tragic tale, would appear necessary for any reader wondering about one of the world's leading influencers of politics, social causes, and self-titled "progressive" causes. It's not stereotyping or prejudice that causes me to mention this gap.

For as LeBor otherwise engages with commendable diligence to those caught up in horrible decisions, unjust demands, failed schemes, and hopeless consequences, the apparent lacuna in this instance, to me at least, crucial to our own comprehensive and complete comprehension of Hungarian agency in what Eichmann called blood for goods (as in the "gold train" skullduggery alleged late in the conflict) puzzles me. Perhaps another ŷ reviewer may enlighten me, and I am open to correction here.

P.S. In my online ed. among sources is listed: "Soros, Tivadar, Maskerado: Dancing Around Death in Nazi Hungary (Edinburgh, 2000)." But György's father Tivadar (aka the Esperanto Teodor Švarc, the family changed their surname from Schwartz in 1936 to an Hungarian one to evade being singled out) isn't otherwise included in the text itself. The Soros clan were from Budapest and George was b. 1930.
]]> To Cook a Bear: A Novel 55033066 A fantastic tale set in the far north of Sweden in 1852 following a runaway Sami boy and his mentor, the revivalist preacher Laestadius, as they investigate a murder in their village along with the mysteries of life.

Jussi, a runaway, becomes the famous preacher Laestadius's faithful son and disciple. The Preacher is an avid botanist, and with Jussi in tow he sets out on long botanical treks filled with philosophical discussions, teaching Jussi all about plants and nature; but also how to read, write and about spirituality. One day a maid goes missing in the deep forest. When she is found dead, the locals suspect a predatory bear is at large. The constable is quick to offer a reward for capturing it, but the Preacher sees other traces that point to a far worse killer on the loose.

After another maid is severely injured, Jussi and the Preacher track down the murderer, unaware of the evil that is closing in on him. For it is revivalist times, and thanks to the Preacher impassioned faith spreads like wildfire among the locals. While the preacher's powerful Sunday sermons grant salvation to farmers and workers, they gain him enemies among local rulers, who see profits dwindle as people choose revival over alcohol.

A completely absorbing and gripping novel, To Cook a Bear both entertains and burrows deep down into the great philosophical questions of life.]]> 432 Mikael Niemi 0525505695 John 3
Most of the narrative filters through his perceptions, although Mieki gives him a hyper-articulate voice which didn't feel calibrated with what I'd have expected, given his disparity from the pastor who sponsors him. Their initial exchanges, reminiscent of a middle-aged Holmes and precocious teen as if Watson, captured my attention, before the story took on a rather conventional clash of opinions amid a revival of evangelical fervor, which didn't fulfill the potential for deeper insight or character nuance.

I kept on, but the rest of the novel didn't stand out after its opening premise. The bear cookout is in chapter 12, not far along, so squeamish readers will get past it expeditiously. Ok overall, but not more.]]> 4.09 2017 To Cook a Bear: A Novel
author: Mikael Niemi
name: John
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/06
date added: 2025/05/06
shelves:
review:
After previewing the ŷ reviews, I figured I'd have a go. Turned out as I'd anticipated, with a greater interest in the setting, 1852 Sweden where "Lapland" veers far north. I'd expected a slightly romanticized (in the early 21st C sense) version of Sámi superiority to the rapacious Protestant culture but Niemi to his credit didn't resort to facile simplification. Actually, the former way of life as truly apart from the Christian dominated society had been fading already, symbolized by Jussi's very name.

Most of the narrative filters through his perceptions, although Mieki gives him a hyper-articulate voice which didn't feel calibrated with what I'd have expected, given his disparity from the pastor who sponsors him. Their initial exchanges, reminiscent of a middle-aged Holmes and precocious teen as if Watson, captured my attention, before the story took on a rather conventional clash of opinions amid a revival of evangelical fervor, which didn't fulfill the potential for deeper insight or character nuance.

I kept on, but the rest of the novel didn't stand out after its opening premise. The bear cookout is in chapter 12, not far along, so squeamish readers will get past it expeditiously. Ok overall, but not more.
]]> <![CDATA[Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy]]> 49099790 A grand narrative of the intertwining lives of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer, major philosophers whose ideas shaped the twentieth century

The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is still fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin, whose life is characterized by false starts and unfinished projects, is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, as a scion of one of the wealthiest industrial families in Europe, in search of absolute spiritual clarity. Meanwhile, Heidegger, having managed to avoid combat in war by serving instead as a meteorologist, is carefully cultivating his career, aligning himself with the great Edmund Husserl and renouncing his prior Catholic associations. Finally, Cassirer is working furiously on the margins of academia, applying himself intensely to his writing and the possibility of a career at Hamburg University. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama, which will unfold across the next decade. The lives and ideas of this extraordinary philosophical quartet will converge as they become world historical figures. But as the Second World War looms on the horizon, their fates will be very different.

Wolfram Eilenberger stylishly traces the paths of these remarkable and turbulent lives, which feature not only philosophy but some of the most important economists, politicians, journalists, and artists of the century, including John Maynard Keynes, Hannah Arendt, and Bertrand Russell. In doing so, he tells a gripping story about some of history's most ambitious and passionate thinkers, and illuminates with rare clarity and economy their brilliant ideas, which all too often have been regarded as enigmatic or opaque.]]> 432 Wolfram Eilenberger 0525559663 John 0 to-read 3.87 2018 Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy
author: Wolfram Eilenberger
name: John
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey]]> 24423802 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � #1 Indie Next Pick � Winner of the PEN New England Award “Enchanting…A book filled with so much love…Long before Oregon, Rinker Buck has convinced us that the best way to see America is from the seat of a covered wagon.� —The Wall Street Journal “Amazing…A real nonfiction thriller.� —Ian Frazier, The New York Review of Books “Absorbing…Winning…The many layers in The Oregon Trail are linked by Mr. Buck’s voice, which is alert and unpretentious in a manner that put me in mind of Bill Bryson’s comic tone in A Walk in the Woods.� —Dwight Garner, The New York TimesA major bestseller that has been hailed as a “quintessential American story� (Christian Science Monitor), Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail is an epic account of traveling the 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way—in a covered wagon with a team of mules—that has captivated readers, critics, and booksellers from coast to coast. Simultaneously a majestic journey across the West, a significant work of history, and a moving personal saga, Buck’s chronicle is a “laugh-out-loud masterpiece� (Willamette Week) that “so ensnares the emotions it becomes a tear-jerker at its close� (Star Tribune, Minneapolis) and “will leave you daydreaming and hungry to see this land� (The Boston Globe).]]> 466 Rinker Buck John 3 Plods, with fitful moments of insight

Like many reviewers who preceded me, scrabbling amidst the scraps of this summer journey revealed both treasures and trinkets. Rink and his brother Nick take this trail--not one path, as with 400k pioneers (and I learned that this word is rooted in the same Latinate as "peon" as well as that Pike's Peak isn't the derivation of "piker"), there's necessarily a divergent array of cutoffs, byways, and parallels. In this telling, rambling anecdotes, rather tiresome potshots at the Tea Party, Fox News, and, if more nuanced, Mormons, alternate with an East Coast sensibility (their father basically ran Look Magazine) which faces dusty West with a part-patrician, part-prole role-semi-cosplaying.

I failed to enjoy his necessary identification with mules, although I am glad they found a home out near Baker City, Oregon. What's odd is that the author stopped his own trek before the actual terminus, nearer Portland. But he certainly reports in sometimes engrossing, often digressive, and occasionally prattling fashion. Bits of memoir, of his dad's complex relationship, of Buck's later-midlife decision in the aftermath of the 2008 recession to "see the elephant," as his predecessors lighting out for the frontier territory phrased their quest, all mingle. However, the historical context highlighted for me my engagement. The present-day adventure didn't draw me in as I'd anticipated.

It's one of those concepts pitched that sounds to a publisher, or peddled via a publicist, as a can't-fail press promotion. If editorial control had been exerted, instead of Buck being granted full run not to rein in his self-discipline, it'd have resulted in a tighter narrative. Potentially a great topic, but it wanders off of the titular theme. And its gratuitous profanity feels shoddy, a shopworn cliche which indulges in puerile sibling banter. Even if accurate, it's indicative of slovenly expression, given that the chronicler laments the declining standards of his own employer, the oldest paper in the country.]]> 4.12 2015 The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey
author: Rinker Buck
name: John
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/05
date added: 2025/05/05
shelves:
review:
Plods, with fitful moments of insight

Like many reviewers who preceded me, scrabbling amidst the scraps of this summer journey revealed both treasures and trinkets. Rink and his brother Nick take this trail--not one path, as with 400k pioneers (and I learned that this word is rooted in the same Latinate as "peon" as well as that Pike's Peak isn't the derivation of "piker"), there's necessarily a divergent array of cutoffs, byways, and parallels. In this telling, rambling anecdotes, rather tiresome potshots at the Tea Party, Fox News, and, if more nuanced, Mormons, alternate with an East Coast sensibility (their father basically ran Look Magazine) which faces dusty West with a part-patrician, part-prole role-semi-cosplaying.

I failed to enjoy his necessary identification with mules, although I am glad they found a home out near Baker City, Oregon. What's odd is that the author stopped his own trek before the actual terminus, nearer Portland. But he certainly reports in sometimes engrossing, often digressive, and occasionally prattling fashion. Bits of memoir, of his dad's complex relationship, of Buck's later-midlife decision in the aftermath of the 2008 recession to "see the elephant," as his predecessors lighting out for the frontier territory phrased their quest, all mingle. However, the historical context highlighted for me my engagement. The present-day adventure didn't draw me in as I'd anticipated.

It's one of those concepts pitched that sounds to a publisher, or peddled via a publicist, as a can't-fail press promotion. If editorial control had been exerted, instead of Buck being granted full run not to rein in his self-discipline, it'd have resulted in a tighter narrative. Potentially a great topic, but it wanders off of the titular theme. And its gratuitous profanity feels shoddy, a shopworn cliche which indulges in puerile sibling banter. Even if accurate, it's indicative of slovenly expression, given that the chronicler laments the declining standards of his own employer, the oldest paper in the country.
]]> <![CDATA[Where Did the Universe Come From? And Other Cosmic Questions: Our Universe, from the Quantum to the Cosmos]]> 58525205
Over the last few centuries, humans have successfully unraveled much of the language of the universe, exploring and defining formerly mysterious phenomena such as electricity, magnetism, and matter through the beauty of mathematics. But some secrets remain beyond our realm of understanding―and seemingly beyond the very laws and theories we have relied on to make sense of the universe we inhabit. It is clear that the quantum, the world of atoms and electrons, is entwined with the cosmos, a universe of trillions of stars and galaxies...but exactly how these two extremes of human understanding interact remains a mystery. Where Did the Universe Come From? And Other Cosmic Questions allows readers to eavesdrop on a conversation between award-winning physicists Chris Ferrie and Geraint F. Lewis as they examine the universe through the two unifying and yet often contradictory lenses of classical physics and quantum mechanics, tackling questions such as:

Where did the universe come from?
Why do dying stars rip themselves apart
Do black holes last forever?
What is left for humans to discover?
A brief but fascinating exploration of the vastness of the universe, this book will have armchair physicists turning the pages until their biggest and smallest questions about the cosmos have been answered.]]> 208 Chris Ferrie 172823882X John 4
It works, obviously, for me, who picks up popular titles in astrophysics, as a layman mathematically "challenged." Baryons, symmetry, and random quantum fluctuations (the last so memorable in Brian Greene's magisterial Until the End of Time; highly recommended, and critiqued by me not long ago) all gain admirable explanations, and the questions, as they accrue, earn evenhanded, concise clarity.

Perhaps too brief in parts, but that's my own preference. Don't expect all of the Big Questions to get tidy answers, given our limited comprehension. Yet, overall, this moves briskly and thoughtfully.

My interest leans to the start and finish of the cosmos. The middle sections, therefore, weren't absent their highlights, but the "why are we here at all" and Big Crunch/ heat death scenarios have always intrigued me most. There's simple "sketch pad" types of graphics, but nothing (almost) that's beyond the comprehension of physics-limited folks. A pleasing primer from 2020, and anyone can benefit.]]> 4.07 Where Did the Universe Come From? And Other Cosmic Questions: Our Universe, from the Quantum to the Cosmos
author: Chris Ferrie
name: John
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/05
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves:
review:
I didn't realize until another GR reviewer pointed it out that the co-author Ferrie writes science books for children. Since I'd been perusing this thinking to myself, this has a tone and style of an engaging read for smart kids. Neither pandering nor cutesy, but an accessible level which respects the audience.

It works, obviously, for me, who picks up popular titles in astrophysics, as a layman mathematically "challenged." Baryons, symmetry, and random quantum fluctuations (the last so memorable in Brian Greene's magisterial Until the End of Time; highly recommended, and critiqued by me not long ago) all gain admirable explanations, and the questions, as they accrue, earn evenhanded, concise clarity.

Perhaps too brief in parts, but that's my own preference. Don't expect all of the Big Questions to get tidy answers, given our limited comprehension. Yet, overall, this moves briskly and thoughtfully.

My interest leans to the start and finish of the cosmos. The middle sections, therefore, weren't absent their highlights, but the "why are we here at all" and Big Crunch/ heat death scenarios have always intrigued me most. There's simple "sketch pad" types of graphics, but nothing (almost) that's beyond the comprehension of physics-limited folks. A pleasing primer from 2020, and anyone can benefit.
]]> <![CDATA[Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel]]> 64392839
Joe Hill is a full-bodied portrait of both the man and the myth: from his entrance into the short-lived Industrial Workers of the World union, the most militant organization in the history of American labor, to his trial, imprisonment, and final martyrdom. His famous last words: "Don't waste time mourning. Organize."]]> 386 Wallace Stegner John 3
The first half, largely occurring around the Los Angeles port of San Pedro, intrigued me, for I worked a few miles away for over a quarter century myself. It opened in 1910, when a fellow Swede, preacher Lund at a seaman's mission, engages the seething bindlestiff wandering laborer in the first of many dialogues about the futility of the anarchist cause, given how the system embeds itself no matter who claims to rise to the top of a utopian rather than wage slave pyramid. Familiar, sure, but as the 20th c. opened, this debate roiled among hundreds of millions, as industry ground people into pulp or peons.

The second section deals with Hill's Salt Lake City stint and his incarceration in summer 1916. I think the pace slackened, confined as much of the events were to the precincts, cell, chambers of the law, and the sultry Mormon streets. Inevitably, maybe, but the novel for me (and this generic scenario as either real or imaginary captivates me less than many readers or viewers) crawled rather than roused.

I came to this after reviewing two related tellings from our own period. Karl Marlantes' Deep River up on the coast of the Washington State lumber mills featured Hill in a walk-on role. Jess Walter's The Cold Millions had the I.W.W. prominent throughout over in Spokane. And less than a generation after Hill's celebrity, in U.S.A.'s trio by John Dos Passos, a shadow of One Big Union stretches memorably. ]]> 3.25 1950 Joe Hill: A Biographical Novel
author: Wallace Stegner
name: John
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1950
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/04
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves:
review:
Three-quarters of a century ago, when this appeared, legendary Joe Hill, anthem composer, Wobbly composer, stolid firebrand, already had been promoted as a martyr to the proletarian cause, a framed convict railroaded by Utah's capitalist courts, a selfless bard committed to non-violent revolution. The truth may, at least as of this fictionalized rendering given the access Stegner's acumen allowed back then, never have been revealed. Even by Scandinavian stereotypes, Joe proved taciturn and kept mum.

The first half, largely occurring around the Los Angeles port of San Pedro, intrigued me, for I worked a few miles away for over a quarter century myself. It opened in 1910, when a fellow Swede, preacher Lund at a seaman's mission, engages the seething bindlestiff wandering laborer in the first of many dialogues about the futility of the anarchist cause, given how the system embeds itself no matter who claims to rise to the top of a utopian rather than wage slave pyramid. Familiar, sure, but as the 20th c. opened, this debate roiled among hundreds of millions, as industry ground people into pulp or peons.

The second section deals with Hill's Salt Lake City stint and his incarceration in summer 1916. I think the pace slackened, confined as much of the events were to the precincts, cell, chambers of the law, and the sultry Mormon streets. Inevitably, maybe, but the novel for me (and this generic scenario as either real or imaginary captivates me less than many readers or viewers) crawled rather than roused.

I came to this after reviewing two related tellings from our own period. Karl Marlantes' Deep River up on the coast of the Washington State lumber mills featured Hill in a walk-on role. Jess Walter's The Cold Millions had the I.W.W. prominent throughout over in Spokane. And less than a generation after Hill's celebrity, in U.S.A.'s trio by John Dos Passos, a shadow of One Big Union stretches memorably.
]]> <![CDATA[Confession of a Murderer: Told in One Night]]> 57786 223 Joseph Roth 295211210X John 2
Like Job, which I started twice now but bailed on by a fifth in, with Confession, I found it turgid rather than gripping. The first third, before Golubchik ("little dove") joined the Tsarist secret police, Okrana, was the most interesting. But when he meets Lutetia (unremarked, but from the Latin for "mud"), the plot bogged down in a revenge tale against the Prince Krapotkin (a third name of significance by both its slight alteration and our English root?). The setup initially framing the yarn had potential, though.

Yet the storyline felt drawn out. The Desmond Vesey 1951 translation didn't seem at fault, for I could discern Roth's conversational rhythm convincingly. However, the girl felt tiresome, the Prince plot contrived, and the denouement pat. I wished for a nuanced narrative, but this might have gained in the telling as a briefer dramatic monologue, or a screenplay; as a short novel, it wears out its premise. ]]> 3.77 1936 Confession of a Murderer: Told in One Night
author: Joseph Roth
name: John
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1936
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/03
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves:
review:
Like Roberto Bolaño over half a century later, Joseph Roth seems to keep publishing from beyond the grave. That is, more fiction and journalism issues from the presses now than during his career. And, sadly, there may be reasons for this productivity postmortem. Not always quality control as demand.

Like Job, which I started twice now but bailed on by a fifth in, with Confession, I found it turgid rather than gripping. The first third, before Golubchik ("little dove") joined the Tsarist secret police, Okrana, was the most interesting. But when he meets Lutetia (unremarked, but from the Latin for "mud"), the plot bogged down in a revenge tale against the Prince Krapotkin (a third name of significance by both its slight alteration and our English root?). The setup initially framing the yarn had potential, though.

Yet the storyline felt drawn out. The Desmond Vesey 1951 translation didn't seem at fault, for I could discern Roth's conversational rhythm convincingly. However, the girl felt tiresome, the Prince plot contrived, and the denouement pat. I wished for a nuanced narrative, but this might have gained in the telling as a briefer dramatic monologue, or a screenplay; as a short novel, it wears out its premise.
]]> <![CDATA[In Times of Fading Light: A Novel (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Hardcover))]]> 18905256 An enthrallingly expansive family saga set against the backdrop of the collapse of East German communism, from a major new international voice

*Over 450,000 copies sold in Germany alone * Rights sold in 20 countries *Winner of the German Book Prize * A PW"First Fiction"pick*

In Times of Fading Light begins in September 2001 as Alexander Umnitzer, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, leaves behind his ailing father to fly to Mexico, where his grandparents lived as exiles in the 1940s.
The novel then takes us both forward and back in time, creating a panoramic view of the family’s history: from Alexander’s grandparents� return to the GDR to build the socialist state, to his father’s decade spent in a gulag for criticizing the Soviet regime, to his son’s desire to leave the political struggles of the twentieth century in the past.
With wisdom, humor, and great empathy, Eugen Ruge draws on his own family history as he masterfully brings to life the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime.

]]> 318 Eugen Ruge 1555970737 John 2
I wanted to find out about a fictional (albeit I suspect this novel's heavily based on the author's clan) life in the DDR. (Apropos, I reviewed Katja Royer's memoir-history "Beyond the Wall"). However, little emerges. The Stasi gets mentioned in passing once; stores, goods, propaganda, and workaday world, with dreary Charlotte's exception, don't get much coverage. Ruge prefers to focus on family dynamics, or their lack given the entropy that permeates the society, within the stoic households, Mexican and German alike. But the characters mope, mumble, brood, ail, and bicker, with little love.

There seemed missed opportunities, as in those exiled in the New World, or Kurt in the Soviet labor camp, for expanding insights and cultural clashes. Hints persist of this between Russian and DDR, Mexican and German sensibilities, but the detachment prevents this reader from immersion. Ruge probably intends this expression of persistent isolation within anomie, but it drags on way too long. (Admittedly there's always a possibility of a listless translation, but my hunch is that it's faithful.)]]> 3.54 2011 In Times of Fading Light: A Novel (Lannan Translation Selection (Graywolf Hardcover))
author: Eugen Ruge
name: John
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:
When the most interesting passages in this sprawling chronicle of prolonged suffering comprise the loss of memory of a ninety-year old Communist, a surly Russian emigre making Christmas dinner, a sad German wandering around Mexico listlessly as he battles his impending weakness, and a feckless guy roaming around nightclubs after the fall of the Wall a decade earlier, it doesn't make for much gaiety. Maybe par for the course for a dull socialist Germany, but not a page-turner, here.

I wanted to find out about a fictional (albeit I suspect this novel's heavily based on the author's clan) life in the DDR. (Apropos, I reviewed Katja Royer's memoir-history "Beyond the Wall"). However, little emerges. The Stasi gets mentioned in passing once; stores, goods, propaganda, and workaday world, with dreary Charlotte's exception, don't get much coverage. Ruge prefers to focus on family dynamics, or their lack given the entropy that permeates the society, within the stoic households, Mexican and German alike. But the characters mope, mumble, brood, ail, and bicker, with little love.

There seemed missed opportunities, as in those exiled in the New World, or Kurt in the Soviet labor camp, for expanding insights and cultural clashes. Hints persist of this between Russian and DDR, Mexican and German sensibilities, but the detachment prevents this reader from immersion. Ruge probably intends this expression of persistent isolation within anomie, but it drags on way too long. (Admittedly there's always a possibility of a listless translation, but my hunch is that it's faithful.)
]]> <![CDATA[The Great Prince Died: A Novel About the Assassination of Trotsky]]> 26843552 On August 20, 1940, Marxist philosopher, politician, and revolutionary Leon Trotsky was attacked with an ice axe in his home in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the next day.



In The Great Prince Died, Bernard Wolfe offers his lyrical, fictionalized account of Trotsky’s assassination as witnessed through the eyes of an array of characters: the young American student helping to translate the exiled Trotsky’s work (and to guard him), the Mexican police chief, a Rumanian revolutionary, the assassin and his handlers, a poor Mexican “peón,� and Trotsky himself. Drawing on his own experiences working as the exiled Trotsky’s secretary and bodyguard and mixing in digressions on Mexican culture, Stalinist tactics, and Bolshevik history, Wolfe interweaves fantasy and fact, delusion and journalistic reporting to create one of the great political novels of the past century.]]> 419 Bernard Wolfe John 3 Worthwhile, if exhausting

William T. Vollmann, in his afterword to the 2015 rpt. of this 1959 novel, dramatizing the last months of Trotsky, albeit for Wolfe's own reasons (see highlights) made into Victor Rostov, calls this a "parable." Wolfe, who two years before Trotsky's murder spent eight (which must have been memorable; had to check Wikipedia to find he was bodyguard/secretary) months in his entourage in Mexican exile, crafted an unwieldy, sprawling, and intermittently engrossing tale. He's obsessed, as his fictional partial alter ego Paul Teleki, with his mentor's crime of the 1921 massacre of mutineers at Kronstadt. Rostov's culpability, in Paul/Wolfe's judgement, nags at his acolyte's conscience and peace.

This crime drives Wolfe, through this doppelganger, to voice his frustration at how the initially "soft" socialist Trotsky compromised his ideals at a young age, and after being accepted into the Bolsheviks, with the unhinged fervor of the desperate convert, initiated the bloody purge, long before the Man of Steel's massive death cult. Wolfe clumsily inserts long passages of recrimination, this being not only a novel of action but of ideas, but he cleverly juxtaposes the Aztec pyramidal model as a symbol, reified, for class war, the doomed and predictable turnaround of revolutionary rhetoric into stolid police states, and the predicament of rebels who rely, once they climb to that gory top of the structure, on bureaucrats, rather than peons, for the paperwork and the jails to seal their nascent crackdowns.

Wolfe's later career as a Hollywood-journeyman-hack writer (producing pornography for a wealthy patron after he left Mexico, and in the beat-hippie decades, penning for Playboy) shows how his Yale education, as a relevant aside, churns erudition and excess into sordid scenes, such as a fifth of the way in, when the hired thug uses an Alpine ax to pin down his mistress as foreplay. I almost gave up.

I didn't, since the byways into provocative dialogues about power dynamics transcended, sporadically, the pulp fiction genre. It's a half-inspired, half-turgid concoction. Creating a hangover worthy of an Ivy League grad turned talespinner for hire to the highest bidder. Magic mushrooms, mucus, whores painted like zebras, a crafty neighbor craving huaraches, corrupt spies, and/or Soviet agents appear.

There's a lot of potential. Paul (as Vollmann agrees) stands as its most fully realized character. His experience in the Spanish Civil War sears, as in the Sheridan Justice episodes. And credit to Wolfe for calling out the romanticization of the noble worker, the immaculate peasant, the defiant mother, the bold insurgent as if they can do no wrong. However awkward, Wolfe takes to task the professors, the activists, the intellectuals, who wander the then-Third World, caricatured as either heroes or villains, searching for horrors and miracles. In this digression, Wolfe presciently critiques posers and pieties.]]> 3.50 1972 The Great Prince Died: A Novel About the Assassination of Trotsky
author: Bernard Wolfe
name: John
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/03
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:
Worthwhile, if exhausting

William T. Vollmann, in his afterword to the 2015 rpt. of this 1959 novel, dramatizing the last months of Trotsky, albeit for Wolfe's own reasons (see highlights) made into Victor Rostov, calls this a "parable." Wolfe, who two years before Trotsky's murder spent eight (which must have been memorable; had to check Wikipedia to find he was bodyguard/secretary) months in his entourage in Mexican exile, crafted an unwieldy, sprawling, and intermittently engrossing tale. He's obsessed, as his fictional partial alter ego Paul Teleki, with his mentor's crime of the 1921 massacre of mutineers at Kronstadt. Rostov's culpability, in Paul/Wolfe's judgement, nags at his acolyte's conscience and peace.

This crime drives Wolfe, through this doppelganger, to voice his frustration at how the initially "soft" socialist Trotsky compromised his ideals at a young age, and after being accepted into the Bolsheviks, with the unhinged fervor of the desperate convert, initiated the bloody purge, long before the Man of Steel's massive death cult. Wolfe clumsily inserts long passages of recrimination, this being not only a novel of action but of ideas, but he cleverly juxtaposes the Aztec pyramidal model as a symbol, reified, for class war, the doomed and predictable turnaround of revolutionary rhetoric into stolid police states, and the predicament of rebels who rely, once they climb to that gory top of the structure, on bureaucrats, rather than peons, for the paperwork and the jails to seal their nascent crackdowns.

Wolfe's later career as a Hollywood-journeyman-hack writer (producing pornography for a wealthy patron after he left Mexico, and in the beat-hippie decades, penning for Playboy) shows how his Yale education, as a relevant aside, churns erudition and excess into sordid scenes, such as a fifth of the way in, when the hired thug uses an Alpine ax to pin down his mistress as foreplay. I almost gave up.

I didn't, since the byways into provocative dialogues about power dynamics transcended, sporadically, the pulp fiction genre. It's a half-inspired, half-turgid concoction. Creating a hangover worthy of an Ivy League grad turned talespinner for hire to the highest bidder. Magic mushrooms, mucus, whores painted like zebras, a crafty neighbor craving huaraches, corrupt spies, and/or Soviet agents appear.

There's a lot of potential. Paul (as Vollmann agrees) stands as its most fully realized character. His experience in the Spanish Civil War sears, as in the Sheridan Justice episodes. And credit to Wolfe for calling out the romanticization of the noble worker, the immaculate peasant, the defiant mother, the bold insurgent as if they can do no wrong. However awkward, Wolfe takes to task the professors, the activists, the intellectuals, who wander the then-Third World, caricatured as either heroes or villains, searching for horrors and miracles. In this digression, Wolfe presciently critiques posers and pieties.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)]]> 50910499
Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.]]> 593 Tana French John 2
Over the series, this pattern became tiresome. I felt in Broken Harbour, for instance, that French, via her main character, was slumming. She's from a privileged and cosmopolitan background. While her education and experience broadens her perspective, she still, in my opinion, lacks the grassroots and the lived familiarity with sections of her adopted Ireland. So agree my own friends and family there.

Maybe it's a regional rivalry, but rather than the capital city or Belfast (predictably) getting the great share of attention, I'd rather see Ken Bruen in Galway city get the acclaim. He's got his beleaguered Jack Taylor's aging pulse on the heart of the battered island's energy, facing the Atlantic the hard way.

]]> 3.93 2007 In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1)
author: Tana French
name: John
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:
I liked the hardly credible The Likeness, later in this series..This debut by French, which set in motion by its success the Dublin Murder Squad's doings, proceeded as a police procedural fine. As with other installments, the past overshadows the present psychological predicament of a conflicted protagonist.

Over the series, this pattern became tiresome. I felt in Broken Harbour, for instance, that French, via her main character, was slumming. She's from a privileged and cosmopolitan background. While her education and experience broadens her perspective, she still, in my opinion, lacks the grassroots and the lived familiarity with sections of her adopted Ireland. So agree my own friends and family there.

Maybe it's a regional rivalry, but rather than the capital city or Belfast (predictably) getting the great share of attention, I'd rather see Ken Bruen in Galway city get the acclaim. He's got his beleaguered Jack Taylor's aging pulse on the heart of the battered island's energy, facing the Atlantic the hard way.


]]> Roots 869208 Now a major BBC drama starring Forest Whitaker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Laurence Fishburne

Tracing his ancestry through six generations � slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects � back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and in torment and anguish brought to the slave markets of the New World, who held the key to Haley's deep and distant past.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award]]> 688 Alex Haley 0099362813 John 0 4.52 1976 Roots
author: Alex Haley
name: John
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s]]> 48669445 MOJO, the Wire, Prog, and author of the acclaimed biography Captain Beefheart) goes back to the birth of progressive rock and surveys the cultural conditions and attitudes that fed into, and were in turn affected by, this remarkable musical phenomenon. He examines the myths and misconceptions that have grown up around progressive rock and paints a vivid, colorful picture of the Seventies based on hundreds of hours of his own interviews with musicians, music business insiders, journalists, and DJs, and from the personal testimonies of those who were fans of the music in that extraordinary decade.]]> 608 Mike Barnes 1780389205 John 4
Not forgetting a sense of humor, for the most part, Barnes listens sympathetically to those he talks to. His discussions range as widely as his roster. He starts with the �60s; he argues that King Crimson’s 1969 debut represents beginning of prog as we know it.

Yet he doesn’t let its leader Robert Fripp’s posturing, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters� pomposity or Nick Mason’s ineptitude get in the way of critiques of excess. Barnes takes a nuanced approach instead of easy potshots. These British artists committed � the application of that word’s psychiatric and judicial senses might be apropos to Peter Hammill of Van De Graaf Generator and Floyd’s Syd Barrett � to breaking radio’s three-minute song barriers. They upended staid preconceptions about what entertainment for the audience could encompass. They pursued subtler explorations of sonic depth, spiritual awe and, at their best, personal liberation from convention, whether religious, technical, aesthetic, sexual, political or corporate.

Barnes introduces us to lesser-known figures such as prankster Ron Gessin, NME journalist Ian MacDonald, producer Eddie Offord, instrumentalist Charles Hayward (who with This Heat bridged the illusory prog-punk generation gap), the group Gracious and Sonja Kristina of Curved Air, one of the few females prominent in this hirsute era. While Barnes� generous discussions with diverse participants allows readers to appreciate the vividness and the blurriness of the performers gathered to groove, he does, for about a third of this lengthy compendium, bog down in the weeds of the so-called Canterbury Scene featuring Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Caravan, Camel, Gong and Hatfield and the North. It’s intermittently engrossing, yet this dogged concentration may weary audiences expecting deep dives into ELO, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull or Roxy Music. Barnes hurries past lots of innovative albums, although as these may be familiar to deep prog heads, he adds illustrative, insightful and wry anecdotes.

These chartbusters earn their spotlight, but for a fleeting set rather than as headliners. On the other hand, this allows Barnes to elevate contenders such as Gentle Giant, Family, 801, Fruupp, Renaissance, Gryphon and Hawkwind. The last-named come across as one of the few bands who gave back to their community, staging free benefits, while a disproportionate number of their peers became insular, snobby and grubbing. As the plight of talented Yes/Crimson drummer Bill Bruford shows, like actors, these scrappers had to survive, taking what they could get at offer, never knowing how long their tenure in any group would outlast a punch-up at that night’s gig.

Barnes� transition away from the zenith of prog rock over half a decade peaks as Peter Gabriel leaves Genesis. Fittingly, Gabriel’s solo career, which saw him sidle into a vibrant crossover flow in which Brian Eno, David Bowie and Fripp also progressed beyond their original incarnations, found Gabriel riding the crest of an emerging wave of audial invigoration, as punk ebbed and warped.

Barnes neatly skewers The Clash’s Paul Simonon and Joe Strummer for their hyperbolic hatred of their shaggier forebears. He demonstrates adroitly how saturnine post-punks Magazine built on the exemplars of the earlier �70s. Barnes could have noted that Howard Devoto’s former mates in Buzzcocks themselves took their motorik beat from Can, beloved by Pete Shelley. He might have elaborated how John Lydon post-Sex Pistols channeled a teenaged admiration for Faust and Van De Graaf into Public Image Ltd., alongside likewise devoted fans Keith Levene (at 15, a roadie for mid-career Yes) and Jah Wobble. Barnes does include Wobble in his shortlist of career survivors who kept the spirit of the creative musicians and singers they grew up with. This conclusion deserves its own expansion, at the cost of cutting back on, say, reams of tedium on fringe mainstay Daevid Allen’s hippie-beatnik drug dabbling.

This musical history will appeal to insiders first, yet it will also encourage readers to revisit or discover innovative records long consigned as unhip. The narrow-minded attitudes engendered and flaunted during the arch backlash against Tales from Topographic Oceans, Tarkus or Nursery Cryme need to finally vanish, decades past late-70s posed slouches and camera-ready snickers. Instead, the follies and the failures of the progressive rock epoch need to be weighed against the achievements and accomplishments of its practitioners, who at their peak, refused to compromise, just as their pretending-prole punk successors claimed to call their predecessors on their own hypocrisy. Barnes� study may ramble on as long as a triple-disc ELP opus, but he makes his case that prog rock, as a common album-sleeve sticker from those days assured us, “is your best entertainment value.�

(This from May 2nd 2025, Spectrum Culture)]]> 4.09 A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s
author: Mike Barnes
name: John
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:
First off, brush aside your stereotypes of symphonic bluster, the hobbit caricatures, the lyrical flights of fancy and foolishness, the preening singer, those artsy public (in the British sense) schoolboy prodigies and/or stoned misfits. Mike Barnes in A New Day Yesterday will, if not eradicate your prejudices, at least restore your faith in intelligent music. Barnes patiently interviews dozens of musicians, singers and songwriters who, from 1969-74, took part in a movement that melded the uplift of psychedelic moods with the complexity of longer formats for composition, integrating myriad genres: Asian, African, opera, cabaret, orchestral, folk, R&B, jazz, minimalism, freakbeat, proto-punk, Krautrock and camp.

Not forgetting a sense of humor, for the most part, Barnes listens sympathetically to those he talks to. His discussions range as widely as his roster. He starts with the �60s; he argues that King Crimson’s 1969 debut represents beginning of prog as we know it.

Yet he doesn’t let its leader Robert Fripp’s posturing, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters� pomposity or Nick Mason’s ineptitude get in the way of critiques of excess. Barnes takes a nuanced approach instead of easy potshots. These British artists committed � the application of that word’s psychiatric and judicial senses might be apropos to Peter Hammill of Van De Graaf Generator and Floyd’s Syd Barrett � to breaking radio’s three-minute song barriers. They upended staid preconceptions about what entertainment for the audience could encompass. They pursued subtler explorations of sonic depth, spiritual awe and, at their best, personal liberation from convention, whether religious, technical, aesthetic, sexual, political or corporate.

Barnes introduces us to lesser-known figures such as prankster Ron Gessin, NME journalist Ian MacDonald, producer Eddie Offord, instrumentalist Charles Hayward (who with This Heat bridged the illusory prog-punk generation gap), the group Gracious and Sonja Kristina of Curved Air, one of the few females prominent in this hirsute era. While Barnes� generous discussions with diverse participants allows readers to appreciate the vividness and the blurriness of the performers gathered to groove, he does, for about a third of this lengthy compendium, bog down in the weeds of the so-called Canterbury Scene featuring Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Caravan, Camel, Gong and Hatfield and the North. It’s intermittently engrossing, yet this dogged concentration may weary audiences expecting deep dives into ELO, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull or Roxy Music. Barnes hurries past lots of innovative albums, although as these may be familiar to deep prog heads, he adds illustrative, insightful and wry anecdotes.

These chartbusters earn their spotlight, but for a fleeting set rather than as headliners. On the other hand, this allows Barnes to elevate contenders such as Gentle Giant, Family, 801, Fruupp, Renaissance, Gryphon and Hawkwind. The last-named come across as one of the few bands who gave back to their community, staging free benefits, while a disproportionate number of their peers became insular, snobby and grubbing. As the plight of talented Yes/Crimson drummer Bill Bruford shows, like actors, these scrappers had to survive, taking what they could get at offer, never knowing how long their tenure in any group would outlast a punch-up at that night’s gig.

Barnes� transition away from the zenith of prog rock over half a decade peaks as Peter Gabriel leaves Genesis. Fittingly, Gabriel’s solo career, which saw him sidle into a vibrant crossover flow in which Brian Eno, David Bowie and Fripp also progressed beyond their original incarnations, found Gabriel riding the crest of an emerging wave of audial invigoration, as punk ebbed and warped.

Barnes neatly skewers The Clash’s Paul Simonon and Joe Strummer for their hyperbolic hatred of their shaggier forebears. He demonstrates adroitly how saturnine post-punks Magazine built on the exemplars of the earlier �70s. Barnes could have noted that Howard Devoto’s former mates in Buzzcocks themselves took their motorik beat from Can, beloved by Pete Shelley. He might have elaborated how John Lydon post-Sex Pistols channeled a teenaged admiration for Faust and Van De Graaf into Public Image Ltd., alongside likewise devoted fans Keith Levene (at 15, a roadie for mid-career Yes) and Jah Wobble. Barnes does include Wobble in his shortlist of career survivors who kept the spirit of the creative musicians and singers they grew up with. This conclusion deserves its own expansion, at the cost of cutting back on, say, reams of tedium on fringe mainstay Daevid Allen’s hippie-beatnik drug dabbling.

This musical history will appeal to insiders first, yet it will also encourage readers to revisit or discover innovative records long consigned as unhip. The narrow-minded attitudes engendered and flaunted during the arch backlash against Tales from Topographic Oceans, Tarkus or Nursery Cryme need to finally vanish, decades past late-70s posed slouches and camera-ready snickers. Instead, the follies and the failures of the progressive rock epoch need to be weighed against the achievements and accomplishments of its practitioners, who at their peak, refused to compromise, just as their pretending-prole punk successors claimed to call their predecessors on their own hypocrisy. Barnes� study may ramble on as long as a triple-disc ELP opus, but he makes his case that prog rock, as a common album-sleeve sticker from those days assured us, “is your best entertainment value.�

(This from May 2nd 2025, Spectrum Culture)
]]> <![CDATA[American Stuff: An Anthology of Prose & Verse By Members Of The Federal Wrters' Project - With Sixteen Prints By The Federal Arts Project]]> 216406484 301 Viking Press John 2
They contributed to this 1937 anthology. A grab bag of "stuff" for which the WPA Writers Project head honcho Henry Alsberg admits in a throat-clearing preface how the delicate handling of royalties, from a taxpayer-subsidized work scheme, for creative rather than factual efforts, had to be finessed, lest Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public fret about misappropriation of New Deal funds for frivolous imaginations.

The contents, however (John Lomax among the fieldwork gathering archivists), richly cover white and black American, especially Southern, varieties of song, sayings, and tall tales. The WPA also pioneered the collection of slave testimony in separate studies, so American Stuff samples similar enterprises to record, as with Gullah and chain gang chants, the vanishing voices which astute investigators record.

However, despite the occasional inclusion of a decent poem by such as Claude McKay, the end of a hardboiled if bewildering (think Faulkner) yarn by Jim Thompson, or odd pair of New Mexican ditties (one about a bride resisting her father's advances when he viewed her nuptial finery), too much of this anthology wallows in dreadful verse ("hermaphrodite" pops up in more than one fervent, giddy, gawky paean), leaden agitprop whether in meter or screed, or fevered attempts at sending a Message if not in all caps than about evils of Capital. Understandable, for the employed ranks, Jerre Maggione recounts in The Deal and the Dream (recently reviewed; his story appears herein), were crammed, especially in San Francisco or NYC offices, with Trots, Stalinists, goldbrickers, bums and/or socialists.

The period illustrations, very much of their time, too, have a few successes. But overall, this feels like a student literary magazine compiled by progressive faculty at an urban liberal arts college. Its uneven quality, lack of editorial control, and as Maggione hints, regional imbalances towards the coastal elite (temporarily down if not out, same as it ever was in who gets the hype), and overrepresented entries by administrators, means that this well-intended volume languished, as Uncle Sam demanded utility.]]> 2.00 American Stuff: An Anthology of Prose & Verse By Members Of The Federal Wrters' Project - With Sixteen Prints By The Federal Arts Project
author: Viking Press
name: John
average rating: 2.00
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
Although you can find this at the Internet Archive or secondhand vendors as if authored by Richard Wright, this is misleading. His vignettes about surviving Jim Crow represent an early publication by the young talent. But it's one among dozens of poets, novelists, folklorists, artists, and journalists.

They contributed to this 1937 anthology. A grab bag of "stuff" for which the WPA Writers Project head honcho Henry Alsberg admits in a throat-clearing preface how the delicate handling of royalties, from a taxpayer-subsidized work scheme, for creative rather than factual efforts, had to be finessed, lest Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public fret about misappropriation of New Deal funds for frivolous imaginations.

The contents, however (John Lomax among the fieldwork gathering archivists), richly cover white and black American, especially Southern, varieties of song, sayings, and tall tales. The WPA also pioneered the collection of slave testimony in separate studies, so American Stuff samples similar enterprises to record, as with Gullah and chain gang chants, the vanishing voices which astute investigators record.

However, despite the occasional inclusion of a decent poem by such as Claude McKay, the end of a hardboiled if bewildering (think Faulkner) yarn by Jim Thompson, or odd pair of New Mexican ditties (one about a bride resisting her father's advances when he viewed her nuptial finery), too much of this anthology wallows in dreadful verse ("hermaphrodite" pops up in more than one fervent, giddy, gawky paean), leaden agitprop whether in meter or screed, or fevered attempts at sending a Message if not in all caps than about evils of Capital. Understandable, for the employed ranks, Jerre Maggione recounts in The Deal and the Dream (recently reviewed; his story appears herein), were crammed, especially in San Francisco or NYC offices, with Trots, Stalinists, goldbrickers, bums and/or socialists.

The period illustrations, very much of their time, too, have a few successes. But overall, this feels like a student literary magazine compiled by progressive faculty at an urban liberal arts college. Its uneven quality, lack of editorial control, and as Maggione hints, regional imbalances towards the coastal elite (temporarily down if not out, same as it ever was in who gets the hype), and overrepresented entries by administrators, means that this well-intended volume languished, as Uncle Sam demanded utility.
]]> <![CDATA[His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae]]> 32065577
And who were the other two victims? Ultimately, Macrae’s fate hinges on one key is he insane?]]> 300 Graeme Macrae Burnet 1510719229 John 3
It moves efficiently. Burnet captures the tone of mid-Victorian prose of various registers smartly. It sounds convincing, whether the hand of the accused killer himself penning his statement while under arrest, or the investigators, character witnesses, attorneys, and analysts assigned to weigh evidence.

Maybe on audio it might have drawn me deeper in. I was dissuaded as I anticipated an apparatus of lots of footnotes, Gaelic phrases, and archaic commentary. But it's not burdened by such documentary additions. These rather get apt but spare usage. The distancing from drama, however, persisted for me throughout. The triple deaths by the protagonist gain impressive detail, and the pace quickened.

For a bit. Then it settled into the previous steady recital. Thomson channels the "alienist" voice of the era convincingly. It's sobering to contemplate how in our own time, full of experts, psychiatrists, and consultants vetted, prepped, and propped up in trials by the defense, we echo their own set prejudices.

Yet the broader motivations, whether revenge, desperation, pride, panic, or the passion of a lad only seventeen, don't accumulate into a rousing "historical thriller" as blurbed, but a period-accurate re-creation of a well-constructed courtroom drama. All the same, congratulations that given many Man Booker Prize's panels of this quarter-century, at least commonsense prevailed in nominating a work neither pandering to prevailing sensibilities nowadays among literati nor bowing to tedious tokenism.]]> 3.84 2015 His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae
author: Graeme Macrae Burnet
name: John
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
Some reviewers have taken this as fact. While based on a few real people, as the tale-spinner admits in his acknowledgements afterwards, the actual case appears to have been invented. It's the familiar framing device designed to invite the reader in, the better to cast a spell of verisimilitude and truth.

It moves efficiently. Burnet captures the tone of mid-Victorian prose of various registers smartly. It sounds convincing, whether the hand of the accused killer himself penning his statement while under arrest, or the investigators, character witnesses, attorneys, and analysts assigned to weigh evidence.

Maybe on audio it might have drawn me deeper in. I was dissuaded as I anticipated an apparatus of lots of footnotes, Gaelic phrases, and archaic commentary. But it's not burdened by such documentary additions. These rather get apt but spare usage. The distancing from drama, however, persisted for me throughout. The triple deaths by the protagonist gain impressive detail, and the pace quickened.

For a bit. Then it settled into the previous steady recital. Thomson channels the "alienist" voice of the era convincingly. It's sobering to contemplate how in our own time, full of experts, psychiatrists, and consultants vetted, prepped, and propped up in trials by the defense, we echo their own set prejudices.

Yet the broader motivations, whether revenge, desperation, pride, panic, or the passion of a lad only seventeen, don't accumulate into a rousing "historical thriller" as blurbed, but a period-accurate re-creation of a well-constructed courtroom drama. All the same, congratulations that given many Man Booker Prize's panels of this quarter-century, at least commonsense prevailed in nominating a work neither pandering to prevailing sensibilities nowadays among literati nor bowing to tedious tokenism.
]]> <![CDATA[The Angel of Rome and Other Stories]]> 59147716 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes--for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous--as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places.

We all live like we're famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don't want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams.

Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again "solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds" (Esquire).]]> 274 Jess Walter 006286811X John 3
If We Live In Water included a George Saunders-ish tale, about not-quite "zombie" drug casualties, so in this follow-up anthology, you get a predictable satire which may feel very dated quite soon. (Although his forthcoming yarn So Far Gone mines the same unhinged flyover deep-red-state Xtn territory, amidst an Idaho militia, and he's certainly knowledgeable, having penned a non-fiction study of the FBI-Ruby Ridge standoff, on my wait list.) I think that such overt mockery threatens to keep such banter with a short shelf-life. I mean, who bothers with Robert Coover's A Public Burning?

Anyhow, the title novella revisits the actors in Italy of a certain age. One misstep: a candidate for the Catholic religious life is known as not a "novitiate" (that's the period of discernment before first or "simple" vows), but as a "novice." Common mistake, akin to confusing monks and friars. It's not with charm, but rather far-fetched, that Latin and Italian would be comprehended as identical, even by standards however low of a semi-educated middle-aged thespian thirty years ago pre-Duolingo.]]> 4.05 2022 The Angel of Rome and Other Stories
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
I think this is the first fiction from Walter without any cops. Sure, set as usual (mostly) in Spokane. It's noteworthy that fish and chips, cancer, coming out as gay, coming on to someone, and/or, given his success with Beautiful Ruins (if his best-known work, still one that hasn't enticed me to borrow it; my wife advised I "might" like it, but sounded iffy) all repeat. This gives his second of his two story collections a familiar feeling. So it could be enjoyed by those either new to his books, or already fans.

If We Live In Water included a George Saunders-ish tale, about not-quite "zombie" drug casualties, so in this follow-up anthology, you get a predictable satire which may feel very dated quite soon. (Although his forthcoming yarn So Far Gone mines the same unhinged flyover deep-red-state Xtn territory, amidst an Idaho militia, and he's certainly knowledgeable, having penned a non-fiction study of the FBI-Ruby Ridge standoff, on my wait list.) I think that such overt mockery threatens to keep such banter with a short shelf-life. I mean, who bothers with Robert Coover's A Public Burning?

Anyhow, the title novella revisits the actors in Italy of a certain age. One misstep: a candidate for the Catholic religious life is known as not a "novitiate" (that's the period of discernment before first or "simple" vows), but as a "novice." Common mistake, akin to confusing monks and friars. It's not with charm, but rather far-fetched, that Latin and Italian would be comprehended as identical, even by standards however low of a semi-educated middle-aged thespian thirty years ago pre-Duolingo.
]]> We Live in Water: Stories 18880464 The first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, We Live in Water is a diverse suite of stories marked by the wry wit and generosity of spirit that has made him one of America’s most talked-about writers.

Stories in We Live in Water range from comic tales of love to social satire and suspenseful crime fiction. Traveling from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, to a condemned casino in Las Vegas and a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho, this is a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of personal struggles and diminished dreams.

In title story “We Live in Water�, a lawyer returns to his corrupt hometown to find his father, who disappeared 30 years earlier. In “Thief,� a blue-collar worker turns unlikely detective to find out which of his kids is stealing from the family fund.

“Anything Helps� sees a homeless man try to raise money to buy his son the new Harry Potter book; and in “Virgo,� a newspaper editor attempts to get back at his superstitious ex-girlfriend by screwing with her horoscope.

Also included are “Don’t Eat Cat� and “Statistical Abstract of My Hometown, Spokane, Washington,� both of which achieved cult status after their first publication online.

]]> 194 Jess Walter John 3 As expected

I liked the novels set by Jess Walter in his native city. He lists his love-meh-not-hate relationship with Spokane in the final entry to this, one of two story collections. Themes of lower-class, marginalized people mainly. He's at his best with dialogue, as in the two young losers in Wheelbarrow Kings, or the send-up of a newspaperman's rewriting the horoscopes in Virgo. These in time and topic recall his Financial Lives of the Poets, which I recommend on audio (recently reviewed)...

It's no wonder Obama's blurbed as putting We Live in Water on his 2019 list of favorite books. (Politics aside, and he's definitely on the same side as thebauthor, it's indicative that while our current, as of 2024, President and Vice-president have both topped bestseller charts themselves, that often the only published works, ghostwriters aside or lurking, you get from most politicians are supposed memoirs, or campaign policy wonkish quickies if they're running for re-election or a better position.) Anyway, I think Walter's talents better emerge in longer narratives. You get the Don't Eat Cat extended take, originally an Amazon novella, but that's a style perfected by George Saunders a generation ago.

Thus, it's an assortment of often brief glimpses of the struggling Eastern Washington crowd. They may venture into Seattle or Portland, but their red- state region, notwithstanding the former Chief Executive's blue-state kudos and Walter's proletariat leanings, shade their outlook. As with the other tales spun by this prolific and wide-ranging writer, I return to (most of) his talent invented scenarios to view their real-life backgrounds in the Northwest. That setting, and the fact now and then he and I as four years apart recall similar formative fads, trends, and even cereal tastes (though Sugar Pops were awful, next to packets of even lowly Cream of Wheat), keep me checking out his titles from my library.]]> 4.08 2013 We Live in Water: Stories
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
As expected

I liked the novels set by Jess Walter in his native city. He lists his love-meh-not-hate relationship with Spokane in the final entry to this, one of two story collections. Themes of lower-class, marginalized people mainly. He's at his best with dialogue, as in the two young losers in Wheelbarrow Kings, or the send-up of a newspaperman's rewriting the horoscopes in Virgo. These in time and topic recall his Financial Lives of the Poets, which I recommend on audio (recently reviewed)...

It's no wonder Obama's blurbed as putting We Live in Water on his 2019 list of favorite books. (Politics aside, and he's definitely on the same side as thebauthor, it's indicative that while our current, as of 2024, President and Vice-president have both topped bestseller charts themselves, that often the only published works, ghostwriters aside or lurking, you get from most politicians are supposed memoirs, or campaign policy wonkish quickies if they're running for re-election or a better position.) Anyway, I think Walter's talents better emerge in longer narratives. You get the Don't Eat Cat extended take, originally an Amazon novella, but that's a style perfected by George Saunders a generation ago.

Thus, it's an assortment of often brief glimpses of the struggling Eastern Washington crowd. They may venture into Seattle or Portland, but their red- state region, notwithstanding the former Chief Executive's blue-state kudos and Walter's proletariat leanings, shade their outlook. As with the other tales spun by this prolific and wide-ranging writer, I return to (most of) his talent invented scenarios to view their real-life backgrounds in the Northwest. That setting, and the fact now and then he and I as four years apart recall similar formative fads, trends, and even cereal tastes (though Sugar Pops were awful, next to packets of even lowly Cream of Wheat), keep me checking out his titles from my library.
]]> The Bully of Order 54654827
Keen to make his fortune, Jacob Ellstrom, armed with his medical kit and new wife, Nell, lands in The Harbor—a mud-filled, raucous coastal town teeming with rough trade pioneers, sawmill laborers, sailors, and prostitutes. But Jacob is not a doctor, and a botched delivery exposes his ruse, driving him onto the streets in a plunge towards alcoholism. Alone, Nell scrambles to keep herself and their young son, Duncan, safe in this dangerous world. When a tentative reunion between the couple—in the company of Duncan and Jacob’s malicious brother, Matius—results in tragedy, Jacob must flee town to elude being charged with murder.

Years later, the wild and reckless Duncan seems to be yet another of The Harbor’s hoodlums. His only salvation is his overwhelming love for Teresa Boyerton, the daughter of the town’s largest mill owner. But disaster will befall the lovers with heartbreaking consequences.

And across town, Bellhouse, a union boss and criminal rabble-rouser, sits at the helm of The Harbor’s seedy underbelly, perpetuating a cycle of greed and violence. His thug Tartan directs his pack of thieves, pimps, and murderers, and conceals an incendiary secret involving Duncan’s mother. As time passes, a string of calamitous events sends these characters hurtling towards each other in an epic collision that will shake the town to its core.]]> 403 Brian Hart John 2
It failed to pull me into the leaden, sullen, and stolid narrative. Characters don’t have to be saints to earn sympathy but the cast of family, bosses, and workers lack depth, unless grousing, bellyaching, brawling, and boozing count. They cheat, murder, brood, bail, boast, and beat each other up physically or mentally.

It lacks the ability to hold the attention of a reader, however inured to their innate resignation and bitter recrimination. A shame, as the dreary setting and the sordid scenes could have been dramatically altered to integrate the people into the potentially powerful backdrop. But this feels like a hybrid of the soulless naturalism of the period in literature combined with our expectations for gore, lust, and curses. It doesn’t deliver profound observations or transformations of weak folk who overcome their fears or limitations. ]]> 3.50 2014 The Bully of Order
author: Brian Hart
name: John
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:
Despite my recent interest in Jess Walter’s The Cold Millions, set in 1909 Spokane, and Karl Marlantes� less successful but still interesting Deep River, both set in the early twentieth century’s Pacific Northwest labor strikes and vicious strikes, I couldn’t get swept into a parallel account as the logging camps and damp piers around Seattle, in The Bully of Order.

It failed to pull me into the leaden, sullen, and stolid narrative. Characters don’t have to be saints to earn sympathy but the cast of family, bosses, and workers lack depth, unless grousing, bellyaching, brawling, and boozing count. They cheat, murder, brood, bail, boast, and beat each other up physically or mentally.

It lacks the ability to hold the attention of a reader, however inured to their innate resignation and bitter recrimination. A shame, as the dreary setting and the sordid scenes could have been dramatically altered to integrate the people into the potentially powerful backdrop. But this feels like a hybrid of the soulless naturalism of the period in literature combined with our expectations for gore, lust, and curses. It doesn’t deliver profound observations or transformations of weak folk who overcome their fears or limitations.
]]> Unknown Soldiers 25556604 Unknown Soldiers is the story of a platoon of ordinary Finnish soldiers fighting their Soviet Union counterparts during the Second World War. Drawing on Linna's own wartime experiences, this gritty and realistic account shatters the myth of the noble, obedient Finnish soldier.]]> 461 Väinö Linna John 4 The continuation war, same old story?

This opens just before the German attack on the Soviets in 1941; the Finns had drawn to an uneasy stalemate against their Russian foes in the Winter War already. So, given the odds, it's astonishing how Suomi managed yet another attack, and by the halfway mark, troops "liberate" a backwater town in Karelia, where the predictably varied soldiers get some drunken release from their grim struggle against Stalinist forces, alternatively fierce and weary, as conscripts terrified into death lest their surrender leads to their families' own murders.

Linna's raw saga had been previously translated but expurgated, apparently up to a third of the original. The older version filed under ŷ is this, "The Unknown Soldier." Liesl Yamaguchi, in this uncensored rendering, although it's odd she doesn't explain this in her informative afterward, strives for accuracy in the range of accents and dialects of Linna's famous novel. I'm impressed by the subtle shifts in tone and intelligent choices in her allusive shifts. She eschews footnotes or parenthetical explanations. So the effect resembles a subtitled film adaptation, and of course, more than one onscreen dramatization resulted.

As for the content, it's relentless. I wasn't pulled in deeply, as the characters don't fall victim to cliched backstory effusion or deathbed explication. Linna avoids sensationalism, sentimentality, or speechifying. While commendable, the constant cross cuts between the enlisted men, probably intentionally, blur their distinctions. Which reinforces the titular theme. Yet, their cause proved justified and their defense of their beleaguered republic a brave stand for their liberty.]]> 4.39 2000 Unknown Soldiers
author: Väinö Linna
name: John
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:
The continuation war, same old story?

This opens just before the German attack on the Soviets in 1941; the Finns had drawn to an uneasy stalemate against their Russian foes in the Winter War already. So, given the odds, it's astonishing how Suomi managed yet another attack, and by the halfway mark, troops "liberate" a backwater town in Karelia, where the predictably varied soldiers get some drunken release from their grim struggle against Stalinist forces, alternatively fierce and weary, as conscripts terrified into death lest their surrender leads to their families' own murders.

Linna's raw saga had been previously translated but expurgated, apparently up to a third of the original. The older version filed under ŷ is this, "The Unknown Soldier." Liesl Yamaguchi, in this uncensored rendering, although it's odd she doesn't explain this in her informative afterward, strives for accuracy in the range of accents and dialects of Linna's famous novel. I'm impressed by the subtle shifts in tone and intelligent choices in her allusive shifts. She eschews footnotes or parenthetical explanations. So the effect resembles a subtitled film adaptation, and of course, more than one onscreen dramatization resulted.

As for the content, it's relentless. I wasn't pulled in deeply, as the characters don't fall victim to cliched backstory effusion or deathbed explication. Linna avoids sensationalism, sentimentality, or speechifying. While commendable, the constant cross cuts between the enlisted men, probably intentionally, blur their distinctions. Which reinforces the titular theme. Yet, their cause proved justified and their defense of their beleaguered republic a brave stand for their liberty.
]]> The Cold Millions 54459974 Listening Length: 11 hours and 30 minutes

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins delivers a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.


Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?


An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, it is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors� (Boston Globe)]]> 12 Jess Walter John 4
Walter keeps chapters alternating between the actors on this crowded stage of ideas, plans, and escapes, after thugs hired to take down the motley radicals open this tale starkly. You may think the lefties get all the sympathy, but read (or listen) on as betrayal and machinations grind down the lofty rhetoric and airy causes to their harsh, grating, quotidian reality. Given his mystery bent, Walter angles the epic towards the personal motives which conflict with the political speeches. Evil erupts.

It can get messy. Instigators stay necessarily shadowy, and for more than one operative or false flag plant, I'd have wished for deeper backstory. Still, Walter's skilled at death scenes, and he manages to flesh out not only the bloody ends of particular ne'er-do-wells, but to cause you to care for their woe.

However, as a lengthy epilogue demonstrates, his sympathetic portrayal of the predecessors to today's progressives, and in turn their civil rights intermediaries, in Walter's depiction, reveal his own unstated but obvious parallels to 2020, when this appeared. It makes for sprawling storylines, at times too ambitious for limits of squaring an espionage thriller, an historical enactment, and fitful bits common to a coming-of-age adventure "based on real events." Yet I liked its scope, through a smart integration of Tolstoy's "War and Peace," holding sway over the Dolan brothers and family.]]> 3.68 2020 The Cold Millions
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves:
review:
This full-cast audio presentation gets rounded up past 4/5 for it adds to the enjoyment and enhances the verisimilitude of this saga. It's 1909, and Spokane, the hometown of Jess Walter, roils as cops, spies, anarchists, Wobblies, and provocateurs converge to rouse for variously defined causes. Among them the firebrand Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Her passion stirs Rye Dolan, who with his brother Gig turn the leading characters in a memorable cast of scoundrels, all bent on gain while claiming purity of arms. Their manipulations, justifications, ideals, cynicism, backstabbing, and compromises all clash.

Walter keeps chapters alternating between the actors on this crowded stage of ideas, plans, and escapes, after thugs hired to take down the motley radicals open this tale starkly. You may think the lefties get all the sympathy, but read (or listen) on as betrayal and machinations grind down the lofty rhetoric and airy causes to their harsh, grating, quotidian reality. Given his mystery bent, Walter angles the epic towards the personal motives which conflict with the political speeches. Evil erupts.

It can get messy. Instigators stay necessarily shadowy, and for more than one operative or false flag plant, I'd have wished for deeper backstory. Still, Walter's skilled at death scenes, and he manages to flesh out not only the bloody ends of particular ne'er-do-wells, but to cause you to care for their woe.

However, as a lengthy epilogue demonstrates, his sympathetic portrayal of the predecessors to today's progressives, and in turn their civil rights intermediaries, in Walter's depiction, reveal his own unstated but obvious parallels to 2020, when this appeared. It makes for sprawling storylines, at times too ambitious for limits of squaring an espionage thriller, an historical enactment, and fitful bits common to a coming-of-age adventure "based on real events." Yet I liked its scope, through a smart integration of Tolstoy's "War and Peace," holding sway over the Dolan brothers and family.
]]> Land of the Blind: A Novel 18918082
“Walter is at his incisive best. . . . Hypnotically compelling." —Publishers Weekly

In this fiendishly clever and darkly funny novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jess Walter explores the bonds and compromises we make as children—and the fatal errors we can make at any time in our lives.

While working the weekend night shift, Caroline Mabry, a weary Spokane police detective, encounters a seemingly unstable but charming derelict who tells her, "I'd like to confess." But he insists on writing out his statement in longhand. In the forty-eight hours that follow, the stranger confesses to not just a crime but an entire life—spinning a wry and haunting tale of youth and adulthood, of obsession and revenge, and of two men's intertwined lives.]]> 323 Jess Walter John 3 Great Spokane setting

Having stayed at the splendidly restored Davenport Hotel, if fifteen-odd years after this takes place ca. 2001 when said edifice was still in decrepit hibernation, I can vouch for the authenticity of Spokane native Jess Walter's depiction. This follows the first installment of Caroline Mabry's detective work, about six months after her downward spiral in Over Tumbled Graves, which I also reviewed. For a long stretch, I thought I'd rank the sequel higher. Perhaps it's a Sixties connection: while the author's born midway and I nearer the decade at its start, I was hooked by 5th grader Clark/Tony Mason's unending, unsettled, upbringing mid-Seventies, as it echoed my own, white working-class nowhere.

I happen to be to finishing (delaying as I will miss it) a full-cast audio of his recent The Cold Millions, set ninety years earlier. In it, the leading "voice" reveals how exposure to "War and Peace" broadens his perceptions. Similarly, Mason within this "confession" shows how in college, hearing the allegory of Plato's cave opens up intellectual depth and enchants--and disturbs--his youthful complacency.

Walter gets sharp details down for his troubled (aren't we all?) character, who relates, albeit verbosely (some dramatic license taken) to Caroline how he wound up inside the shut down hotel in downtown, and what led him to the predicament he narrates to police. It's focused on interior motivation than external action. So it may not please those expecting a frantic pace akin to Citizen Vince or Graves...

But as in both those tales, Alan Dupree, now retired from the force, plays again a doleful role. There's less about the present condition of adrift, lonely, aging Caroline compared to either Mason or his longtime foil Eli Boyle. The transformation of Seattle in the Eighties, as Mason and hipster bros turn the nascent tech boom into a juggernaut, with all the morbid connotations that carries, too, earns deft critique. The gas stations get turned into coffee shops, the dive bars look identical but warp into imitations for the Scandinavian sailors and stranded bums who've been discovered, romanticized, and dispersed. (Imagine the impact a generation later, as Amazon hadn't even flooded yet...). Walter's at his sharpest in these passages. They encapsulate a view of "our" West which blow-ins can't discern.

That's why I read him, more than the plots of his procedurals. They may plod along, amidst a stark backdrop. But the surroundings and the observations: these convince me of his talent beyond genre.]]> 4.15 2003 Land of the Blind: A Novel
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:
Great Spokane setting

Having stayed at the splendidly restored Davenport Hotel, if fifteen-odd years after this takes place ca. 2001 when said edifice was still in decrepit hibernation, I can vouch for the authenticity of Spokane native Jess Walter's depiction. This follows the first installment of Caroline Mabry's detective work, about six months after her downward spiral in Over Tumbled Graves, which I also reviewed. For a long stretch, I thought I'd rank the sequel higher. Perhaps it's a Sixties connection: while the author's born midway and I nearer the decade at its start, I was hooked by 5th grader Clark/Tony Mason's unending, unsettled, upbringing mid-Seventies, as it echoed my own, white working-class nowhere.

I happen to be to finishing (delaying as I will miss it) a full-cast audio of his recent The Cold Millions, set ninety years earlier. In it, the leading "voice" reveals how exposure to "War and Peace" broadens his perceptions. Similarly, Mason within this "confession" shows how in college, hearing the allegory of Plato's cave opens up intellectual depth and enchants--and disturbs--his youthful complacency.

Walter gets sharp details down for his troubled (aren't we all?) character, who relates, albeit verbosely (some dramatic license taken) to Caroline how he wound up inside the shut down hotel in downtown, and what led him to the predicament he narrates to police. It's focused on interior motivation than external action. So it may not please those expecting a frantic pace akin to Citizen Vince or Graves...

But as in both those tales, Alan Dupree, now retired from the force, plays again a doleful role. There's less about the present condition of adrift, lonely, aging Caroline compared to either Mason or his longtime foil Eli Boyle. The transformation of Seattle in the Eighties, as Mason and hipster bros turn the nascent tech boom into a juggernaut, with all the morbid connotations that carries, too, earns deft critique. The gas stations get turned into coffee shops, the dive bars look identical but warp into imitations for the Scandinavian sailors and stranded bums who've been discovered, romanticized, and dispersed. (Imagine the impact a generation later, as Amazon hadn't even flooded yet...). Walter's at his sharpest in these passages. They encapsulate a view of "our" West which blow-ins can't discern.

That's why I read him, more than the plots of his procedurals. They may plod along, amidst a stark backdrop. But the surroundings and the observations: these convince me of his talent beyond genre.
]]> Garcia : An American Life 139805 520 Blair Jackson 0140291997 John 4 4.35 1999 Garcia : An American Life
author: Blair Jackson
name: John
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III]]> 30977169 285 Robert Greenfield 1466893117 John 3 Dutifully related, if not the nicest guy around

While near the end of his life, when veteran Rolling Stone chronicler of the heyday of classic rock Greenfield finally meets Bear in his still impressive flesh, there's some softness in his formidable subject, Owsley Stanley III doesn't come across as a particularly likeable fellow. Yet having chosen to commit himself to St Elizabeth's asylum (where Ezra Pound was held) in his early teens, it shows how dreadful was his state of mind even before the decades of indulgence in not only LSD but an all-meat diet, plus the usual added chemicals of the era. Unlike the GR, Bear doesn't appear to have cared much at all for bettering the lives around him, in flawed but idealized ways. He's out to peddle skull-icon belt buckles to Chelsea Clinton, scam hippies into drug deals, natch, or evade being husband or father.

I wish Greenfield had delved into the Wall of Sound. He treats it in cursory fashion, and seems despite his career hanging out before many a stage, or likely back of it, not to convey much interest in how Bear engineered the precarious but monumental edifice separating notes spatially for high fidelity. As besides the altered states of pharmaceutical invention, Bear's other claim to contributing to late 20c progress appears his embrace of loopy climate change global flooding from his Australian eyrie, there
seems less to applaud this self-made countercultural legend for. An object lesson in smug selfishness?

A morality tale it's not, in Greenfield's workmanlike account. I can't imagine many reading this not already enraptured by the purple haze of the period. But as I was a kid then, the antics of those a bit my elders admittedly intrigues me as I age, and as I seek to comprehend the promise that such scions as Bear inherited to create meaningful change. He chose dubious methods for his skillful means, in the lab and in the outback, and seems to have never been able to mature into a responsible citizen.]]> 4.14 2016 Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III
author: Robert Greenfield
name: John
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:
Dutifully related, if not the nicest guy around

While near the end of his life, when veteran Rolling Stone chronicler of the heyday of classic rock Greenfield finally meets Bear in his still impressive flesh, there's some softness in his formidable subject, Owsley Stanley III doesn't come across as a particularly likeable fellow. Yet having chosen to commit himself to St Elizabeth's asylum (where Ezra Pound was held) in his early teens, it shows how dreadful was his state of mind even before the decades of indulgence in not only LSD but an all-meat diet, plus the usual added chemicals of the era. Unlike the GR, Bear doesn't appear to have cared much at all for bettering the lives around him, in flawed but idealized ways. He's out to peddle skull-icon belt buckles to Chelsea Clinton, scam hippies into drug deals, natch, or evade being husband or father.

I wish Greenfield had delved into the Wall of Sound. He treats it in cursory fashion, and seems despite his career hanging out before many a stage, or likely back of it, not to convey much interest in how Bear engineered the precarious but monumental edifice separating notes spatially for high fidelity. As besides the altered states of pharmaceutical invention, Bear's other claim to contributing to late 20c progress appears his embrace of loopy climate change global flooding from his Australian eyrie, there
seems less to applaud this self-made countercultural legend for. An object lesson in smug selfishness?

A morality tale it's not, in Greenfield's workmanlike account. I can't imagine many reading this not already enraptured by the purple haze of the period. But as I was a kid then, the antics of those a bit my elders admittedly intrigues me as I age, and as I seek to comprehend the promise that such scions as Bear inherited to create meaningful change. He chose dubious methods for his skillful means, in the lab and in the outback, and seems to have never been able to mature into a responsible citizen.
]]> Over Tumbled Graves: A Novel 18918083
“Riveting. . . . Without ever taking the easy way out, the book explores the battle of good vs. evil on very human terms.� —Washington Post Book World

Dark in mood and rich in character,Over Tumbled Graves by #1 New York Times bestselling author Jess Walteris that rare thriller that manages to be at once viscerally gripping and deeply provocative

During a routine drug bust, on a narrow bridge over white-water falls in the center of town, Spokane detective Caroline Mabry finds herself face-to-face with a brutal murderer. Within hours, the body of a young prostitute is found on the riverbank nearby. What follows confronts our fascination with pathology and murder and stares it down, as Caroline and her cynical partner, Alan Dupree—thrown headlong into the search for a serial murderer who communicates by killing women—uncover some hard truths about their profession . . . and each other.

Rich with the darkly muted colors of the Pacific Northwest skies, Over Tumbled Graves established Jess Walter as a novelist of extraordinary emotional depth and dimension.]]> 422 Jess Walter John 3
Anyhow, his colleague, Caroline Mabry, is the protagonist. She's hunting a serial killer of prostitutes along the city's dramatic riverfront, where the opening vignette sets the scene memorably. Walter uses the landscape effectively to stage the showdown and the choice Mabry must make in a moment.

Its consequences haunt her, along with plenty of early midlife crises. Walter prefers scuttling around the edges of society, and his milieu favors the "lower middle class" in a gentrifying vs hardscrabble territory where those marginalized keep pushing themselves down and out, in a pitiless existence. But he doesn't overdo the sentiment, or indulge in finger-pointing at caricatured villains. This stabilizes his fiction, grounding it in genre conventions, while sending up two clashing FBI celebrity profilers of cases, allowing Walter's best throwaways as he satirized our era's insatiable appetite for "true" crime.

As for the culprit, this role gets a spotlight, eventually. I lost interest in the plot, but kept pushing on for the background, as police procedurals aren't my normal pick. If it wasn't Walter in charge, I'd not have picked this out. There's a sequel, and I wonder if any others from Citizen Vince might reappear?

P.S. There's chapter headings midway taken from sections of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Not a total surprise as Walter at the end of the decade produced The Financial Lives of the Poets, or one of 'em.]]> 4.06 2001 Over Tumbled Graves: A Novel
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:
I chose this as I'd reviewed Citizen Vince, and wound up impressed by Walter's deft evocation of his hometown of Spokane. What I didn't know was that a key figure in that story, set during the finale of the Reagan-Carter election battle, featured the same Alan Dupree. A fresh detective in 1980, who in this novel published in 2001, at that time faces retirement. So, it's unfamiliar to find a character out of sync, whose creator doesn't have him allude to the 1980 case at all, as it hadn't been conceived yet...

Anyhow, his colleague, Caroline Mabry, is the protagonist. She's hunting a serial killer of prostitutes along the city's dramatic riverfront, where the opening vignette sets the scene memorably. Walter uses the landscape effectively to stage the showdown and the choice Mabry must make in a moment.

Its consequences haunt her, along with plenty of early midlife crises. Walter prefers scuttling around the edges of society, and his milieu favors the "lower middle class" in a gentrifying vs hardscrabble territory where those marginalized keep pushing themselves down and out, in a pitiless existence. But he doesn't overdo the sentiment, or indulge in finger-pointing at caricatured villains. This stabilizes his fiction, grounding it in genre conventions, while sending up two clashing FBI celebrity profilers of cases, allowing Walter's best throwaways as he satirized our era's insatiable appetite for "true" crime.

As for the culprit, this role gets a spotlight, eventually. I lost interest in the plot, but kept pushing on for the background, as police procedurals aren't my normal pick. If it wasn't Walter in charge, I'd not have picked this out. There's a sequel, and I wonder if any others from Citizen Vince might reappear?

P.S. There's chapter headings midway taken from sections of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Not a total surprise as Walter at the end of the decade produced The Financial Lives of the Poets, or one of 'em.
]]> The Land of Plenty 16171128
Selected and Introduced by Jess Walter ( Beautiful Ruins, The Financial Lives of the Poets ).]]> 360 Robert Cantwell 0988172569 John 3
It's after the Wobblies have been wiped out, the unions compromised, and the bosses consolidated their grip upon a nation where stocks soar, while ordinary folks can't make their utility bills monthly. Sounds familiar. Set in an indefinite span, before the Depression but not far before it's arrived. Robert Cantwell isn't the ambitious experimenting chronicler Dos Passos was. Nor the diligent scene setter that Steinbeck became during the era in which Land is set. But Cantwell, writing much later in their wake, tries to interweave various characters, mostly proletarian, into this depiction of weary despair.

And to his credit, he broadens the cast to include an unsentimental portrayal of an indigenous fellow, a college kid, a harried pair of teenaged sisters set upon by an opportunistic frat boy type, and, yeah, a cigar-chomping antisemitic fat-cat. So although it's not subtle, at least their creator attempts to give us an assortment of types to populate his grim industrial burg. There's symbolism, as the events of the initial half take place the night and the day of the Fourth of July parade, sourly noisy and blaring.

Can't say this was a page-turner, but the chapters alternate between the ensemble, and often dialogue does ring convincingly, if not exactly that indelibly. Having reviewed Karl Marlantes' logging saga set in the same region among the Finns in the decades leading up to Cantwell's tale, and listening to the audiobook by multiple narrators of Jess Walter's Spokane agitators and schemers in 1909 (he provided a preface to a reprint of this narrative, but it wasn't inserted into the public domain ed. my library had on Kindle), this compliments the fiction dramatizing these century-old clashes, and offers us, likely in far less dangerous professions, and comfier conditions, to contemplate truly tough circumstances.]]> 3.65 1971 The Land of Plenty
author: Robert Cantwell
name: John
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
When the novel opens, throughout its first half, a pioneer processing factory on the Northwest coast suddenly has its lights off and power shut down. Before the Land of Plenty closes, another night of darkness falls, this time during a strike. In between, men and women, younger and older--to an extent, as the labor demanded wears down, cripples, and terminates lives prematurely--struggle.

It's after the Wobblies have been wiped out, the unions compromised, and the bosses consolidated their grip upon a nation where stocks soar, while ordinary folks can't make their utility bills monthly. Sounds familiar. Set in an indefinite span, before the Depression but not far before it's arrived. Robert Cantwell isn't the ambitious experimenting chronicler Dos Passos was. Nor the diligent scene setter that Steinbeck became during the era in which Land is set. But Cantwell, writing much later in their wake, tries to interweave various characters, mostly proletarian, into this depiction of weary despair.

And to his credit, he broadens the cast to include an unsentimental portrayal of an indigenous fellow, a college kid, a harried pair of teenaged sisters set upon by an opportunistic frat boy type, and, yeah, a cigar-chomping antisemitic fat-cat. So although it's not subtle, at least their creator attempts to give us an assortment of types to populate his grim industrial burg. There's symbolism, as the events of the initial half take place the night and the day of the Fourth of July parade, sourly noisy and blaring.

Can't say this was a page-turner, but the chapters alternate between the ensemble, and often dialogue does ring convincingly, if not exactly that indelibly. Having reviewed Karl Marlantes' logging saga set in the same region among the Finns in the decades leading up to Cantwell's tale, and listening to the audiobook by multiple narrators of Jess Walter's Spokane agitators and schemers in 1909 (he provided a preface to a reprint of this narrative, but it wasn't inserted into the public domain ed. my library had on Kindle), this compliments the fiction dramatizing these century-old clashes, and offers us, likely in far less dangerous professions, and comfier conditions, to contemplate truly tough circumstances.
]]> Roger's Version: A Novel 18904141 Scarlet Letter—made new for a disbelieving age.]]> 354 John Updike John 3
Well, 2/3 in, it seemed not that dreadful. Typical bawdy sex (oral especially, and as other reviewers did note dutifully, pairing Tertullian's Latin prose with what the protagonist projects into the lusty mind of his wife's lover, same Dale), yet so convoluted and bizarre, even by Updike's erudite bonafides, that I bet Bellow turned envious, wondering if in turn he couldn't have spun Spinoza or channelled Kant in such an academic twist. I had to look up a couple of German terms, but then, at a Yale-like Divinity School, at least in the (unnamed) Reagan Administration, professors would've had to know its lingo.

Then the computer jargon deadened the already ambling, rambling, shambling plot of the standard campus romp for the New Yorker audience two generations ago. I see in hindsight how Updike wants us to feel Dale's weariness of calculating, his postcoital exhaustion, and his chickenfeed grant, which all weigh his heartland Protestant fervor down. But there's too extended a detour into math, at least for a humanist like me (in this I resemble Roger's son, challenged by numbers), and the other sexy subplot between Roger and, again a contrivance, his half-sister's feckless, slatternly, teen-mom of a daughter, stretches credulity. Despite an attempt at last-gasp moral recovery in the final pages (and even a toddler in this scenario doesn't come off devoid of unlikable qualities, although this realism is refreshing), the momentum of the narrative never recovers. Yet, I picked this up (see my recent take on Martin Rees' Just Six Numbers) as I find fine-tuning arguments applied to (un)belief, cosmology, and/or apologetics irresistible as a parlor game. And that's an underappreciated theme in any fiction.]]> 3.75 1986 Roger's Version: A Novel
author: John Updike
name: John
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1986
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:
I realize when this was published, I was the exact age Dale was, and in grad school as well, in real life. I'd read Roger's Version back then. I hadn't any precise memory of any details. I thought, despite the tepid reviews, I'd try it again, 2/3 of my life since then possibly adding to its insights, as Updike, like Roth and Bellow, let alone Cheever, isn't a young man's storyteller, at least for those mature efforts.

Well, 2/3 in, it seemed not that dreadful. Typical bawdy sex (oral especially, and as other reviewers did note dutifully, pairing Tertullian's Latin prose with what the protagonist projects into the lusty mind of his wife's lover, same Dale), yet so convoluted and bizarre, even by Updike's erudite bonafides, that I bet Bellow turned envious, wondering if in turn he couldn't have spun Spinoza or channelled Kant in such an academic twist. I had to look up a couple of German terms, but then, at a Yale-like Divinity School, at least in the (unnamed) Reagan Administration, professors would've had to know its lingo.

Then the computer jargon deadened the already ambling, rambling, shambling plot of the standard campus romp for the New Yorker audience two generations ago. I see in hindsight how Updike wants us to feel Dale's weariness of calculating, his postcoital exhaustion, and his chickenfeed grant, which all weigh his heartland Protestant fervor down. But there's too extended a detour into math, at least for a humanist like me (in this I resemble Roger's son, challenged by numbers), and the other sexy subplot between Roger and, again a contrivance, his half-sister's feckless, slatternly, teen-mom of a daughter, stretches credulity. Despite an attempt at last-gasp moral recovery in the final pages (and even a toddler in this scenario doesn't come off devoid of unlikable qualities, although this realism is refreshing), the momentum of the narrative never recovers. Yet, I picked this up (see my recent take on Martin Rees' Just Six Numbers) as I find fine-tuning arguments applied to (un)belief, cosmology, and/or apologetics irresistible as a parlor game. And that's an underappreciated theme in any fiction.
]]> Little Siberia 52020325 A man is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland, when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the treasure is temporarily placed in a neighborhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel. But Joel has a lot more on his mind than simply protecting the riches that have apparently rained down from heaven. His wife has just revealed that she is pregnant. Unfortunately Joel has strong reason to think the baby isn't his. As Joel tries to fend off repeated and bungled attempts to steal the meteorite, he must also come to terms with his own situation, and discover who the father of the baby really is. Transporting the reader to the culture, landscape and mores of northern Finland, Little Siberia is both a crime novel and a hilarious, blacker-than-black comedy about what to do when bolts from the blue—both literal and figurative—turn your life upside down.

]]> 300 Antti Tuomainen John 3 Okay, but

I was looking for a novel from Finland. Preferably not Nordic (or Baltic-neighboring) noir, but not much in English translation, unless it's about the Sami.

The set-up sounded promising. Meteorite. Russian bad guys. The protagonist's wife's pregnant by somebody else.

The execution of the premise in Eastern (rather than the extreme North, although blurbs may differ) Finland offered four days of chaos. The pastor, conveniently, has military experience from a tour in Afghanistan. So he combines the cerebral with the visceral when needed.

Yet, crime isn't my go-to genre. Capers not my first pick. I turned the pages and it whiled away a few hours. Yet it didn't captivate me.]]> 3.97 2018 Little Siberia
author: Antti Tuomainen
name: John
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:
Okay, but

I was looking for a novel from Finland. Preferably not Nordic (or Baltic-neighboring) noir, but not much in English translation, unless it's about the Sami.

The set-up sounded promising. Meteorite. Russian bad guys. The protagonist's wife's pregnant by somebody else.

The execution of the premise in Eastern (rather than the extreme North, although blurbs may differ) Finland offered four days of chaos. The pastor, conveniently, has military experience from a tour in Afghanistan. So he combines the cerebral with the visceral when needed.

Yet, crime isn't my go-to genre. Capers not my first pick. I turned the pages and it whiled away a few hours. Yet it didn't captivate me.
]]> <![CDATA[Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden (Grønlands-trilogi, #1)]]> 13519968
Langt inde i landet er et oprør blandt kristne grønlændere undervejs, ledt af profeterne Habakuk og hans kone Maria Magdalene. Inspireret af Den Franske Revolution, drømmer grønlænderne om frihed, lighed og broderskab.

I "Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden" må Morten Falck beslutte om han skal håndhæve den danske overmagt eller støtte de grønlandske frihedsdrømme.

"Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden" er en spændende fortælling om et dramatisk kultursammenstød, inspireret af virkelige hændelser i Danmark og Grønland i slutningen af 1700-tallet.]]> 525 Kim Leine John 0 to-read 3.97 2012 Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden (Grønlands-trilogi, #1)
author: Kim Leine
name: John
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In Dubious Battle 56083 In Dubious Battle is set in the California apple country, where a strike by migrant workers against rapacious landowners spirals out of control. Caught in the upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who finds himself in the course of the strike.]]> 274 John Steinbeck 0143039636 John 0 to-read 3.91 1936 In Dubious Battle
author: John Steinbeck
name: John
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Deep River 36395451 Three Finnish siblings head for the logging fields of nineteenth-century America in the New York Times–bestselling author’s “commanding historical epic� (Washington Post).Born into a farm family, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and Aino—are raised to maintain their grit and resiliency in the face of hardship. This lesson in sisu takes on special meaning when their father is arrested by imperial Russian authorities, never to be seen again. Lured by the prospects of the Homestead Act, Ilmari and Matti set sail for America, while young Aino, feeling betrayed and adrift after her Marxist cell is exposed, follows soon after.The brothers establish themselves among a logging community in southern Washington, not far from the Columbia River. In this New World, they each find themselves—Ilmari as the family’s spiritual rock; Matti as a fearless logger and entrepreneur; and Aino as a fiercely independent woman and union activist who is willing to make any sacrifice for the cause that sustains her.Layered with fascinating historical detail, this novel bears witness to the stump-ridden fields that the loggers—and the first waves of modernity—leave behind. At its heart, Deep River explores the place of the individual, and of the immigrant, in an America still in the process of defining its own identity.]]> 820 Karl Marlantes 0802146198 John 3
But unlike Matterhorn, his Vietnam tale (performed by Bronson Pinchot memorably, who repeats his role here over 26 hours: while I first read and then listened to the debut novel which made this bold author's reputation, I could not commit to this second yarn with such slow enactment), Deep River floats along instead of churning up action. It's character driven, but for long stretches until about 2/3 in, Aino, the radical agitator, stays a drip. She's supposedly a firebrand, but her presence hovers inert.

She does soften as the chapters add up. Yet her postwar activism gets compressed, as if her maker by halfway senses impatience with the protracted maturation of her stubborn self, and what could have been improved by careful construction of sharp vignettes instead gets summed up or rushed offstage.

Her two brothers join in the logging industry. The induction by diktat of their cohort into the Spruce Production sector, engineered so as to thwart I.W.W. direct action, and criminalize strikes during WWI provides a fascinating glimpse at how the government intervened which I doubt almost anyone knows of. But there's hundreds of pages by contrast where working, courting, conniving, and childbearing take up their mundane routines, leaving no room, despite prolixity, for memorable scenes or dialogue.

A shame, as this story could have been cut by 60% at least. It's intriguing to learn about how both the lumber trade, in its devastating impacts, and the cooperative which grew from the salmon cannery trade both developed over decades filled with strife, loss, greed, desperation, and hard-earned gain.

My father-in-law came of age across the Puget Sound from these battles in forests, on rivers, and in bars and bunkhouses when this tumultuous period unfolded. We need reminders of the physical, mental, spiritual, as well as economic costs that hundreds of millions not even a hundred years ago endured. And fictional creators capable of dramatically illustrating the lessons some of our ancestors had to grapple with. But without the editorial control to whittle down this, yes, lumbering narrative, Deep River meanders when it should have roared. Let's see how Jess Walter handles this with his tool.

As an aside, Joe Hill plays a supporting role. Wallace Stegner's self-titled blend of critique, biography and imagination has so-so reviews on ŷ. However, after Walters, I figured I'll take a look, as this span, built by Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Dos Passos, and their increasingly underappreciated peers, certainly testifies to truths, myths, and messages relevant despite our digital, distracted, now.]]> 4.22 2019 Deep River
author: Karl Marlantes
name: John
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves:
review:
I'm reading this parallel with Jess Walter's The Cold Millions, set at the same time if inland around Spokane rather than on the Washington State coast--early 20th c. Labor vs Capital, complete with lots of Wobblies, free-love feminists, and brawling immigrants. The difference is that Marlantes, drawing on his Finnish heritage, integrates motifs from the Suomi nation-building folklore of Kalevala saga, a clever touch which provides this epic sibling rivalry with some of its most engaging, vivid passages.

But unlike Matterhorn, his Vietnam tale (performed by Bronson Pinchot memorably, who repeats his role here over 26 hours: while I first read and then listened to the debut novel which made this bold author's reputation, I could not commit to this second yarn with such slow enactment), Deep River floats along instead of churning up action. It's character driven, but for long stretches until about 2/3 in, Aino, the radical agitator, stays a drip. She's supposedly a firebrand, but her presence hovers inert.

She does soften as the chapters add up. Yet her postwar activism gets compressed, as if her maker by halfway senses impatience with the protracted maturation of her stubborn self, and what could have been improved by careful construction of sharp vignettes instead gets summed up or rushed offstage.

Her two brothers join in the logging industry. The induction by diktat of their cohort into the Spruce Production sector, engineered so as to thwart I.W.W. direct action, and criminalize strikes during WWI provides a fascinating glimpse at how the government intervened which I doubt almost anyone knows of. But there's hundreds of pages by contrast where working, courting, conniving, and childbearing take up their mundane routines, leaving no room, despite prolixity, for memorable scenes or dialogue.

A shame, as this story could have been cut by 60% at least. It's intriguing to learn about how both the lumber trade, in its devastating impacts, and the cooperative which grew from the salmon cannery trade both developed over decades filled with strife, loss, greed, desperation, and hard-earned gain.

My father-in-law came of age across the Puget Sound from these battles in forests, on rivers, and in bars and bunkhouses when this tumultuous period unfolded. We need reminders of the physical, mental, spiritual, as well as economic costs that hundreds of millions not even a hundred years ago endured. And fictional creators capable of dramatically illustrating the lessons some of our ancestors had to grapple with. But without the editorial control to whittle down this, yes, lumbering narrative, Deep River meanders when it should have roared. Let's see how Jess Walter handles this with his tool.

As an aside, Joe Hill plays a supporting role. Wallace Stegner's self-titled blend of critique, biography and imagination has so-so reviews on ŷ. However, after Walters, I figured I'll take a look, as this span, built by Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Dos Passos, and their increasingly underappreciated peers, certainly testifies to truths, myths, and messages relevant despite our digital, distracted, now.
]]> <![CDATA[Gentle Power: A Revolution in How We Think, Lead, and Succeed Using the Finnish Art of Sisu]]> 60827519
Power is fundamental in our lives―we express it in every conversation, relationship, and choice we make. All too often, we equate force and domination with power, while gentleness and compassion are considered “soft� or “weak.� The destructive nature of this skewed perspective has never been more obvious, yet there is reason to hope. With Gentle Power , Dr. Emilia Elisabet Lahti shares an illuminating guide to an emerging shift in the way we define true strength―an approach that balances resolve with reason, grit with compassion, and personal success with service to the collective good.

Lahti uses the concept of sisu, a central philosophy native to Finland, as the foundation for her investigation of gentle power. “At its best,� she says, “sisu is a harmonious approach to life itself, specifically in how we make decisions, relate to one another, and navigate times of crisis and peace.� Drawing from sisu―as well as aikido, Taoism, neuroscience, systems intelligence, and more―she shares an evidence-based approach to help you transform the way you manifest power. Join her to

� Sisu―its history, its shadow, and the rising global interest in this profound philosophy
� Leadership and power―why toxic myths of power persist, and how we can dismantle them
� The paradox of gentleness―how inner resilience and true influence arise from vulnerability, empathy, and love
� Self-care―why gentle power begins with the way we treat ourselves

To understand power is to realize that leadership is not just for some selected minority―we are all leaders whose choices impact those around us. “Each of us can play a vital role in the collective transformation that the world is calling for,� Lahti writes. “It all starts in our own heart, in our own gentle power.� Here you’ll discover a path of wisdom, resilience, and compassionate strength that will elevate your life―and uplift others to take part in a new revolution of human empowerment.]]> 192 Emilia Elisabet Lahti 1683649699 John 3
While I don't like opening to pages full of so-and-so Ph.Ds blurbing "arcane praise" in turn for their mentions in said text ahead, and while the heavily first-person emphasis (she did a marathon run across New Zealand, was chosen for Kurzweil's Singularity U Silicon Valley's elite attendees, she got a month hanging out in Bali upon wrapping her dissertation etc...) and assumed audience of Type A's didn't align with humbled me, albeit she's a generation younger, which may explain some disparity.

The challenge I have with this cohort is that these writers often pitch their message at a comfortable niche. Full of people who'd fly at least premium business class, say (with the lounge pre-boarding). Whereas I'm a greying guy in middle seat coach. She avers that those taking on her counsel can step off the corporate treadmill, but she tellingly glides past those (me) who've filled cubicles, unwillingly, of her "outsourced" ilk who must cater to this privileged cadre, as if lords rather than the serfs merit her attention most. This gets elided in a paragraph, but it's instructive of the inherent bias which did put me off from her ethical intent. Yet this slant embeds itself in many New Age-adjacent products.

I expected that she'd delve into her homeland, as a native Finn, for examples. Instead, she opts for a style that fills with documentation from the social sciences, her aikido teacher, her cadre of similarly self-driven survivors as the term gets broadened today, and those of globalized digital nomads in the professions, tech, academia, and high-profile and hjgh-income pursuits. Her advice to align rather than force mind over matter, to disengage, to foster silence, to let up, however, resonates with us all.

So while the bulk of this short work felt more like an expanded TED talk, she does offer questions for reflection, calm motivation, and grounding. While the flimsier if more "happy font meets computed stock images graphics" endemic to our coffeehouse and signboard cafe (and checkout) predominant small shelf of titles on "sisu" may grab the casual consumer, this presentation, by contrast, strives for a mix of hyperlinked scholarship, personal testimony, pop psychology, and Eastern insights. Not sure if the Finnish Americans who stocked this based on its subtitled keyword noticed, but instead of you-go-girl admonitions to dash out of a sauna into sub-zero snowdrifts, or push your pain aside as you reach the sixteenth mile, this offers a rather unevenly paced, but refreshingly less manic, companion.]]> 3.83 Gentle Power: A Revolution in How We Think, Lead, and Succeed Using the Finnish Art of Sisu
author: Emilia Elisabet Lahti
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves:
review:
Self-help isn't a genre I delve into. I'd never have heard of this without a chance find in the Finlandia Foundation's online booksite. I'd already known about the Suomi-labelled "sisu" ~fortitude/ guts/ inner drive as what William James (learned that within) coined "second wind" but I wanted a solid srudy, not one of those impulse-buy cutesy Nordic secret for "hygge" by another Scandinavian name.

While I don't like opening to pages full of so-and-so Ph.Ds blurbing "arcane praise" in turn for their mentions in said text ahead, and while the heavily first-person emphasis (she did a marathon run across New Zealand, was chosen for Kurzweil's Singularity U Silicon Valley's elite attendees, she got a month hanging out in Bali upon wrapping her dissertation etc...) and assumed audience of Type A's didn't align with humbled me, albeit she's a generation younger, which may explain some disparity.

The challenge I have with this cohort is that these writers often pitch their message at a comfortable niche. Full of people who'd fly at least premium business class, say (with the lounge pre-boarding). Whereas I'm a greying guy in middle seat coach. She avers that those taking on her counsel can step off the corporate treadmill, but she tellingly glides past those (me) who've filled cubicles, unwillingly, of her "outsourced" ilk who must cater to this privileged cadre, as if lords rather than the serfs merit her attention most. This gets elided in a paragraph, but it's instructive of the inherent bias which did put me off from her ethical intent. Yet this slant embeds itself in many New Age-adjacent products.

I expected that she'd delve into her homeland, as a native Finn, for examples. Instead, she opts for a style that fills with documentation from the social sciences, her aikido teacher, her cadre of similarly self-driven survivors as the term gets broadened today, and those of globalized digital nomads in the professions, tech, academia, and high-profile and hjgh-income pursuits. Her advice to align rather than force mind over matter, to disengage, to foster silence, to let up, however, resonates with us all.

So while the bulk of this short work felt more like an expanded TED talk, she does offer questions for reflection, calm motivation, and grounding. While the flimsier if more "happy font meets computed stock images graphics" endemic to our coffeehouse and signboard cafe (and checkout) predominant small shelf of titles on "sisu" may grab the casual consumer, this presentation, by contrast, strives for a mix of hyperlinked scholarship, personal testimony, pop psychology, and Eastern insights. Not sure if the Finnish Americans who stocked this based on its subtitled keyword noticed, but instead of you-go-girl admonitions to dash out of a sauna into sub-zero snowdrifts, or push your pain aside as you reach the sixteenth mile, this offers a rather unevenly paced, but refreshingly less manic, companion.
]]> <![CDATA[Finland: The Essential Guide to Customs & Etiquette (Culture Smart!)]]> 2421657
Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include


* customs, values, and traditions
* historical, religious, and political background
* life at home
* leisure, social, and cultural life
* eating and drinking
* do's, don'ts, and taboos
* business practices
* communication, spoken and unspoken


"Culture Smart has come to the rescue of hapless travellers." Sunday Times Travel

"... the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries." Global Travel

"...full of fascinating-as well as common-sense-tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas." Observer

"...as useful as they are entertaining." Easyjet Magazine

"...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world." New York Times]]> 168 Terttu Leney 1857333640 John 3
Which makes me aware I'm more similar to them, discounting I hate coffee (they rank #1 at 24 lbs./11 kg. per capita annually). I'd have wished for more guidance as to cultural contexts (while how-to and "sisu"-boosting guides are listed, no fiction and no films are, and one Nordic Noir series). Such added aspects always assist me, whether visiting a land or merely reading about it (I picked this up to briefly inform my taking on Karl Marlantes' immigrant saga Deep River). But overall, a snappy reference.

There's a few photos, although they tend to be stock images, offering less of the natural beauty and the architectural innovation than seem fitting for Suomi. Yet, as libraries don't feature many stand-alone titles on this land, properly closer to its Baltic neighbors in ethnicity than to Sweden, and of course distinct from that other occupier of Karelia, Russia, this fills an evening efficiently and briskly.]]> 4.16 2004 Finland: The Essential Guide to Customs & Etiquette (Culture Smart!)
author: Terttu Leney
name: John
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
I read this in a 2021 ed., so Nokia's fall from world domination post-iPhone is duly noted. The firm had long ago begun by making rubber boots, among other diversified products, so it's stable. Overall, as this series serves business clients and sensitive travellers, it's strong on etiquette, social cues, and how to interpret the famously reticent Finns, who don't mind silence, don't do small talk, being frank.

Which makes me aware I'm more similar to them, discounting I hate coffee (they rank #1 at 24 lbs./11 kg. per capita annually). I'd have wished for more guidance as to cultural contexts (while how-to and "sisu"-boosting guides are listed, no fiction and no films are, and one Nordic Noir series). Such added aspects always assist me, whether visiting a land or merely reading about it (I picked this up to briefly inform my taking on Karl Marlantes' immigrant saga Deep River). But overall, a snappy reference.

There's a few photos, although they tend to be stock images, offering less of the natural beauty and the architectural innovation than seem fitting for Suomi. Yet, as libraries don't feature many stand-alone titles on this land, properly closer to its Baltic neighbors in ethnicity than to Sweden, and of course distinct from that other occupier of Karelia, Russia, this fills an evening efficiently and briskly.
]]> <![CDATA[Finlandia (Lonely Planet 2024)]]> 216958899
In questa meraviglie naturali, la Lapponia di Babbo Natale, l'aurora boreale, i sámi.]]> 256 Paula Hotti 8859283124 John 4
Rather, emphasis on sights, with plenty of the best filtered and vibrant photos to display the Suomi beauty. I generally shrink from modern architecture, but Finland may be an exception: man-made harmony does enhance the natural grace of this land, in its cities, towns, and of course vast forests.

So that's the takeaway. It's designed for rapid consultation, not deep lore. Tends towards summary, and with the cultural markers I'd prefer to orientation within a different European setting, language, and mindset than more heavily touristed destinations. Still, that appeal is probably why you're taking a look at whether you might want to chew out this attractive companion to a dignified, organized, and notoriously self-contained country. Visually, full of rich content to get you into its wilds and streets.]]> 4.67 Finlandia (Lonely Planet 2024)
author: Paula Hotti
name: John
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
Don't know why this is the Italian heading, but I read this in English, 2024 ed. Much changed from the Andy Symington version (Northern Lights rather than summer cabin aerial view cover). On the Kindle, no phones, no prices, no hyperlinked websites, no directions. Simply a "map" internal cross-reference (they're decent, not overly detailed) or Google Maps. Very streamlined food, lodging listings.

Rather, emphasis on sights, with plenty of the best filtered and vibrant photos to display the Suomi beauty. I generally shrink from modern architecture, but Finland may be an exception: man-made harmony does enhance the natural grace of this land, in its cities, towns, and of course vast forests.

So that's the takeaway. It's designed for rapid consultation, not deep lore. Tends towards summary, and with the cultural markers I'd prefer to orientation within a different European setting, language, and mindset than more heavily touristed destinations. Still, that appeal is probably why you're taking a look at whether you might want to chew out this attractive companion to a dignified, organized, and notoriously self-contained country. Visually, full of rich content to get you into its wilds and streets.
]]> <![CDATA[Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead]]> 11985156 343 Phil Lesh John 4 Better than I expected

I waited three months for this from my library. Meanwhile reviewing my way, if as a non-Deadhead, yet interested in the band's cultural and musical legacies, through Long Strange Trip, So Many Roads, and No Simple Highway as the major biographies of the Grateful Dead which appeared in the 2010s. Plus apt books on Jerry Garcia, Bear, and "Why the GD Matters." All this gave me a brisk crash course.

So, as I'm a noodler on the bass, thus curious about Phil Lesh's approach to integrating sonic fluidity rather than stolid timekeeping into an instrument that when he picked it up in the middling Sixties had barely begun to be explored (outside of Motown's James Jamerson?), this autobiography delivers the inside scoop on the thump, beat, melody, and above all, the improvising on stage of his top lineup.

That's enriched by Phil's chemically infused tangents. Others have waved these transports away as hippie ravings. But as somebody who has never dropped acid and likely never will, I found these lush insights enlightening about how they liberated his talents on the four strings. Points deducted, as too scant about what became the Wall of Sound (n.b. late 2024, there appeared a study of this innovation).

He also regaled with how the Acid Trips, the communal dance, and the compositional telepathy lifted, at least on their '68-'72 and to me by far most important recordings, the Dead to life. His asides about Plato's warnings about the power of sounds, in the aftermath of Altamont and Woodstock, Egyptian experiences at the Pyramids, and the inspiration provided him by the fans all deepen this nimble read.

I'd conclude that this delves into the intricate, and often inarticulate in words rather than tunes, elixir which he and his partners concocted. He opens up glimpses across the neuron threshold, allowing raw outliers like myself a heady sense of what the GD aspired towards. Although the actual tracks on wax laid down, and their peak performances, don't gain the breadth I'd hoped for, Lesh does manage to coax open the doors of his altered perceptions, and offers those on the outside an approximation of what the counterculture dreamt of, as well as the hangover and recriminations. As Phil advises, never marry anyone you meet in a bar. Glad to know that with maturity, albeit delayed, came inner peace.]]> 4.39 2005 Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead
author: Phil Lesh
name: John
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
Better than I expected

I waited three months for this from my library. Meanwhile reviewing my way, if as a non-Deadhead, yet interested in the band's cultural and musical legacies, through Long Strange Trip, So Many Roads, and No Simple Highway as the major biographies of the Grateful Dead which appeared in the 2010s. Plus apt books on Jerry Garcia, Bear, and "Why the GD Matters." All this gave me a brisk crash course.

So, as I'm a noodler on the bass, thus curious about Phil Lesh's approach to integrating sonic fluidity rather than stolid timekeeping into an instrument that when he picked it up in the middling Sixties had barely begun to be explored (outside of Motown's James Jamerson?), this autobiography delivers the inside scoop on the thump, beat, melody, and above all, the improvising on stage of his top lineup.

That's enriched by Phil's chemically infused tangents. Others have waved these transports away as hippie ravings. But as somebody who has never dropped acid and likely never will, I found these lush insights enlightening about how they liberated his talents on the four strings. Points deducted, as too scant about what became the Wall of Sound (n.b. late 2024, there appeared a study of this innovation).

He also regaled with how the Acid Trips, the communal dance, and the compositional telepathy lifted, at least on their '68-'72 and to me by far most important recordings, the Dead to life. His asides about Plato's warnings about the power of sounds, in the aftermath of Altamont and Woodstock, Egyptian experiences at the Pyramids, and the inspiration provided him by the fans all deepen this nimble read.

I'd conclude that this delves into the intricate, and often inarticulate in words rather than tunes, elixir which he and his partners concocted. He opens up glimpses across the neuron threshold, allowing raw outliers like myself a heady sense of what the GD aspired towards. Although the actual tracks on wax laid down, and their peak performances, don't gain the breadth I'd hoped for, Lesh does manage to coax open the doors of his altered perceptions, and offers those on the outside an approximation of what the counterculture dreamt of, as well as the hangover and recriminations. As Phil advises, never marry anyone you meet in a bar. Glad to know that with maturity, albeit delayed, came inner peace.
]]> Citizen Vince 50614 Citizen Vince is an irresistible tale about the price of freedom and the mystery of salvation, by an emerging writer of boundless talent.

Eight days before the 1980 presidential election, Vince Camden wakes up at 1:59 A.M. in a quiet house in Spokane, Washington. Pocketing his stash of stolen credit cards, he drops by an all-night poker game before heading to his witness-protection job dusting crullers at Donut Make You Hungry. This is the sum of Vince's new life: donuts and forged credit cards—not to mention a neurotic hooker girlfriend.

But when a familiar face shows up in town, Vince realizes that his sordid past is still close behind him. During the next unforgettable week, on the run from Spokane to New York, Vince Camden will negotiate a maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters, only to find that redemption might just exist—of all places—in the voting booth. Sharp and refreshing, Citizen Vince is the story of a charming crook chasing the biggest score of his life: a second chance.]]> 293 Jess Walter 0060989297 John 3
How he wound up so far from his native city, and who wants to track him down, naturally unfolds as the plot. It progresses with the expected twists, but a couple of conventions bugged me. First, the old whore with a heart of gold (and cute toddler). Second, the coincidence of the cop Dupree and a lawyer DeVries, as to their similar sounding surnames (never commented upon or relevant) appeared oddly.

Minor, yes, but there's also a coincidence early on bringing Dupree and Vince together and later an incriminating document brandished by the detective against the crooked (no surprise given that line of work) lawyer which rankled me. However, Walter limns New York City as vividly as his hometown, which adds authenticity to the period. When a house might be bought for under $30k in the latter locale, a sign of how out of whack whatever the Reagan era itself might have brought on in the U.S.?

There's a tangent, unfortunately fizzled out, which found the protagonist, channeling his creator, that readers may ponder. Vince contrasts stories which end artfully, happy endings, against those in a truthful mode. These, he opines, need no other verification, as anyone who's watched somebody die can testify. Keeping track of how many people one has known who've passed on is a motif throughout.]]> 3.85 2005 Citizen Vince
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
Having enjoyed Jess Walter's own audio performance of his Financial Lives of the Poets, I gambled on L.J. Ganser's delivery of Citizen Vince. Taking place as the Carter-Reagan campaigns battle to the wire in 1980, the challenge by the victor in their final debate: are you better off than you were four years ago?--reverberates within Vince Camden, in a witness protection program in Walter's own Spokane.

How he wound up so far from his native city, and who wants to track him down, naturally unfolds as the plot. It progresses with the expected twists, but a couple of conventions bugged me. First, the old whore with a heart of gold (and cute toddler). Second, the coincidence of the cop Dupree and a lawyer DeVries, as to their similar sounding surnames (never commented upon or relevant) appeared oddly.

Minor, yes, but there's also a coincidence early on bringing Dupree and Vince together and later an incriminating document brandished by the detective against the crooked (no surprise given that line of work) lawyer which rankled me. However, Walter limns New York City as vividly as his hometown, which adds authenticity to the period. When a house might be bought for under $30k in the latter locale, a sign of how out of whack whatever the Reagan era itself might have brought on in the U.S.?

There's a tangent, unfortunately fizzled out, which found the protagonist, channeling his creator, that readers may ponder. Vince contrasts stories which end artfully, happy endings, against those in a truthful mode. These, he opines, need no other verification, as anyone who's watched somebody die can testify. Keeping track of how many people one has known who've passed on is a motif throughout.
]]> <![CDATA[The Kalevala: Tales of Magic and Adventure]]> 5100355 The national Finnish epic, The Kalevala, is one of the most important works of Finnish literature. It was originally compiled by Elias Lonnröt in the 19th century from ancient oral poetry. Since then, it has been translated into over 45 languages. This English translation captures the magic and beauty for children and adults alike. Beginning with the world's creation, it follows the stories of Väinämöinen, a shamanistic hero of song and story; his young rival, Joukahainen; and the handsome but arrogant Lemminkäinen. Their quests for love, revenge, truth, and the mysterious Sampo, the ultimate source of prosperity, have thrilled and inspired generations of readers. This vibrant translation, with shimmering illustrations by Pirkko-liisa Surojegin, is sure to attract even more fans.

]]> 214 Kirsti Mäkinen 1897476000 John 4
Problem is (look at Lonnrot in the recent Penguin Classic), his trochaic verse gallumphs rather than gallops. I found it unreadable in English. I had started Keith Bosley's recent Oxford UP alternative and it scans smoothly (he also reads it on audio for Naxos). But lacking my copy, if wanting a briefer clip, this 2020 illustrated for younger readers, most probably, fills the need for a brisk take of these stories.

I wish, as others on ŷ also mentioned, that there were even more colors, and many more of the ink-dominant images. What's herein satisfies the basic support for the narrative full of its magic sword, battles of vengeful warriors, an eagle and a bear, flowery fields, maidens, elders, and marriage. Yet so much escapes the comparatively spare--true to its Nordic terse style, perhaps--and stoic tone.

I'd have wanted every margin filled with details. What's on offer pleases. But it left me craving more.

It's well-known how Tolkien at an impressionable age fell for the undeniably enchanting appearance of the Finnish tongue, all those vowels and umlauts. I share his admiration (same with circumflexed Welsh). Thus, a glossary helps with pronunciation (not as daunting as it first seems) and terminology.

Still, given the paucity of literature from Suomi not Moomins, neither "Scandinavian"- nor Baltic-adjacent mysteries (I'm in the minority in wishing deeper genres proliferated for us non-Finno-Ugric speakers), and apart from feminist fantasy or post-modernist alienation from the sub-Arctic lands, it's encouraging to find any title attractively designed which freshens once-told legends for us today.]]> 4.04 2002 The Kalevala: Tales of Magic and Adventure
author: Kirsti Mäkinen
name: John
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:
Elias Lonnrot invented the Finnish national epic in the 19c, gathering and embellishing the folklore. I have heard that he Christianized the tales (think of Beowulf) and that at least seven other versions of the word-hoard could have been crafted. But he diminished the shamanism and increased the familiar for his audience, no doubt, part of the rise of ethnic pride among many influenced by Romanticism.

Problem is (look at Lonnrot in the recent Penguin Classic), his trochaic verse gallumphs rather than gallops. I found it unreadable in English. I had started Keith Bosley's recent Oxford UP alternative and it scans smoothly (he also reads it on audio for Naxos). But lacking my copy, if wanting a briefer clip, this 2020 illustrated for younger readers, most probably, fills the need for a brisk take of these stories.

I wish, as others on ŷ also mentioned, that there were even more colors, and many more of the ink-dominant images. What's herein satisfies the basic support for the narrative full of its magic sword, battles of vengeful warriors, an eagle and a bear, flowery fields, maidens, elders, and marriage. Yet so much escapes the comparatively spare--true to its Nordic terse style, perhaps--and stoic tone.

I'd have wanted every margin filled with details. What's on offer pleases. But it left me craving more.

It's well-known how Tolkien at an impressionable age fell for the undeniably enchanting appearance of the Finnish tongue, all those vowels and umlauts. I share his admiration (same with circumflexed Welsh). Thus, a glossary helps with pronunciation (not as daunting as it first seems) and terminology.

Still, given the paucity of literature from Suomi not Moomins, neither "Scandinavian"- nor Baltic-adjacent mysteries (I'm in the minority in wishing deeper genres proliferated for us non-Finno-Ugric speakers), and apart from feminist fantasy or post-modernist alienation from the sub-Arctic lands, it's encouraging to find any title attractively designed which freshens once-told legends for us today.
]]> The Sisters Brothers 9850443
With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters - losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West, and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.]]> 328 Patrick deWitt 0062041266 John 4
Furthermore, hearing the talented Irish performer John Lee delivering this while my wife and I drove through Gold Rush California, I figured it'd be an apt match for frontier ambience. Better than the Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, at least. See my recent GR take(down) on that disastrous road choice.

The trouble is in retrospect, the 2019 Jacques Audiard film (how this got picked for the big screen may be credited to its Booker Prize attention) blurs with my recollections of the narrative as dramatized. I'd first read this after it being recommended by Irish travel writer Manchán Magan, and in print, its evocative scenes set in Gothic brothels, ne'er-do-well infested mining camps, and sordid shacks as the pair make their way from Oregon Territory into the Southern Sierras halfway into the 19c on a hit man mission rang both erudite and arcane in the mannered delivery. Arch, odd: Twain meets Melville?

DeWitt remains an acquired taste, very much a small-press, determinedly niche storyteller, who likes the mandarin, affected, and wry style, coupling fustian prose with contemporary mindsets. It's very much a cult-follower's pick. If you engage, I'd dive into the audio before seeing the movie. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix are perfectly cast as the titular siblings. And however it's revealed, the alchemy achieved at the lake late in the saga will stay with you. Not a mass appeal book, but a "curio."]]> 3.84 2011 The Sisters Brothers
author: Patrick deWitt
name: John
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:
Having lived very near L.A.-hipster Silverlake, where his obviously semi-autobiographical earlier novella Ablutions is set in a dive bar (although gentrification has priced out any such joints long ago) and having fast-forwarded at hyperspeed his later farce French Exit, which I'd downloaded for a plane ride on audio and so was stuck with, as I despised it, I recall Sisters Brothers falls between the two in effect. As if conjuring a fabled scenario half-past, but eerily hovering close to us. If self-involved tone.

Furthermore, hearing the talented Irish performer John Lee delivering this while my wife and I drove through Gold Rush California, I figured it'd be an apt match for frontier ambience. Better than the Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, at least. See my recent GR take(down) on that disastrous road choice.

The trouble is in retrospect, the 2019 Jacques Audiard film (how this got picked for the big screen may be credited to its Booker Prize attention) blurs with my recollections of the narrative as dramatized. I'd first read this after it being recommended by Irish travel writer Manchán Magan, and in print, its evocative scenes set in Gothic brothels, ne'er-do-well infested mining camps, and sordid shacks as the pair make their way from Oregon Territory into the Southern Sierras halfway into the 19c on a hit man mission rang both erudite and arcane in the mannered delivery. Arch, odd: Twain meets Melville?

DeWitt remains an acquired taste, very much a small-press, determinedly niche storyteller, who likes the mandarin, affected, and wry style, coupling fustian prose with contemporary mindsets. It's very much a cult-follower's pick. If you engage, I'd dive into the audio before seeing the movie. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix are perfectly cast as the titular siblings. And however it's revealed, the alchemy achieved at the lake late in the saga will stay with you. Not a mass appeal book, but a "curio."
]]> The Big Rock Candy Mountain 10801 563 Wallace Stegner 0140139397 John 3
But as he's embedded as "Bruce Mason," the sensitive sibling among Elsa and Bo's sulky, brooding brood, Stegner's trapped within his own stolid narrative, mired in the thick description. It's certainly not without verve, as in the Great Plains opening, small-town fun, courtship, and period charm. Yet, once Elsa hitches her nuptial wagon to mercurial and restless, tempestuous and indecisive brutal Bo, there's a sullen mood that descends into the main voice, filtering Elsa's cloudy, resentful, hermetic sensibility. I get her reasons why, but however faithful to Stegner's own boyhood, it plods, not dashes.

So I'll put this aside. I can't fathom 2/3 ahead of this style. It may ring true for the writer himself as he determines to channel his coming-of-age, but the failure to launch into a plot which would draw in the reader into his formative years leaves his talent stalling. A letdown, at least for impatient me.]]> 4.17 1943 The Big Rock Candy Mountain
author: Wallace Stegner
name: John
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1943
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
review:
I staggered a third in, and it doesn't seem as if the weight will be lifted from this, one of Stegner's semi-autobiographical novels about a hardscrabble upbringing in the early 20th C Mid/west stretches. As others commented, the pace lumbers. It's a common flaw for even talents such as his to be unable to self-edit. This might have gained momentum if Stegner's skill allowed him necessary objectivity.

But as he's embedded as "Bruce Mason," the sensitive sibling among Elsa and Bo's sulky, brooding brood, Stegner's trapped within his own stolid narrative, mired in the thick description. It's certainly not without verve, as in the Great Plains opening, small-town fun, courtship, and period charm. Yet, once Elsa hitches her nuptial wagon to mercurial and restless, tempestuous and indecisive brutal Bo, there's a sullen mood that descends into the main voice, filtering Elsa's cloudy, resentful, hermetic sensibility. I get her reasons why, but however faithful to Stegner's own boyhood, it plods, not dashes.

So I'll put this aside. I can't fathom 2/3 ahead of this style. It may ring true for the writer himself as he determines to channel his coming-of-age, but the failure to launch into a plot which would draw in the reader into his formative years leaves his talent stalling. A letdown, at least for impatient me.
]]> <![CDATA[Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767 (NYRB Classics)]]> 32302881 Arabia Felix is the spellbinding true story of a scientific expedition gone disastrously astray. On a winter morning in 1761 six men leave Copenhagen by sea--a botanist, a philologist, an astronomer, a doctor, an artist, and their manservant--an ill-assorted band of men who dislike and distrust one another from the start. These are the members of the first Danish expedition to Arabia Felix, as Yemen was then known, the first organized foray into a corner of the world unknown to Europeans, an enterprise that had the support of the Danish Crown and was keenly followed throughout Europe. The expedition made its way to Turkey and Egypt, by which time its members were already actively seeking to undercut and even kill one another, before disappearing into the harsh desert that was their destination. Nearly seven years later a single survivor returned to Denmark to find himself a forgotten man and all the specimens that had been sent back ruined by neglect.
Based on diaries, notebooks, and sketches that lay unread in Danish archives until the twentieth century, Arabia Felix is both a comedy of intellectual rivalry and very bad manners and an utterly absorbing tale of high adventure."]]> 392 Thorkild Hansen 1681370727 John 0 to-read 4.37 1962 Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767 (NYRB Classics)
author: Thorkild Hansen
name: John
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Long Ships 438452 478 Frans G. Bengtsson 000612609X John 0 to-read 4.26 1941 The Long Ships
author: Frans G. Bengtsson
name: John
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1941
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Emigrants I and II: The Emigrants and Unto a Good Land]]> 2030345 383 Vilhelm Moberg 0140288147 John 4 4.48 1951 The Emigrants I and II: The Emigrants and Unto a Good Land
author: Vilhelm Moberg
name: John
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[True North: Travels in Arctic Europe]]> 6086372 240 Gavin Francis 1846970784 John 0 to-read 3.97 2008 True North: Travels in Arctic Europe
author: Gavin Francis
name: John
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Brief History of the Dead 30072
The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end.

Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out.

Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.]]> 252 Kevin Brockmeier 1400095956 John 4 3.68 2003 The Brief History of the Dead
author: Kevin Brockmeier
name: John
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Far North 6496876
My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He’d say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn.

Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace—sheriff and perhaps last citizen—patrols a city’s ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair.

Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing a refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism.

What Makepeace finds is a world stockaded villages enforcing an uncertain justice and hidden work camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of a vanished civilization. But Makepeace’s journey—rife with danger—also leads to an unexpected redemption.

Far North takes the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape, from humanity’s origins to its possible end. Haunting, spare, yet stubbornly hopeful, the novel is suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the world’s fragility and beauty, and its ability to recover from our worst trespasses.]]> 320 Marcel Theroux 0374153531 John 4 3.59 2009 Far North
author: Marcel Theroux
name: John
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Between Two Fires 13543121
Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.]]> 432 Christopher Buehlman 1937007863 John 2
I approached this with scrutiny. It reminds me of Roger Zelazny's Lords of Light from, naturally, the Sixties. That focused on the clashes of Hindu titans. I liked it, but hapless humans were nothing but expendable extras. I kept, as a mere mortal, wondering about their put-upon plight, not the godly.

Same here. It starts, as so many tall tales, promisingly. Some standout apocalyptic scenes in French countryside as death from above devastates the late-feudal landscape. But it suffers that flaw, as the men, women, and children succumb and their fears get relegated to margins, speaking of medieval...

So it's hard to care...Laurent Binet's Civilizations fell short of my admittedly high anticipation as an alternative history rough parallel. The lofty condescension of the empowered elites doesn't arouse my sympathy. If Buehlman had taken pains to sustain rather than merely sketch his frail and frightened common folks, instead of getting carried away with Grand Guignol gore, it might've come off better.]]> 4.20 2012 Between Two Fires
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: John
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:
I read this hoping for the spirit of Michael Flynn's Eifelheim (recently reviewed), or less supernatural, Bruce Holsinger's pair of Chaucerian mysteries. Neither fantasy nor whodunits are my usual fare, and as a never-employed as such but "trained medievalist," my b.s. detector's sensitive as to fool's gold.

I approached this with scrutiny. It reminds me of Roger Zelazny's Lords of Light from, naturally, the Sixties. That focused on the clashes of Hindu titans. I liked it, but hapless humans were nothing but expendable extras. I kept, as a mere mortal, wondering about their put-upon plight, not the godly.

Same here. It starts, as so many tall tales, promisingly. Some standout apocalyptic scenes in French countryside as death from above devastates the late-feudal landscape. But it suffers that flaw, as the men, women, and children succumb and their fears get relegated to margins, speaking of medieval...

So it's hard to care...Laurent Binet's Civilizations fell short of my admittedly high anticipation as an alternative history rough parallel. The lofty condescension of the empowered elites doesn't arouse my sympathy. If Buehlman had taken pains to sustain rather than merely sketch his frail and frightened common folks, instead of getting carried away with Grand Guignol gore, it might've come off better.
]]> <![CDATA[The Way West (The Big Sky, #2)]]> 202033
This enormously entertaining classic brings to life the adventure of the western passage and the pioneer spirit, charting a frontiersman's return to the untamed West in 1846.

Dick Summers, as pilot of a wagon train, guides a group of settlers on the difficult journey from Missouri to Oregon. In sensitive but unsentimental prose, Guthrie illuminates the harsh trials and resounding triumphs of pioneer life.

A celebrated novel, The Way West pays homage to the grandeur of the western wilderness, its stark and beautiful scenery, and its extraordinary people.

"With A. B. Guthrie, the pioneer West has found its novelist at last."—Bernard DeVoto, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian]]> 352 A.B. Guthrie Jr. 0618154620 John 3
His poignant recollections as he confronts mortality jibed wiih my present melancholy mood, so he's the reason to persevere. But the future Oregonians come off staid despite Guthrie's skill in conveying their own introspection, as younger men and women, this rarely swept me up. He's capable of, in this 1950 prize-winning epic, of delving into sexual dynamics, doubt and belief, and existential awe. Given a more civilized cast of figures, their collective sangfroid, domesticated and stoic, doesn't excite me.

Tamed, the prairie, desert, even the harrowing Snake River gorge look like backdrops. What in Big Sky loomed as terrifying, immense, or dangerous shrinks, like what a studio lab might add in production, to project on greenscreen (or matte painting mid-20th c.). The decorous exchanges between these Methodist-harried, prepped Midwestern transplants transpire as if politely well rehearsed. I reckon Guthrie's intent may lie in precisely this scaling down from the grand conflicts of Big Sky, as he's too talented for accidental neglect of his structure and method. Still, it feels a letdown from past dramas.

And the natives rarely appear, as their numbers diminish, their reticence increases, and their presence turns marginal. Therefore, the action which energized Big Sky's dissipated. This proves verisimilitude.

Yet it doesn't make for a page turner. Far easier to comprehend, as the prose straightened out from the convoluted, creole, compressed lingo of its predecessor, so that may've contributed to its success.

However, the humdrum events without the violence, lust, torment, and outbursts of part one mean it's a straightforward tale. Accessible, but respectable rather than rowdy. Less "racialized" as they say in academia 75 years after its publication, but without the haunting, conflicted, or chaotic chronicles of Big Sky. So, if those pair were the peaks of Guthrie's career, I'll take my exit, nodding to Summers.]]> 3.96 1949 The Way West (The Big Sky, #2)
author: A.B. Guthrie Jr.
name: John
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1949
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:
I left a detailed review of the prequel, The Big Sky, recently. I anticipated, based on the clotted, dense, and gnarled style of its evocation of thirteen years starting in 1830 across the frontier, that The Way West would mark my terminus with Guthrie's series (even if Fair Land set in his native Montana in the 1880s eventually followed, and three other novels set later than that, apparently with lesser verve, completed the entire saga, over a century of settlement). Dick Summers, the mountain man guide, has returned to helm a wagon train, 1845. He's by far the standout character, of an open era already over.

His poignant recollections as he confronts mortality jibed wiih my present melancholy mood, so he's the reason to persevere. But the future Oregonians come off staid despite Guthrie's skill in conveying their own introspection, as younger men and women, this rarely swept me up. He's capable of, in this 1950 prize-winning epic, of delving into sexual dynamics, doubt and belief, and existential awe. Given a more civilized cast of figures, their collective sangfroid, domesticated and stoic, doesn't excite me.

Tamed, the prairie, desert, even the harrowing Snake River gorge look like backdrops. What in Big Sky loomed as terrifying, immense, or dangerous shrinks, like what a studio lab might add in production, to project on greenscreen (or matte painting mid-20th c.). The decorous exchanges between these Methodist-harried, prepped Midwestern transplants transpire as if politely well rehearsed. I reckon Guthrie's intent may lie in precisely this scaling down from the grand conflicts of Big Sky, as he's too talented for accidental neglect of his structure and method. Still, it feels a letdown from past dramas.

And the natives rarely appear, as their numbers diminish, their reticence increases, and their presence turns marginal. Therefore, the action which energized Big Sky's dissipated. This proves verisimilitude.

Yet it doesn't make for a page turner. Far easier to comprehend, as the prose straightened out from the convoluted, creole, compressed lingo of its predecessor, so that may've contributed to its success.

However, the humdrum events without the violence, lust, torment, and outbursts of part one mean it's a straightforward tale. Accessible, but respectable rather than rowdy. Less "racialized" as they say in academia 75 years after its publication, but without the haunting, conflicted, or chaotic chronicles of Big Sky. So, if those pair were the peaks of Guthrie's career, I'll take my exit, nodding to Summers.
]]> <![CDATA[The Financial Lives of the Poets]]> 6426026 The Financial Lives of the Poets is a comic and heartfelt novel from National Book Award nominee Jess Walter, author of Citizen Vince and The Zero, about how we get to the edge of ruin—and how we begin to make our way back. Walter tells the story of Matt Prior, who’s losing his job, his wife, his house, and his mind—until, all of a sudden, he discovers a way that he might just possibly be able to save it all . . . and have a pretty damn great time doing it.]]> 304 Jess Walter 0061916048 John 4
As the title alludes, the "poetfolio" gig seems far-fetched, and while Walter appears to labor hard to convince us of his ex-newspaperman's inspired, if wacky, start-up of sorts in an early online booklet the scenario never swayed me. I'm unsure if there's to be distance between his erudite ambition and his failed enterprise as the reader (or listener) perceives his hubris, and this nagged at me throughout.

However, if you have a chance to play this as an audio performance, do so. I doubt I'd have had as much pleasure if I hadn't gambled on hearing it. And I will look for more of his works afterwards...

There's a masterful scene built around taking out the household garbage, another around playing the game of Jenga, which reveal Walter's skill at depicting everyday family dynamics. The protagonist has a senile father, which avoids sentimentality or schmaltz, no easy feat. The supporting cast comes off as realistic, slightly caricatured, appropriate to the social messages embedded within the examination of system failures, "marital bankruptcy," the drug culture permeating the 7-11, working class, weary, beaten down, muttering and slang of the early smartphone age, full of shysters, hustlers, schemers...

Unsustainable, untenable: this drive for.acquisition, stability, sex, success. That's the moral. Nothing we don't know, but as any talented storytelling, Walter's tale convinces us of how fictional folks can parallel the trajectory of our own confused lives, those of us (the author's four years younger than me) of a certain cohort, too old for gaming and toking, too young for resignation to the inevitable end.
]]> 3.69 2009 The Financial Lives of the Poets
author: Jess Walter
name: John
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:
Not sure if the creators of "Breaking Bad" read this back in 2009, but the parallels reverberate as this novel, set a year before, evokes a time within, as they say, "living memory" and not pleasant ones in the Great Dep...aka Recession. That's why I put off listening to Jess Walter's spirited, satirical, and sad tale. You can get a gander of the setup: guy in his mid-forties, out of work, behind in mortgage and payments, desperate to keep his home, his wife, his two boys, his dignity, and his equilibrium in an unnamed (but like Walter's hometown, Spokane suburbia) American setting, clinging, trying to cope.

As the title alludes, the "poetfolio" gig seems far-fetched, and while Walter appears to labor hard to convince us of his ex-newspaperman's inspired, if wacky, start-up of sorts in an early online booklet the scenario never swayed me. I'm unsure if there's to be distance between his erudite ambition and his failed enterprise as the reader (or listener) perceives his hubris, and this nagged at me throughout.

However, if you have a chance to play this as an audio performance, do so. I doubt I'd have had as much pleasure if I hadn't gambled on hearing it. And I will look for more of his works afterwards...

There's a masterful scene built around taking out the household garbage, another around playing the game of Jenga, which reveal Walter's skill at depicting everyday family dynamics. The protagonist has a senile father, which avoids sentimentality or schmaltz, no easy feat. The supporting cast comes off as realistic, slightly caricatured, appropriate to the social messages embedded within the examination of system failures, "marital bankruptcy," the drug culture permeating the 7-11, working class, weary, beaten down, muttering and slang of the early smartphone age, full of shysters, hustlers, schemers...

Unsustainable, untenable: this drive for.acquisition, stability, sex, success. That's the moral. Nothing we don't know, but as any talented storytelling, Walter's tale convinces us of how fictional folks can parallel the trajectory of our own confused lives, those of us (the author's four years younger than me) of a certain cohort, too old for gaming and toking, too young for resignation to the inevitable end.

]]> Led Zeppelin: The Biography 57623697 688 Bob Spitz 0399562435 John 4
Spitz, a veteran chronicler, handles the challenge. Some reviewers carped at his recital, yet I reckon it fairly covered the group's famous peaks in concert and on tape, as well as their cringeworthy and one-time hedonism. By a fifth of the way in, their debauchery wearied me. I know they were all in their early twenties, but the excess, coupled with "Led Wallet" Jimmy Page's tightfistedness (ironic?) makes the Stones sometimes seem like decent choirboys now and then. But it's what established their reputation, and as Spitz delineates well, their command of not mere loudness or volume, but of soft and thunderous dynamic range, perhaps finds its corollary in their hotel room and nightclub frenzy.

One doesn't find the members, let alone their thuggish entourage headed by Peter Grant and Richard Cole, particularly philanthropic. They make Bill Graham seem a paragon of selflessness, and their rivals in the 70s "arenaverse" magnanimous compared to the wasteful greed and silly demands of a coke-addled and heroin-fueled ensemble. So the cumulative effect of this tome leaves one satiated, but as if waking up from a dozen year bender, into a gritty morning after, as the Eighties lumber in.]]> 4.31 2021 Led Zeppelin: The Biography
author: Bob Spitz
name: John
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:
Sure, often I asked myself why I was scouring this, but after all, alongside Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin was the first rock band this kid was into. And Zep's guaranteed to deliver lots more entertainment value, maybe off stage as much as in the studio... Having admired Bob Spots for his nerve in taking on The Beatles in a snappy one-volume treatment, I waited three months for this from my library. So I am not alone in the ranks of those curious about a legacy of a legendary lineup.

Spitz, a veteran chronicler, handles the challenge. Some reviewers carped at his recital, yet I reckon it fairly covered the group's famous peaks in concert and on tape, as well as their cringeworthy and one-time hedonism. By a fifth of the way in, their debauchery wearied me. I know they were all in their early twenties, but the excess, coupled with "Led Wallet" Jimmy Page's tightfistedness (ironic?) makes the Stones sometimes seem like decent choirboys now and then. But it's what established their reputation, and as Spitz delineates well, their command of not mere loudness or volume, but of soft and thunderous dynamic range, perhaps finds its corollary in their hotel room and nightclub frenzy.

One doesn't find the members, let alone their thuggish entourage headed by Peter Grant and Richard Cole, particularly philanthropic. They make Bill Graham seem a paragon of selflessness, and their rivals in the 70s "arenaverse" magnanimous compared to the wasteful greed and silly demands of a coke-addled and heroin-fueled ensemble. So the cumulative effect of this tome leaves one satiated, but as if waking up from a dozen year bender, into a gritty morning after, as the Eighties lumber in.
]]> The Big Sky (The Big Sky, #1) 202035 A classic portrait of America's vast frontier that inspired the Western genre in fiction.

Originally published more than fifty years ago, The Big Sky is the first of A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s epic adventure novels set in the American West. Here he introduces Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers: traveling the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Rockies, these frontiersmen live as trappers, traders, guides, and explorers. The story centers on Caudill, a young Kentuckian driven by a raging hunger for life and a longing for the blue sky and brown earth of big, wild places. Caught up in the freedom and savagery of the wilderness, Caudill becomes an untamed mountain man, whom only the beautiful daughter of a Blackfoot chief dares to love.]]> 386 A.B. Guthrie Jr. 0618154639 John 4
I liked this as it began, full of febrile tension through mainly the significantly named Boone Caudhill's teenaged eyes. He flees Kentucky for the Rockies in the company of beaver hunters, a trade in the 1830s still dominated by French-Canadians, but not for long, as the British in Oregon Territory and then Yankees, symbolized by the also tellingly monikered Peabody, compete with the Blackfoot, Crees, and Sioux for control of the frontier, as it slowly moves westward. Guthrie's skill lies in conveying this
spastic assault in spare terms. It can be pastoral, depending on which white man views a panorama, or violent, as Boone stands for a brutal backwoodsman, rather than greenhorns in Conestoga wagons.

The diminished space already rankles at Boone. His companions come and go. Some die, some retire to return back East, and others vanish, "go native," or give in as the trade itself due to the devastated haul dries up, although the "buffler" still roam the prairies and plains. Guthrie's style compresses the action into effective bursts, as you find in combat memoirs, interspersed with tedium, lust, and drink.

It's a crabbed cadence. It can be lovely transports of lyrical beauty. Albeit filtered through men who lack the ability to render their aesthetic sensation into smooth phrases, as they grapple with futility, aging, and the drives to flee civilization and to drag it with them into the wilderness. At least in their view. For of course, heavy on the ground or thinning into the horizon, those preceding them over the valleys, buttes, and canyons watch their progress, as they curse, mate, barter, circle, banter, and wait.

But it's all in heavily antiquated language. Which adds verisimilitude. So I confess it took me far too long to figure out "painter" meant panther. Yet Guthrie's labored to create a hardbitten, terse, lingo.

Boone, who's the central character through whom we get to know this (to him and us, new world), is not an lovable fellow. Certainly, certain co-workers along the thirteen unlucky years of this saga will align better with our own empathic, engaging, or eloquent selves. But they won't necessarily stick with Boone. He survives as the fittest, although this compromise with decisions he makes on both sides of the Missouri and the Mississippi (if I get my bearings straight as a non-Midwesterner) illustrates a soul-crushing force which wariness, temper, greed, whiskey, women, and a killing instinct exact on a taciturn, unloved kid hellbent on revenge, ruckus, a rifle, ruin, robbery, or reward.

It slows halfway; the protagonist gets his gal, after a biblically prolonged seven years of longing. Her kin, brought low by smallpox, succumb to numerous foes, often indigenous, as their numbers die off.

This appears in 1947, so there's uncomfortable talk by our curtailed contemporary standards, but for me the cutting edges felt true to the attitude during a cruel, determinedly insensitive era when barely literate, unschooled, and rapacious men blazed their path amidst raw survival, scant knowledge, and far too much whiskey, meat, and weariness. The cumulative weight of this quest: mercantile, scary, and sudden in its fortunes or reverses, could strike down even the most hardened cuss in a moment.

I wish Guthrie's pacing allowed for a clearer chronology; it takes patience to stick with this narrative. It doesn't race along, preferring to force you into the sporadically brisk clashes of violence, then softly blended into extended introspection. Boone, unlike some of his companions, isn't cut out for deep thought. This challenges any writer, but Guthrie does allow his cast to contemplate their fates in this vast terrain as they'd have attempted to articulate their reactions. And he wisely sticks to mentalities of the vagabonds, voyageurs, and varmints of the human form who set themselves apart from those who first inhabit the landscape. This enables perspective, while freeing Guthrie's attempt to depict the revelations on the journey through eyes akin to most of his readers, thus questioning our own views.]]> 4.01 1947 The Big Sky (The Big Sky, #1)
author: A.B. Guthrie Jr.
name: John
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1947
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
review:
Well, if this and its first sequel, The Way West, are Guthrie's best, I'll stop after part two. For this is tough going in fictional evocation of a grueling, dispiriting, and draining parable on youth and age.

I liked this as it began, full of febrile tension through mainly the significantly named Boone Caudhill's teenaged eyes. He flees Kentucky for the Rockies in the company of beaver hunters, a trade in the 1830s still dominated by French-Canadians, but not for long, as the British in Oregon Territory and then Yankees, symbolized by the also tellingly monikered Peabody, compete with the Blackfoot, Crees, and Sioux for control of the frontier, as it slowly moves westward. Guthrie's skill lies in conveying this
spastic assault in spare terms. It can be pastoral, depending on which white man views a panorama, or violent, as Boone stands for a brutal backwoodsman, rather than greenhorns in Conestoga wagons.

The diminished space already rankles at Boone. His companions come and go. Some die, some retire to return back East, and others vanish, "go native," or give in as the trade itself due to the devastated haul dries up, although the "buffler" still roam the prairies and plains. Guthrie's style compresses the action into effective bursts, as you find in combat memoirs, interspersed with tedium, lust, and drink.

It's a crabbed cadence. It can be lovely transports of lyrical beauty. Albeit filtered through men who lack the ability to render their aesthetic sensation into smooth phrases, as they grapple with futility, aging, and the drives to flee civilization and to drag it with them into the wilderness. At least in their view. For of course, heavy on the ground or thinning into the horizon, those preceding them over the valleys, buttes, and canyons watch their progress, as they curse, mate, barter, circle, banter, and wait.

But it's all in heavily antiquated language. Which adds verisimilitude. So I confess it took me far too long to figure out "painter" meant panther. Yet Guthrie's labored to create a hardbitten, terse, lingo.

Boone, who's the central character through whom we get to know this (to him and us, new world), is not an lovable fellow. Certainly, certain co-workers along the thirteen unlucky years of this saga will align better with our own empathic, engaging, or eloquent selves. But they won't necessarily stick with Boone. He survives as the fittest, although this compromise with decisions he makes on both sides of the Missouri and the Mississippi (if I get my bearings straight as a non-Midwesterner) illustrates a soul-crushing force which wariness, temper, greed, whiskey, women, and a killing instinct exact on a taciturn, unloved kid hellbent on revenge, ruckus, a rifle, ruin, robbery, or reward.

It slows halfway; the protagonist gets his gal, after a biblically prolonged seven years of longing. Her kin, brought low by smallpox, succumb to numerous foes, often indigenous, as their numbers die off.

This appears in 1947, so there's uncomfortable talk by our curtailed contemporary standards, but for me the cutting edges felt true to the attitude during a cruel, determinedly insensitive era when barely literate, unschooled, and rapacious men blazed their path amidst raw survival, scant knowledge, and far too much whiskey, meat, and weariness. The cumulative weight of this quest: mercantile, scary, and sudden in its fortunes or reverses, could strike down even the most hardened cuss in a moment.

I wish Guthrie's pacing allowed for a clearer chronology; it takes patience to stick with this narrative. It doesn't race along, preferring to force you into the sporadically brisk clashes of violence, then softly blended into extended introspection. Boone, unlike some of his companions, isn't cut out for deep thought. This challenges any writer, but Guthrie does allow his cast to contemplate their fates in this vast terrain as they'd have attempted to articulate their reactions. And he wisely sticks to mentalities of the vagabonds, voyageurs, and varmints of the human form who set themselves apart from those who first inhabit the landscape. This enables perspective, while freeing Guthrie's attempt to depict the revelations on the journey through eyes akin to most of his readers, thus questioning our own views.
]]> <![CDATA[The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (Vintage Departures)]]> 152109 254 Timothy Egan 0679734856 John 3
It's certainly depressing. The craven capitulation of the supposed guardians of the National Forests give in to Weyerhaeuser as they strip the trees. A crew flying over Mt. St. Helens after it blew its lid thinks it's surveyed the volcanic devastation, but it ain't seen nothin' yet, only the stripped slopes processed into lumber. Tens of thousands of people move into the Puget Sound megapolis yearly, as they in contradictory fashion flock to an outdoor paradise to inhabit subdivisions, encourage high rise density which levels the hills and fills the wetlands of Seattle, and this is way before Amazon arrived.

Meanwhile, the familiar plight of dispossessed tribes, depleted salmon runs, bitter foes of the spotted owl, towns resigned to cater to neo-hippies/ REI hipsters, windsurfing ex-Californians or Easterners: these are a few of Egan's lists of losers and gainers. His sympathies lie with the latter, for he reasons that this fragile ecosystem can't serve both Japan and North America in their pulp demand. And again, preceding the Chinese market, which a third of a century later looms so large. On a side note, Egan in retrospect seems naive about the real estate boom fueled by both continental and overseas investors who drove up the prices to make much of the Pacific cities so unaffordable to locals like himself....]]> 4.18 1990 The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (Vintage Departures)
author: Timothy Egan
name: John
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
review:
This purports to follow in the footsteps of a Winthrop descendant's three-month journey published in the 1850s, just as American settlers were unsettling the natives and grabbing the lands of the former Oregon Territory which had been wrested from British control. Egan sticks to the current state of his home, Washington, generally following the coast and then up the rivers, dipping into the other side of the Columbia Gorge, and over the border into Victoria. But he skirts Vancouver (which didn't really exist as a Canadian outpost yet), although he ventures into the Rogue riparian watershed and Crater Lake. But it's more a compendium of articles than a coherent book with a flow, start to graceful end.

It's certainly depressing. The craven capitulation of the supposed guardians of the National Forests give in to Weyerhaeuser as they strip the trees. A crew flying over Mt. St. Helens after it blew its lid thinks it's surveyed the volcanic devastation, but it ain't seen nothin' yet, only the stripped slopes processed into lumber. Tens of thousands of people move into the Puget Sound megapolis yearly, as they in contradictory fashion flock to an outdoor paradise to inhabit subdivisions, encourage high rise density which levels the hills and fills the wetlands of Seattle, and this is way before Amazon arrived.

Meanwhile, the familiar plight of dispossessed tribes, depleted salmon runs, bitter foes of the spotted owl, towns resigned to cater to neo-hippies/ REI hipsters, windsurfing ex-Californians or Easterners: these are a few of Egan's lists of losers and gainers. His sympathies lie with the latter, for he reasons that this fragile ecosystem can't serve both Japan and North America in their pulp demand. And again, preceding the Chinese market, which a third of a century later looms so large. On a side note, Egan in retrospect seems naive about the real estate boom fueled by both continental and overseas investors who drove up the prices to make much of the Pacific cities so unaffordable to locals like himself....
]]> <![CDATA[Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression]]> 59651
In this “invaluable record� of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, striking workers, and Okies, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the 1929 stock market crash and its repercussions radically changed the lives of a generation. The voices that speak from the pages of this unique book are as timeless as the lessons they impart ( The New York Times ).

� Hard Times doesn’t ‘render� the time of the depression―it is that time, its lingo, mood, its tragic and hilarious stories.� ―Arthur Miller

“Wonderful! The American memory, the American way, the American voice. It will resurrect your faith in all of us to read this book.� � Newsweek

“Open Studs Terkel’s book to almost any page and rich memories spill out... Read a page, any page. Then try to stop.� � The National Observer]]> 462 Studs Terkel 1565846567 John 0 to-read 4.20 1970 Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
author: Studs Terkel
name: John
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America]]> 4782921
Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.]]> 272 David A. Taylor 0470403802 John 0 to-read 3.95 2009 Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America
author: David A. Taylor
name: John
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero]]> 25897805 384 Timothy Egan 0544272889 John 3
Well, he carries it off as expected. I wasn't wowed as much as some, for my familiarity with Meagher preceded this account. In fact, eminent U. of Montana historian (I recommend his two studies of the Irish, both in Butte and across the American West) Dave Emmons judged Egan's account a popular retelling rather than groundbreaking research. I'd agree, as he pads out his narrative with the times in which the tumultuous events of a quarter century took hold in the imagination of so many, for the subject who became "immortal"--as in his stay of execution by the Crown--knew how to rally the press and the Irish diaspora, and his career may stand as a skillful harbinger of many an "war hero-activist-politician" as we're all too familiar with since. So, if you're new to the topic, this may serve.

I aver that Egan missed a chance to delve into first-hand archival research, and as he's coming to this theme from the other direction, that of the Rockies as it were, he didn't focus on the Irish context so much as the overseas intrigues. Understandable, sure, but the "Irishman" then becomes more of a backdrop for the subsequent and undeniably memorable saga after he departs his troubled native land. It's an accessible telling of a deserving saga, but I'd have preferred scrutiny rather than scenery.]]> 4.25 2016 The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero
author: Timothy Egan
name: John
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves:
review:
I read this in 2016 when it appeared, and since Timothy Egan's already known for chronicling the frontier, past and present, of the American West, it's unsurprising that he'd take on the adventures of Thomas Francis Meagher. Exiled as a Fenian after the 1848 uprising in his native Ireland, evading a death sentence thanks to public outcry, deported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania),, marrying, becoming widowed, escaping and agitating for his homeland whike re-marrying in New York City, commanding the Irish Brigade as a brigadier general during significant battles, then winding up as Territorial Governor of Montana before his drowning in the Missouri River in 1867, certainly it's a tale made for epics. Egan, then, appears ideally cast as ready biographer, a century after the 1916 Rising.

Well, he carries it off as expected. I wasn't wowed as much as some, for my familiarity with Meagher preceded this account. In fact, eminent U. of Montana historian (I recommend his two studies of the Irish, both in Butte and across the American West) Dave Emmons judged Egan's account a popular retelling rather than groundbreaking research. I'd agree, as he pads out his narrative with the times in which the tumultuous events of a quarter century took hold in the imagination of so many, for the subject who became "immortal"--as in his stay of execution by the Crown--knew how to rally the press and the Irish diaspora, and his career may stand as a skillful harbinger of many an "war hero-activist-politician" as we're all too familiar with since. So, if you're new to the topic, this may serve.

I aver that Egan missed a chance to delve into first-hand archival research, and as he's coming to this theme from the other direction, that of the Rockies as it were, he didn't focus on the Irish context so much as the overseas intrigues. Understandable, sure, but the "Irishman" then becomes more of a backdrop for the subsequent and undeniably memorable saga after he departs his troubled native land. It's an accessible telling of a deserving saga, but I'd have preferred scrutiny rather than scenery.
]]> <![CDATA[The Collected Works of Billy the Kid]]> 5947 105 Michael Ondaatje 0747572607 John 0 to-read 3.96 1970 The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: John
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gold: Firsthand Accounts From The Rush That Made The West]]> 18341835 368 John Richard Stephens 0762791500 John 0 to-read 4.00 2014 Gold: Firsthand Accounts From The Rush That Made The West
author: John Richard Stephens
name: John
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)]]> 256008 Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.]]> 960 Larry McMurtry 067168390X John 0 to-read 4.54 1985 Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: John
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism]]> 532890
"[Updike is] one of the best essayists and critics this country has produced in the last century." —The Los Angeles Times

Here Updike considers many books, some in introductions—to such classics as Walden, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Mabinogion —and many more in reviews, usually for The New Yorker. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the five Biblical books of Moses come in for appraisal, along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Wizard of Oz .

Contemporary American and English writers—Colson Whitehead, E. L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, Norman Rush, William Trevor, A. S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwan—receive attentive and appreciative reviews, as do Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami, Günter Grass, and Orhan Pamuk.

In factual waters, Mr. Updike ponders the sinking of the Lusitania and the “unsinkable career� of Coco Chanel, the adventures of Lord Byron and Iris Murdoch, the sexual revolution and the advent of female Biblical scholars, and biographies of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and Søren Kierkegaard.

Reading Due Considerations is like taking a cruise that calls at many ports with a witty, sensitive, and articulate guide aboard—a voyage not to be missed.]]> 703 John Updike 0307266400 John 4
But there's room for personal recollections, ephemeral pieces that were as short as paragraphs or as columns answering particular queries for a variety of reprinted editions (his fiction, and many other writers, artists, and thinkers preceding him). It's a testimony to his breadth of knowledge that he was able to combine his "commissioned" journalism and criticism with his poems, novels, stories, in a very productive career which, rare among his rank, continued in quality up to 2009, over a long life.

I'd gently aver that some of the smaller pieces in this mosaic would not have been much missed if left out, but as a compendium which the reader can skim or stop for a deeper dive depending, it serves a valuable purpose. Compared with, say, the erudite Adam Gopnik, in terms of erudition in the New Yorker today, contrast Updike's prolific output yearly, with the comparatively modest side projects of the latter, rough equivalent, in terms of critical thought applied across many intellectual endeavors...]]> 4.05 2007 Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism
author: John Updike
name: John
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves:
review:
I'm not sure if this weighs as much in print as did my copy of his earlier anthology of his criticism, Hugging the Shore, but it likely rivals it in heft. Even the Kindle version packs in hundreds of pages. There's plenty of New Yorker in both senses of the literary term as to focus. It's full of reminiscences and tributes to its staff, and Updike devoted the expected space to coverage of the city and magazine with whom his name and stories became associated for decades, a leader in postwar American prose.

But there's room for personal recollections, ephemeral pieces that were as short as paragraphs or as columns answering particular queries for a variety of reprinted editions (his fiction, and many other writers, artists, and thinkers preceding him). It's a testimony to his breadth of knowledge that he was able to combine his "commissioned" journalism and criticism with his poems, novels, stories, in a very productive career which, rare among his rank, continued in quality up to 2009, over a long life.

I'd gently aver that some of the smaller pieces in this mosaic would not have been much missed if left out, but as a compendium which the reader can skim or stop for a deeper dive depending, it serves a valuable purpose. Compared with, say, the erudite Adam Gopnik, in terms of erudition in the New Yorker today, contrast Updike's prolific output yearly, with the comparatively modest side projects of the latter, rough equivalent, in terms of critical thought applied across many intellectual endeavors...
]]> <![CDATA[Tiger on the Road: The Life of Vardis Fisher]]> 1570637 Tim Woodward 0870043331 John 3
Tim Woodward interweaves a dramatic opening where he introduces us to the ruins of the dwellings his irascible subject built, as symbolic of the neglect into which, long before this study appeared in 1989, had shrouded Idaho's expert on its promise and folly. For he penned, alone in the WPA guides, the entire (well, almost?) text himself. Actually, the help he got for this, and an ensuing encyclopedia, get glossed over too rapidly. That's the reason I picked up this biography. Similarly, Woodward tends to rush past much of the thick pile of publications left behind by the self-made scholar (PhD, Chicago) turned erstwhile Mountain Man (to a degree, as that book was turned into the film Jeremiah Johnson, earning Fisher his biggest audience if indirectly). But you get heaps of poison-pen, cranky invective.

For as an atheist who knew his childhood bible, an isolationist (usually, as WWII seems to be a special cause), and a fierce scold of pretension (although his classmate and fleeting confidant was Thomas Wolfe, and at Utah, in one of his brief stints at teaching, he mentored Wallace Stegner), Fisher took on all comers, and was adept--he hated Time, The New Yorker, and the usual arbiters and gatekeepers--at writing himself out of steady income. How he assembled a vast library, managed an ongoing ranch full of construction, and funded a decades-long environmental stewardship of the land I haven't any idea. Woodward shows how much he probably earned, but I'm still baffled. Fisher's not very likable, as like his parents, he combined a stubborn, headstrong cussedness with a fierce independent streak.

He drove the first of his three wives to kill herself by drinking Lysol. He fathered kids whom he does not seem to have particularly Boyden's close to--another family dynamic passed along. And his own formative years made him anti-social, turning inward for whatever forces compelled him to create a disparate body of works, too intellectual for the Hemingway crowd, too scattered in consistency for mass appeal, too iconoclast for the academy. Woodward's alert to merits but honest about failings; in this aspect, Hemingway and Fisher--who never met--stand for hubris and as cautionary tale tellers.]]> 3.75 1989 Tiger on the Road: The Life of Vardis Fisher
author: Tim Woodward
name: John
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
It seems that unless you're Hemingway, who like so many "Westerners" (Reagan?) came to ape the fashion and mannerisms of a bygone, he-man, frontier pose, those natives west of the Rockies don't earn respect. Same when Vardis Fisher, born to dour Mormon homesteaders who even by their faith's stereotypes come off as formidably lacking in warmth, grew up over a century ago in dire poverty and overwhelmingly brutal conditions which scarred him mentally even as they drove him maniacally to produce dozens of books, and countless columns and criticisms of the entire East Coast establishment.

Tim Woodward interweaves a dramatic opening where he introduces us to the ruins of the dwellings his irascible subject built, as symbolic of the neglect into which, long before this study appeared in 1989, had shrouded Idaho's expert on its promise and folly. For he penned, alone in the WPA guides, the entire (well, almost?) text himself. Actually, the help he got for this, and an ensuing encyclopedia, get glossed over too rapidly. That's the reason I picked up this biography. Similarly, Woodward tends to rush past much of the thick pile of publications left behind by the self-made scholar (PhD, Chicago) turned erstwhile Mountain Man (to a degree, as that book was turned into the film Jeremiah Johnson, earning Fisher his biggest audience if indirectly). But you get heaps of poison-pen, cranky invective.

For as an atheist who knew his childhood bible, an isolationist (usually, as WWII seems to be a special cause), and a fierce scold of pretension (although his classmate and fleeting confidant was Thomas Wolfe, and at Utah, in one of his brief stints at teaching, he mentored Wallace Stegner), Fisher took on all comers, and was adept--he hated Time, The New Yorker, and the usual arbiters and gatekeepers--at writing himself out of steady income. How he assembled a vast library, managed an ongoing ranch full of construction, and funded a decades-long environmental stewardship of the land I haven't any idea. Woodward shows how much he probably earned, but I'm still baffled. Fisher's not very likable, as like his parents, he combined a stubborn, headstrong cussedness with a fierce independent streak.

He drove the first of his three wives to kill herself by drinking Lysol. He fathered kids whom he does not seem to have particularly Boyden's close to--another family dynamic passed along. And his own formative years made him anti-social, turning inward for whatever forces compelled him to create a disparate body of works, too intellectual for the Hemingway crowd, too scattered in consistency for mass appeal, too iconoclast for the academy. Woodward's alert to merits but honest about failings; in this aspect, Hemingway and Fisher--who never met--stand for hubris and as cautionary tale tellers.
]]> <![CDATA[The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain: A Handbook for Visitors to 1789�1830]]> 58964962 A vivid and immersive history of Georgian England that gives its reader a firsthand experience of life as it was truly lived during the era of Jane Austen, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the Duke of Wellington.

This is the age of Jane Austen and the Romantic poets; the paintings of John Constable and the gardens of Humphry Repton; thesartorial elegance ofBeau Brummell and the poetic licence of Lord Byron; Britain's military triumphs at Trafalgar and Waterloo; thethreat of revolution and the Peterloomassacre. In the latest volume of his celebrated series ofTime Traveler's Guides,IanMortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in Britishhistory: the Regency, or Georgian England.

A time of exuberance, thrills, frills and unchecked bad behavior, it was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival ofthe stifling world ofVictorian morality. At the same time, it was a period of transition that reflected unprecedented social, economic, and political change. And like all periodsin history, it was an age of many contradictions—where Beethoven's thundering FifthSymphony could premier in the same year that saw Jane Austencraft the delicate sensitivities ofPersuasion.

Once more, Ian Mortimer takes us on a thrilling journey to the past, revealing what people ate, drank, and wore; where theyshopped and how theyamused themselves; what they believed in, and what they were afraid of. Conveying the sights, sound,s andsmells of the Regency period, this is historyat its most exciting, physical, visceral—the past not as something to be studied but aslived experience.]]> 427 Ian Mortimer 1643138820 John 4
He combines attentive gazes galore with an awareness, as he notes in his coda here, to the impact that distant eras, in this case an elastic 1789-1830, have in making our own mentalities. While Regency means little more than high tea with Jane Austen even to (semi-)educated classes today, Mortimer aptly opts for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as an appropriate harbinger of our troubled times 200 years on. We too fear the promises of technocrats, politicians, and engineers of progress.

He shows how our attitudes towards animals, slavery, punishment and incarceration, labor safety, urban planning, the post, and diet, for instance, begin to shift in this period. And how brutal were the conditions driving many millions off their lands, enclosed for grazing, which destroyed the commons and the shared resources of villages, and forced those fleeing to fill the cities, in turn exacerbating the demand for even higher levels of agricultural productivity to feed the burgeoning populations to toil toiling in mills, mines, slaughterhouses, penal colonies, and domestic service.

Mortimer takes us from arrival at a southern Channel port as the increase in lamps at night shows the expansion of social life outside daylight, and how this trickles down from the wealthy (who for the first time turn towards rather than away from the sea, as doctors "prescribe" both shore air and salt water as healthy) to the middle ranks, themselves beginning to grow as they in turn get waited on by the swelling pool of cheap workers, as the birthrates soar and the formerly rural masses have to scrabble to make ends meet by hiring themselves out. The circle grows into cities, the emptying hamlets, prisons, workhouses, brothels, theatres, schools, hospitals, fairs, markets, inns, transport, among other bustling venues. While I found the pace sometimes overwhelmingly fact-dense as the amount of research (see his endnotes) astonishes, I felt rewarded by the diaries he shares from by Anne Lister (an "out" lesbian), the poet and wit Robert Southey, and one German, Prince Hermann.

A plus for those who persevere (in the Kindle version for me) is the colorful lithographs. They leap off the screen, and with well-chosen captions and selections, show how the people back then "saw" their own panoramas. They combine the older Cruikshank late 18c verve with sharp hues that we may associate with circuses or posters from the grand Queen's reign, not yet commenced until 1837.

A sign of a good read is the other books it reminds you of. For instance, I do need to finally, gulp, get into Gibbon. And Walter Scott. I look forward soon to a Victorian companion as Mortimer in chronology marches forward. My favorite time travel destination, the Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace in 1851, may loom large there. Meanwhile, there's plenty of byways to follow earlier!]]> 4.41 2022 The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain: A Handbook for Visitors to 1789–1830
author: Ian Mortimer
name: John
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
This felt more than immersive, given the detail. I've enjoyed all of Ian Mortimer's series. As well as his clever novel The Outcasts of Time, his survey Millennium, and his look at his medieval ancestor.

He combines attentive gazes galore with an awareness, as he notes in his coda here, to the impact that distant eras, in this case an elastic 1789-1830, have in making our own mentalities. While Regency means little more than high tea with Jane Austen even to (semi-)educated classes today, Mortimer aptly opts for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as an appropriate harbinger of our troubled times 200 years on. We too fear the promises of technocrats, politicians, and engineers of progress.

He shows how our attitudes towards animals, slavery, punishment and incarceration, labor safety, urban planning, the post, and diet, for instance, begin to shift in this period. And how brutal were the conditions driving many millions off their lands, enclosed for grazing, which destroyed the commons and the shared resources of villages, and forced those fleeing to fill the cities, in turn exacerbating the demand for even higher levels of agricultural productivity to feed the burgeoning populations to toil toiling in mills, mines, slaughterhouses, penal colonies, and domestic service.

Mortimer takes us from arrival at a southern Channel port as the increase in lamps at night shows the expansion of social life outside daylight, and how this trickles down from the wealthy (who for the first time turn towards rather than away from the sea, as doctors "prescribe" both shore air and salt water as healthy) to the middle ranks, themselves beginning to grow as they in turn get waited on by the swelling pool of cheap workers, as the birthrates soar and the formerly rural masses have to scrabble to make ends meet by hiring themselves out. The circle grows into cities, the emptying hamlets, prisons, workhouses, brothels, theatres, schools, hospitals, fairs, markets, inns, transport, among other bustling venues. While I found the pace sometimes overwhelmingly fact-dense as the amount of research (see his endnotes) astonishes, I felt rewarded by the diaries he shares from by Anne Lister (an "out" lesbian), the poet and wit Robert Southey, and one German, Prince Hermann.

A plus for those who persevere (in the Kindle version for me) is the colorful lithographs. They leap off the screen, and with well-chosen captions and selections, show how the people back then "saw" their own panoramas. They combine the older Cruikshank late 18c verve with sharp hues that we may associate with circuses or posters from the grand Queen's reign, not yet commenced until 1837.

A sign of a good read is the other books it reminds you of. For instance, I do need to finally, gulp, get into Gibbon. And Walter Scott. I look forward soon to a Victorian companion as Mortimer in chronology marches forward. My favorite time travel destination, the Great Exhibition at London's Crystal Palace in 1851, may loom large there. Meanwhile, there's plenty of byways to follow earlier!
]]> Timothy Leary: A Biography 123699
Timothy Leary is the first major biography of one of the most controversial figures in postwar America.]]> 689 Robert Greenfield 0151005001 John 3
I admit having been completely neutral coming to this biography. To me, Leary's another once-famous/infamous guru better known to the generation previous to mine. I was still a child during the hey-day of Leary in the late 60s, so I have neither freak flag to fly nor ax to grind.

Often, as with the trials and the endless rigamarole that Leary and the Feds and the informers and ex-paramours and radicals and media all conspired to drag Leary's saga into the 70s and beyond, the book drags considerably. Greenfield's considerable primary and secondary research has been picked apart predictably, and perhaps this is inevitable; however, I admit that his credentials as a chronicler of this era (such as an oral bio of Jerry Garcia and "Bear" aka Owsley Stanley: both by me recently reviewed on GR) do place him arguably as well as any "mainstream" writer could be expected to approach this complicated man. As divisive as was Leary's effect on his times and his audience, the bitter debate over Greenfield's estimation of his shape-shifting subject seems inescapable.

I found this book more poignant than it may seem from the harsh reactions recorded here by some fellow readers. Particularly well handled, for example, are the fate of poor Susan, his troubled wife Marianne, his other manipulated and/or opportunistic lovers, Jack's difficult childhood, and Art Linkletter's unwanted role as bete noire to Leary, if in a less lucrative set-up than that enjoyed by Leary with Liddy.

The confusion of the Algerian years, the manipulation in Switzerland, the comedy of errors in getting busted on the Mexican border/ no man's land: all show well the predicament of Leary's rebellion. Not by accident was he jailed next to Manson by a calculating administration. Such antagonistic positions --literally and symbolically--stranded him within his time and space. The italicized vignettes that delve into what he may have been thinking are deployed sparingly, only three times--as a boy in confession, as a plebe at West Point, and most movingly, as it imagines Leary awaiting death--for once without his devoted acolytes and eagerly attentive coterie around him--in his Hollywood Hills home.

These (terse yet eloquent) departures from fact had been critiqued by the NY Times along with the negative emphasis on Leary's failings in raising his children, keeping his marriages/ partnerships intact, and his tendency to cut and run rather than stay and face the consequences of his actions. Jack Leary responded with hurt in a letter on behalf of "the Millbrook Foundation" to the NY Times Book Review. But, the vignettes do seem to have been re-created from what Leary wrote and/or those who could corroborate his frame of mind at such formative stages. Jack complained that Greenfield in his determination to assassinate Leary's character accentuated the negative and left out the positive. In fact, his son's letter made me want to read the book so I could judge for myself.

The grand hopes that Leary sought to usher into reality by the psychedelic revolution and the grim fate of those unable to keep up with the bewildering pace set by this relentlessly elusive Pied Piper both receive their share of Greenfield's attention. Leary does emerge as one unable or unwilling to take the blame for those who became acid casualties. He is cited as saying this guilt would be like charging Einstein with the damage done by the atom bomb, a provocative response worth debating.

Greenfield does strive to credit Leary with his leadership, but through so many quotes from Leary's admittedly "creative" musings published by a generous press in the 60s and 70s, he does manage subtly to undermine the pedestal upon which millions placed their celebrated Dr. Leary. One telling example is the flyer with which Leary publicized Jack's gone missing after the Laguna drug bust. It captures the simple love of an often absent father, the guilt of a very intelligent man who should have been a better parent, and the desperate desire to break free for himself and his son from the conventional mores and legal restrictions that hounded Leary and his family remorselessly.

On the other hand, Leary's ravenous intake of massive doses of chemicals even as his health wore down does make you wonder how he could keep up his mental and physical stamina so long given what he put his mind and his body through for four decades. Leary's ingestive powers astonished me. Maybe part of the difficulty in following his idealistic (and it seems quite expensive) path was that few could sustain such a consumption of substances for long without their mind and/or body giving in. Leary seemed both to succumb and to resist, the drug explorer combined with the psychological researcher perhaps inextricably, from the mid-1950s to the mid-90s. In the process, he carried exhilarated millions along with him while thousands less enchanted vowed to hunt him down. Yes, social and political contexts are left less fully explicated about the radical vs. the cultural left, but this book is long enough as it is without having to develop into a miniature history of the complex upheavals of the Sixties.

One minor but persistently damaging flaw: the shortage of photos. Often, Greenfield describes with great detail snapshots that he has seen to make clearer his understanding of Leary's personae and his relationships and how he characterized himself before the public eye as well as in more intimate moments. All such remarks are conveyed well, but why so few photos? Perhaps the estate of Leary had fought with Greenfield? This book could have greatly benefited from such pictorial examples, as perhaps 50 such photos should have received their proper place in the chapter headings. Only a handful of photographs are in fact found there, and no photo spreads are placed within the pages, unlike most biographies from popular presses of modern figures caught in the eye of the camera. In an era so dependent on the poster, the gesture, the album cover, the AP photo on the newspaper's front page, the film clip on the evening news: why then such a paucity of illustration?

Within our contemporary limits of biography in a litigious decade and a jealously guarded legacy, Greenfield has sought to portray as accurately as he could, with years of interviews and research, his take on a complicated, fragile, delusive, and imaginative pioneer "psychonaut." Whether Leary proves a success or failure may depend ultimately on a generation who decides his legacy after those with whom Leary prickled, posed, postured, and preached have also departed this world. It will take decades before the cosmic dust that he kicked up has settled. In the meantime, Greenfield, whether or not you agree with his perspective, has taken a brave first step by taking a figure seen to have been on the fringe and taking him onto center stage. You need not to have been converted to benefit from this revival of one man's messianic mission.]]> 3.83 2006 Timothy Leary: A Biography
author: Robert Greenfield
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
Don't blame the messenger. Kindly read my review, and not just the stars (I'd mark about 3.4 if I could; I rounded off) before you rate its helpfulness. It'd be a thoughtful gesture for all those who have entered the fray and who (I trust) have actually read the book carefully. This does not mean you agree or disagree with my own ranking, simply that a review assisted you in better judging the work under scrutiny. Such care, as Leary would have I expect emphasized, needs to be given to ideas and people that we may at first react to cautiously or with fear. This care also goes for those of us reviewing who have taken the considerable time and effort to read Greenfield's weighty biography. Greenfield himself, in taking up such a figure lionized or lambasted, shows also considerable courage, and chutzpah.

I admit having been completely neutral coming to this biography. To me, Leary's another once-famous/infamous guru better known to the generation previous to mine. I was still a child during the hey-day of Leary in the late 60s, so I have neither freak flag to fly nor ax to grind.

Often, as with the trials and the endless rigamarole that Leary and the Feds and the informers and ex-paramours and radicals and media all conspired to drag Leary's saga into the 70s and beyond, the book drags considerably. Greenfield's considerable primary and secondary research has been picked apart predictably, and perhaps this is inevitable; however, I admit that his credentials as a chronicler of this era (such as an oral bio of Jerry Garcia and "Bear" aka Owsley Stanley: both by me recently reviewed on GR) do place him arguably as well as any "mainstream" writer could be expected to approach this complicated man. As divisive as was Leary's effect on his times and his audience, the bitter debate over Greenfield's estimation of his shape-shifting subject seems inescapable.

I found this book more poignant than it may seem from the harsh reactions recorded here by some fellow readers. Particularly well handled, for example, are the fate of poor Susan, his troubled wife Marianne, his other manipulated and/or opportunistic lovers, Jack's difficult childhood, and Art Linkletter's unwanted role as bete noire to Leary, if in a less lucrative set-up than that enjoyed by Leary with Liddy.

The confusion of the Algerian years, the manipulation in Switzerland, the comedy of errors in getting busted on the Mexican border/ no man's land: all show well the predicament of Leary's rebellion. Not by accident was he jailed next to Manson by a calculating administration. Such antagonistic positions --literally and symbolically--stranded him within his time and space. The italicized vignettes that delve into what he may have been thinking are deployed sparingly, only three times--as a boy in confession, as a plebe at West Point, and most movingly, as it imagines Leary awaiting death--for once without his devoted acolytes and eagerly attentive coterie around him--in his Hollywood Hills home.

These (terse yet eloquent) departures from fact had been critiqued by the NY Times along with the negative emphasis on Leary's failings in raising his children, keeping his marriages/ partnerships intact, and his tendency to cut and run rather than stay and face the consequences of his actions. Jack Leary responded with hurt in a letter on behalf of "the Millbrook Foundation" to the NY Times Book Review. But, the vignettes do seem to have been re-created from what Leary wrote and/or those who could corroborate his frame of mind at such formative stages. Jack complained that Greenfield in his determination to assassinate Leary's character accentuated the negative and left out the positive. In fact, his son's letter made me want to read the book so I could judge for myself.

The grand hopes that Leary sought to usher into reality by the psychedelic revolution and the grim fate of those unable to keep up with the bewildering pace set by this relentlessly elusive Pied Piper both receive their share of Greenfield's attention. Leary does emerge as one unable or unwilling to take the blame for those who became acid casualties. He is cited as saying this guilt would be like charging Einstein with the damage done by the atom bomb, a provocative response worth debating.

Greenfield does strive to credit Leary with his leadership, but through so many quotes from Leary's admittedly "creative" musings published by a generous press in the 60s and 70s, he does manage subtly to undermine the pedestal upon which millions placed their celebrated Dr. Leary. One telling example is the flyer with which Leary publicized Jack's gone missing after the Laguna drug bust. It captures the simple love of an often absent father, the guilt of a very intelligent man who should have been a better parent, and the desperate desire to break free for himself and his son from the conventional mores and legal restrictions that hounded Leary and his family remorselessly.

On the other hand, Leary's ravenous intake of massive doses of chemicals even as his health wore down does make you wonder how he could keep up his mental and physical stamina so long given what he put his mind and his body through for four decades. Leary's ingestive powers astonished me. Maybe part of the difficulty in following his idealistic (and it seems quite expensive) path was that few could sustain such a consumption of substances for long without their mind and/or body giving in. Leary seemed both to succumb and to resist, the drug explorer combined with the psychological researcher perhaps inextricably, from the mid-1950s to the mid-90s. In the process, he carried exhilarated millions along with him while thousands less enchanted vowed to hunt him down. Yes, social and political contexts are left less fully explicated about the radical vs. the cultural left, but this book is long enough as it is without having to develop into a miniature history of the complex upheavals of the Sixties.

One minor but persistently damaging flaw: the shortage of photos. Often, Greenfield describes with great detail snapshots that he has seen to make clearer his understanding of Leary's personae and his relationships and how he characterized himself before the public eye as well as in more intimate moments. All such remarks are conveyed well, but why so few photos? Perhaps the estate of Leary had fought with Greenfield? This book could have greatly benefited from such pictorial examples, as perhaps 50 such photos should have received their proper place in the chapter headings. Only a handful of photographs are in fact found there, and no photo spreads are placed within the pages, unlike most biographies from popular presses of modern figures caught in the eye of the camera. In an era so dependent on the poster, the gesture, the album cover, the AP photo on the newspaper's front page, the film clip on the evening news: why then such a paucity of illustration?

Within our contemporary limits of biography in a litigious decade and a jealously guarded legacy, Greenfield has sought to portray as accurately as he could, with years of interviews and research, his take on a complicated, fragile, delusive, and imaginative pioneer "psychonaut." Whether Leary proves a success or failure may depend ultimately on a generation who decides his legacy after those with whom Leary prickled, posed, postured, and preached have also departed this world. It will take decades before the cosmic dust that he kicked up has settled. In the meantime, Greenfield, whether or not you agree with his perspective, has taken a brave first step by taking a figure seen to have been on the fringe and taking him onto center stage. You need not to have been converted to benefit from this revival of one man's messianic mission.
]]> <![CDATA[Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties]]> 74007 240 Robert Stone 0060198168 John 3
The title comes from the "green flash" which Stone, stoned, glimpsed from a Mexican beach. Much of the insight here resembles the recollectons one might expect from a friend of Ken Kesey, an acquaintance of Tim Leary, and one who hung out with the scions of the counterculture in New York City, New Orleans, California north and south, London, Mexico, and Vietnam. That is, pages at a time become illuminated with wisdom-- before sinking again into a miasma of mundane names, places, and events filtered muddily or waveringly through uninspired, if competent, prose. I have only read two novels by Stone, "A Flag for Sunrise," and the disappointing "Damascus Gate." Like the latter book, "Prime Green" stumbles when it could have soared on a promising premise.

The opening chapter rambles on about his stint in the Navy; polar-driven wind and the feel of being at the bridge gain evocative detail, but then the narrative wanders off into recollections of an Australian swimmer he fancied, a bit of action he glimpsed during the Suez crisis, and exchanging Playboys with a Soviet crew. All three anecdotes fizzle. They almost follow randomly, such is the nature of this compilation of memories. Perhaps this casual style conceals careful craft. But, from a writer of Stone's level, that is, of critical acclaim more than another hack bestselling scribe, the offhanded attitude towards such potentially valuable incidents became disappointing. They are treated so offhandedly you wonder why he troubled to bring them up. Much of this book follows suit. It reminds me of a few all-nighters, if you could tape them, with a great storyteller; the difference is, you tend to edit mentally what you were bored or confused by, and highlight the stories which enraptured you, to replay again in your memory. I'd return to this book in the same manner.

For instance, the Bowery and its sudden replacement of white old bums with tough young blacks released from prison circa 1960 sets up a treatise on this sociological phenomenon. But, suddenly, Stone in the next paragraph sidles off into how he wrote copy for a furniture firm. Admittedly, he excels at his harrowing yet hilarious description of writing for the right-wing populist NY Daily News, which like certain media today manages to arouse the contempt of the working class for the system that supposedly favors those less qualified, yet deflects any blame from capitalism or the rich themselves for this inequality and this cynical game of having the victims turn on one another.

His send-up of another bottom-feeding journalistic stint at what he calls the National Thunder, a sort of Weekly World News, is priceless. Anyone who could survive a paper that created headlines like "Armless Veteran Beaten for Not Saluting Flag" or a close runner-up, "Skydiver Devoured By Starving Birds," merits some acclaim for such anecdotes. His accounts of being under the knife for a burst vessel in his brain, of interviewing bitter draftees in Vietnam, of watching the moon on the night of the first landing in 1969 from the California hills, all ring true; his narrative leaps to fitful if brief elegance in these sections. On drugs, Stone glimpses time's wheel and struggles to convey his psychedelic revelation. I wonder if any bard from this time can do so?

The remainder of the book, once Stone leaves in search of the elusive authenticity that takes him, seemingly with little money and the kindness of many strangers become friends, to Stanford on a fellowship, to London, to Vietnam, and to Mexico in a tumultuous but-- for a while-- rather childlike time despite his wife and two children (who are barely mentioned) to support does create in this reader a sense of how much could be seen and heard and experienced by carefree Americans with not much cash, plenty of drugs, and a sense of adventure that in our day has narrowed and priced out all but the affluent or the heavily guarded! Comparing his coming of age with the later century, the combination of a strong dollar, cheap costs of living, and goodwill manage, nearly, to create a glimpse of utopia. On the other hand, his escape from menacing sailors on a Greyhound bus ride from hell that winds up with him barely getting away from the ironically if improbably named hamlet of Highspire, Pennsylvania, marks a gothic tale where Poe meets Genet.

If you want a sense of the Sixties, disjointed and disconnected, with wisdom scattered along with a lot of languour, this does re-create a tone appropriate to these times. No history, or even tightly written account, nonetheless for all its faults, I learned from it. The conclusions are the expected sadness at the decade's waste of its promise, and the government infiltration and corporate co-opting of its ideals and its innocence. Not as many knockout punches as I expected, for the book needed editing and substantial tightening. It keeps reeling about, when it should have cut the flab and trimmed up under a drill sergeant of an editor, such as he used to work for in Manhattan in the early 60s.

The book bumps into the famous, nods, chats, and shuffles off again, In its slackness, casual air of street cred meets the dinner party, and Hollywood mingling with the Bowery, perhaps Stone, who managed to be in all of the proper places, dreadful or erotic, exotic or hilarious, remains the jester-cynic who sneers at the powers that be but knows if he had his chance on the throne (he gets a quick perch during his Hollywood visit), he'd settle down there comfortably enough. Stone, in a sloppy but occasionally memorable account, emerges rather blowsily, yet endearingly avuncular. He's slightly askew, a fitting if exasperatingly rambling witness and slyly calculating chronicler for a messy decade.]]> 3.50 2007 Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
author: Robert Stone
name: John
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
For once, refreshingly, reviews all over the place from one to five stars for this memoir. I added my thoughts when I originally posted this to Amazon when the book appeared back in 2007. Yes, another reviewer already cited the cliche "if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there." I was, but pretty young, being born nearer their start. So, my memories lag behind Stone's...

The title comes from the "green flash" which Stone, stoned, glimpsed from a Mexican beach. Much of the insight here resembles the recollectons one might expect from a friend of Ken Kesey, an acquaintance of Tim Leary, and one who hung out with the scions of the counterculture in New York City, New Orleans, California north and south, London, Mexico, and Vietnam. That is, pages at a time become illuminated with wisdom-- before sinking again into a miasma of mundane names, places, and events filtered muddily or waveringly through uninspired, if competent, prose. I have only read two novels by Stone, "A Flag for Sunrise," and the disappointing "Damascus Gate." Like the latter book, "Prime Green" stumbles when it could have soared on a promising premise.

The opening chapter rambles on about his stint in the Navy; polar-driven wind and the feel of being at the bridge gain evocative detail, but then the narrative wanders off into recollections of an Australian swimmer he fancied, a bit of action he glimpsed during the Suez crisis, and exchanging Playboys with a Soviet crew. All three anecdotes fizzle. They almost follow randomly, such is the nature of this compilation of memories. Perhaps this casual style conceals careful craft. But, from a writer of Stone's level, that is, of critical acclaim more than another hack bestselling scribe, the offhanded attitude towards such potentially valuable incidents became disappointing. They are treated so offhandedly you wonder why he troubled to bring them up. Much of this book follows suit. It reminds me of a few all-nighters, if you could tape them, with a great storyteller; the difference is, you tend to edit mentally what you were bored or confused by, and highlight the stories which enraptured you, to replay again in your memory. I'd return to this book in the same manner.

For instance, the Bowery and its sudden replacement of white old bums with tough young blacks released from prison circa 1960 sets up a treatise on this sociological phenomenon. But, suddenly, Stone in the next paragraph sidles off into how he wrote copy for a furniture firm. Admittedly, he excels at his harrowing yet hilarious description of writing for the right-wing populist NY Daily News, which like certain media today manages to arouse the contempt of the working class for the system that supposedly favors those less qualified, yet deflects any blame from capitalism or the rich themselves for this inequality and this cynical game of having the victims turn on one another.

His send-up of another bottom-feeding journalistic stint at what he calls the National Thunder, a sort of Weekly World News, is priceless. Anyone who could survive a paper that created headlines like "Armless Veteran Beaten for Not Saluting Flag" or a close runner-up, "Skydiver Devoured By Starving Birds," merits some acclaim for such anecdotes. His accounts of being under the knife for a burst vessel in his brain, of interviewing bitter draftees in Vietnam, of watching the moon on the night of the first landing in 1969 from the California hills, all ring true; his narrative leaps to fitful if brief elegance in these sections. On drugs, Stone glimpses time's wheel and struggles to convey his psychedelic revelation. I wonder if any bard from this time can do so?

The remainder of the book, once Stone leaves in search of the elusive authenticity that takes him, seemingly with little money and the kindness of many strangers become friends, to Stanford on a fellowship, to London, to Vietnam, and to Mexico in a tumultuous but-- for a while-- rather childlike time despite his wife and two children (who are barely mentioned) to support does create in this reader a sense of how much could be seen and heard and experienced by carefree Americans with not much cash, plenty of drugs, and a sense of adventure that in our day has narrowed and priced out all but the affluent or the heavily guarded! Comparing his coming of age with the later century, the combination of a strong dollar, cheap costs of living, and goodwill manage, nearly, to create a glimpse of utopia. On the other hand, his escape from menacing sailors on a Greyhound bus ride from hell that winds up with him barely getting away from the ironically if improbably named hamlet of Highspire, Pennsylvania, marks a gothic tale where Poe meets Genet.

If you want a sense of the Sixties, disjointed and disconnected, with wisdom scattered along with a lot of languour, this does re-create a tone appropriate to these times. No history, or even tightly written account, nonetheless for all its faults, I learned from it. The conclusions are the expected sadness at the decade's waste of its promise, and the government infiltration and corporate co-opting of its ideals and its innocence. Not as many knockout punches as I expected, for the book needed editing and substantial tightening. It keeps reeling about, when it should have cut the flab and trimmed up under a drill sergeant of an editor, such as he used to work for in Manhattan in the early 60s.

The book bumps into the famous, nods, chats, and shuffles off again, In its slackness, casual air of street cred meets the dinner party, and Hollywood mingling with the Bowery, perhaps Stone, who managed to be in all of the proper places, dreadful or erotic, exotic or hilarious, remains the jester-cynic who sneers at the powers that be but knows if he had his chance on the throne (he gets a quick perch during his Hollywood visit), he'd settle down there comfortably enough. Stone, in a sloppy but occasionally memorable account, emerges rather blowsily, yet endearingly avuncular. He's slightly askew, a fitting if exasperatingly rambling witness and slyly calculating chronicler for a messy decade.
]]> The Dharma Bums 412732 On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.]]> 244 Jack Kerouac John 2
In hindsight, I realize the smug womanizing of Japhy Ryder (aka Gary Snyder) and addled pals in postwar Beat-brat Berkeley and low-rent digs across my native state prefigured the hordes of hippies and New Age acolytes whose entitled airs infused our own youth in the wake of the older offspring. who lorded themselves over us upstarts born too late to ride Wavy Gravy’s train, of the supposedly Greatest Generation. The males dominate this loose narrative and despite Kerouac’s insistence on their virtues, they come off as know-it-all, gauche, boorish drones.

I never fell for the myth; I didn’t read On the Road or Snyder’s poetry until into my Fifties (not theirs). I recognize their literary ambitions and cultural impact, sure. But like most of Jack’s whack in print, if not for his P.R., and that supposedly manic butcher paper scroll that made his name a byword for seeking enlightenment amidst amusement and inebriation, g the D Bum bunch would have fallen into obscurity long ago. It’s arguably a notch above lots of his later work, but survives for me as a curio, not a treasure.]]> 3.94 1958 The Dharma Bums
author: Jack Kerouac
name: John
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1958
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves:
review:
My late wife, after I’d stopped the audio version, confessed with spousal patience honed over decades, how much she hated this. I’d chosen it to accompany our driving trip to meet our son and his wife in the Sierras. Thinking it’d match the scenery.

In hindsight, I realize the smug womanizing of Japhy Ryder (aka Gary Snyder) and addled pals in postwar Beat-brat Berkeley and low-rent digs across my native state prefigured the hordes of hippies and New Age acolytes whose entitled airs infused our own youth in the wake of the older offspring. who lorded themselves over us upstarts born too late to ride Wavy Gravy’s train, of the supposedly Greatest Generation. The males dominate this loose narrative and despite Kerouac’s insistence on their virtues, they come off as know-it-all, gauche, boorish drones.

I never fell for the myth; I didn’t read On the Road or Snyder’s poetry until into my Fifties (not theirs). I recognize their literary ambitions and cultural impact, sure. But like most of Jack’s whack in print, if not for his P.R., and that supposedly manic butcher paper scroll that made his name a byword for seeking enlightenment amidst amusement and inebriation, g the D Bum bunch would have fallen into obscurity long ago. It’s arguably a notch above lots of his later work, but survives for me as a curio, not a treasure.
]]> I and Thou 551866 An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here.

Martin Buber's I and Thou has long been acclaimed as a classic. Many prominent writers have acknowledged its influence on their work; students of intellectual history consider it a landmark; and the generation born after World War II considers Buber one of its prophets. Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways: (1) that of the "I" toward an "It," toward an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience; (2) that of the "I" toward "Thou," in which we move into existence in a relationship without bounds. One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships. All of our relationships, Buber contends, bring us ultimately into relationship with God, who is the Eternal Thou.

The need for a new English translation had been felt for many years. The old version was marred by many inaccuracies and misunderstandings, and its recurrent use of the archaic "thou" was seriously misleading. Professor Walter Kaufmann, a distinguished writer and philosopher in his own right who was close to Buber, retranslated the work at the request of Buber's family. He added a wealth of informative footnotes to clarify obscurities and bring the reader closer to the original and wrote an extensive prologue that opened up new perspectives on the book and on Buber's thought. This volume provided a new basis for all subsequent discussions of Buber.]]> 185 Martin Buber 0684717255 John 4
So I’d rate the core volume separately at three stars. It brings in section one the intimate, two the alien, three the karmic, and those associating Judaism with Buber will find their preconceptions upended. Lots of Buddhist and Hindu musings speckle this, along with asides to Jesus, although the depth of such analyses I leave to scholars to measure or discern. I admit that I felt the same reaction when plunged into these dim, dark, deep waters as when struggling to keep afloat in his colleague Franz Rosenzweig’s heady Star of Redemption (see my review and of Mendes-Flohr).

I highlighted Kaufman often in his preface, as for we dependent on English, there’s simply an inherent lack of bridging the language gap, the wordplay, the sly nuances of a thinker who in his native tongue was known widely to lose his audience and derail a train of thought. I’m glad this is behind me. As with his prematurely departed companion Rosenzweig, his contribution to 20c intellectual endeavor cannot be overlooked or his project gainsaid. Yet their influence seems today, amidst a disinclined readership eager for streamlined communication at least outside of academia and certain fashionable enclaves aping activism, to have consigned the pair as marginal.

Whether this relegation is deserving I cannot judge. I reserve both these German Jewish explorers of the realm where soul and sense and mind and yearning all mingle in levels I barely can comprehend. But they strived to break down barriers between the smart general public and the professoriate. And that’s a mission for which a few of us may take heart today.

]]> 4.08 1923 I and Thou
author: Martin Buber
name: John
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1923
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves:
review:
Walter Kaufman’s incisive, blunt, antinomian, honest introduction earns five stars, as he hammers away at the trendy postwar posturing which made this a once a byword alongside Hesse, Kafka, and whatever beat or hippie paperback was sported at least two full generations ago. But Kaufman has no patience for the ur-text he renders into a more rigorous version than that which Buber approved decades earlier. I’ve never encountered a translator calling out the author of the original prose (or as his biographer the late Paul Mendes-Flohr suggests, philosophical poems) in such forthright terms. Buber admits he hadn’t the clearest notion of what he’d been getting at anyhow.

So I’d rate the core volume separately at three stars. It brings in section one the intimate, two the alien, three the karmic, and those associating Judaism with Buber will find their preconceptions upended. Lots of Buddhist and Hindu musings speckle this, along with asides to Jesus, although the depth of such analyses I leave to scholars to measure or discern. I admit that I felt the same reaction when plunged into these dim, dark, deep waters as when struggling to keep afloat in his colleague Franz Rosenzweig’s heady Star of Redemption (see my review and of Mendes-Flohr).

I highlighted Kaufman often in his preface, as for we dependent on English, there’s simply an inherent lack of bridging the language gap, the wordplay, the sly nuances of a thinker who in his native tongue was known widely to lose his audience and derail a train of thought. I’m glad this is behind me. As with his prematurely departed companion Rosenzweig, his contribution to 20c intellectual endeavor cannot be overlooked or his project gainsaid. Yet their influence seems today, amidst a disinclined readership eager for streamlined communication at least outside of academia and certain fashionable enclaves aping activism, to have consigned the pair as marginal.

Whether this relegation is deserving I cannot judge. I reserve both these German Jewish explorers of the realm where soul and sense and mind and yearning all mingle in levels I barely can comprehend. But they strived to break down barriers between the smart general public and the professoriate. And that’s a mission for which a few of us may take heart today.


]]> Talking on Paper 1884945 324 Shannon Applegate 0870713787 John 4
The editors merit commendation for their months of dogged effort. Their project reminded men of that in my family's lore, when the Irish government sent out scholars to cull legends, oral testimonies and "just-so" stories from schoolchildren and elders alike in hamlets across the countryside in 1930s.

Or the WPA endeavors during the Depression. Applegate and O'Donnell unearth the stolid and the scurillious, rhe expected recitals of contact with the natives, the settlers and soldiers, farmers and merchants. Closer attention shows nuance. The Chinese hired hands, who call their employers and enemy "barbarians." A teacher who laments her having to poison rabbits infesting her ranch. A nun suffering spiritual dryness, a Mexican girl facing terminal cancer, a C.O. in a WWII-era fire-trail camp. Greek and Basque immigrants, a Portland "bluestocking" yearning for meaning gleaned from George Eliot's journals. trappers weary of chow, teens eager for play, brides surprised by rural tedium.

A small lapse: while each entry gets a biographical blurb and context, there's no annotations. So when an old codger complains about a '68 influx of hippies into his remote outpost, he also notes the return of "face flies." Is this slang for tourists? Or a sudden plague of insects, which never buzzed before there? Some terminology also escapes the grasp of at least this citified critic, yours truly, admittedly...]]> 3.50 1994 Talking on Paper
author: Shannon Applegate
name: John
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves:
review:
Terence O'Donnell (whose fine short history of Oregon, That Balance So Rare, I recommend) also a.generation ago, with pioneer descendent Shannon Applegate, combined to scour archives, seek out local "characters," and in her case, travel about with a hundred-foot extension cord and a "portable" photocopy machine to gather the diaries, letters, and recollections (one "eccentric" recorded his odd routines of Ovaltine and perusing Tolstoy, on paper one-and-a-half by three-odd inches) of those on both the "Westside" of the more populated, fertile, and familiar Cascades and its dry, vast "Eastside."

The editors merit commendation for their months of dogged effort. Their project reminded men of that in my family's lore, when the Irish government sent out scholars to cull legends, oral testimonies and "just-so" stories from schoolchildren and elders alike in hamlets across the countryside in 1930s.

Or the WPA endeavors during the Depression. Applegate and O'Donnell unearth the stolid and the scurillious, rhe expected recitals of contact with the natives, the settlers and soldiers, farmers and merchants. Closer attention shows nuance. The Chinese hired hands, who call their employers and enemy "barbarians." A teacher who laments her having to poison rabbits infesting her ranch. A nun suffering spiritual dryness, a Mexican girl facing terminal cancer, a C.O. in a WWII-era fire-trail camp. Greek and Basque immigrants, a Portland "bluestocking" yearning for meaning gleaned from George Eliot's journals. trappers weary of chow, teens eager for play, brides surprised by rural tedium.

A small lapse: while each entry gets a biographical blurb and context, there's no annotations. So when an old codger complains about a '68 influx of hippies into his remote outpost, he also notes the return of "face flies." Is this slang for tourists? Or a sudden plague of insects, which never buzzed before there? Some terminology also escapes the grasp of at least this citified critic, yours truly, admittedly...
]]> Eifelheim 416327 Father Dietrich is the village priest of Oberhochwald, the village that will soon gain the name of Teufelheim, in later years corrupted to Eifelheim, in the year 1348, when the Black Death is gathering strength across Europe but is still not nearby. Dietrich is an educated man, knows science and philosophy, and to his astonishment becomes the first contact between humanity and an alien race from a distant star when their interstellar ship crashes in the nearby forest. It is a time of wonders, in the shadow of the plague.
Tom and Sharon, and Father Dietrich, have a strange and intertwined destiny of tragedy and triumph in this brilliant SF novel by the winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award.
]]> 320 Michael Flynn 0765300966 John 3
That is, until its final pages. The gambit to sidle away from a full-on grand slam conclusion rankles me, whether in film, streamed series, or story. Flynn backed off, evidently leaving wiggle room for the (nearly inevitable, it seems, in this genre as many popular ones across publishing now) sequel(s).

Instead, if he'd kept the momentum and wrapped up the adventure memorably, this might have won the Hugo, rather than a nomination. His death in 2023 (just learned of it when checking to see if he had in fact continued this saga) put paid to the expectations I'd had for a "second season." But until those last moments, this tale fills the unfortunate void in this under-examined sub-creator territory.]]> 3.76 2006 Eifelheim
author: Michael Flynn
name: John
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves:
review:
Very engaging, as my search for both theologically themed and intelligently executed speculative fiction doesn't sketch a very capacious intersection on Kamala Harris' most beloved of shapes, the Venn diagram. This novel delivered the goods in a deft, challenging narrative, inviting reflection.

That is, until its final pages. The gambit to sidle away from a full-on grand slam conclusion rankles me, whether in film, streamed series, or story. Flynn backed off, evidently leaving wiggle room for the (nearly inevitable, it seems, in this genre as many popular ones across publishing now) sequel(s).

Instead, if he'd kept the momentum and wrapped up the adventure memorably, this might have won the Hugo, rather than a nomination. His death in 2023 (just learned of it when checking to see if he had in fact continued this saga) put paid to the expectations I'd had for a "second season." But until those last moments, this tale fills the unfortunate void in this under-examined sub-creator territory.
]]> <![CDATA[Insight Guides Oregon: Travel Guide eBook (Insight Guides Main Series)]]> 203698135
The Insight Guide Oregon Portland and around, Oregon Coast, Mt. Hood and Columbia River Gorge, Eastern Oregon, Central Oregon, Southern Oregon, Willamette Valley.

In this guide book to Oregon you will

IN-DEPTH CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL FEATURES
Created to provide a deeper dive into the culture and the history of Oregon to get a greater understanding of its modern-day life, people and politics.

BEST OF
The top attractions and Editor's Choice featured in this Oregon guide book highlight the most special places to visit.

TIPS AND FACTS
Up-to-date historical timeline and in-depth cultural background to Oregon as well as an introduction toOregon's food and drink, and fun destination-specific features.

PRACTICAL TRAVEL INFORMATION
A-Z of useful advice on everything, from when to go to Oregon, how to get there and how to get around, to Oregon's climate, advice on tipping, etiquette and more.

COLOUR-CODED CHAPTERS
Every part of the destination, from Oregon City to Willamette Valley, has its own colour assigned for easy navigation of this Oregon travel guide.

CURATED PLACES, HIGH-QUALITY MAPS
Geographically organised text, cross-referenced against full-colour, high-quality travel maps for quick orientation in Salem, Cape Perpetua and many other locations in Oregon.

STRIKING PICTURES
This guide book to Oregon features inspirational colour photography, including the stunning Pacific Coast Scenic Byway and the spectacular Sea Lion Caves.
]]> 512 Insight Guides 183905378X John 4
There's not many maps but they are well-designed, with colors and road differentiation, which many of its competitors now skimp on, or grey out totally. Also, there's fewer restaurants, and instead of dozens of accommodation options per location, this leans towards brisk nods towards the appeal of a particular regional hub. The strength lies in conveying a sense of the landscape, the "mise-en-scene."

There's basic directions, resources, and advice, but this isn't geared towards those with elders and/or kids in tow. It's extremely attentive to "underrepresented" communities and emphasizes the efforts past and present which include African-American, indigenous, Asian, and LGBT constituents, and the historically fraught relations between competing as well congenial peoples. Its introduction delves into this with sensitivity. But leaving out the formidable John McLaughlin betrays a significant lapse.

To sum up, if you're looking for eye candy as well as food for if not deep thoughts on this diverse and lovely corner of the country, than this portal will reward the planning and the carrying out of fun. It's a necessary compromise which subtracts from text to add illustration, but that's the titular insight...]]> 4.00 Insight Guides Oregon: Travel Guide eBook (Insight Guides Main Series)
author: Insight Guides
name: John
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
I'm reviewing the 2024 Kindle version...ŷ lists two entries but they seem the same...Anyway, I've admired the Insight series for decades. Even if I tend towards armchair travels. This stands out for its photography. I think it's the most attractive of the online guidebooks I've recently dipped into about the Beaver State. Nowhere as in-depth as Moon, less visually appealing than the less detailed Pacific Northwest Lonely Planet, but similar to Fodors in scope. That is, sufficient for most readers?

There's not many maps but they are well-designed, with colors and road differentiation, which many of its competitors now skimp on, or grey out totally. Also, there's fewer restaurants, and instead of dozens of accommodation options per location, this leans towards brisk nods towards the appeal of a particular regional hub. The strength lies in conveying a sense of the landscape, the "mise-en-scene."

There's basic directions, resources, and advice, but this isn't geared towards those with elders and/or kids in tow. It's extremely attentive to "underrepresented" communities and emphasizes the efforts past and present which include African-American, indigenous, Asian, and LGBT constituents, and the historically fraught relations between competing as well congenial peoples. Its introduction delves into this with sensitivity. But leaving out the formidable John McLaughlin betrays a significant lapse.

To sum up, if you're looking for eye candy as well as food for if not deep thoughts on this diverse and lovely corner of the country, than this portal will reward the planning and the carrying out of fun. It's a necessary compromise which subtracts from text to add illustration, but that's the titular insight...
]]> <![CDATA[Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures]]> 15757871
Federal Writers' Project. Idaho
Caldwell, Id., Caxton Printers
Possible copyright NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
English
Digitizing Internet Archive
Book Prelinger Library
americana
107

Full catalog MARCXML

This book has an editable web page on Open Library.
Description
"Great seal of the state of Idaho" on lining-papers

"A selected bibliography": p. [415]-418]]> 500 Work Projects Administration John 0 to-read 3.00 1937 Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures
author: Work Projects Administration
name: John
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The WPA Guide to the Monterey Peninsula]]> 2176593 Book by Stegner, Page 247 Work Projects Administration 0816511454 John 3
The WPA staff brings their usual blend of facts, history, archival research, and tours to the mix. Gentrified Carmel and Pacific Grove, the latter boasting the highest number of American-born residents of any incorporated city, so we learn, and trips down to Big Sur, where the highway had recently opened to tourists galore, all earn their place. You even get to glimpse Robinson Jeffers' Tor.

But not the environs north, such as Santa Cruz, or inland to Salinas. Steinbeck Country thanks to Cannery Row had already attracted the lookie-loos. But the real boom would follow as this strategic peninsula would see the Navy again, in far greater strength than nearly a century earlier. The beauty remains, but so do the crowds and subdivisions...as like San Diego, many inductees never leave here.

As for this reprint, Page Stegner's introduction doesn't add much value to this facsimile 1997 version. It's general comments about the estimable WPA effort, but only a few paragraphs of nothing that revelatory. However, it's welcome to have it published anew, and the period charm of the photos does enhance the presentation. A few maps accompany the text, and a surprisingly in-depth glossary of Spanish terms for those eager to increase their immersion into the Old Town ambiance still lingering, if faintly, before sailors, sprawl, and the usual population boom swept away this prewar atmosphere.]]> 3.40 1990 The WPA Guide to the Monterey Peninsula
author: Work Projects Administration
name: John
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1990
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
This 1941 regional guide takes in mostly the historic presidio town of Monterey itself. Full of tales from Spanish friars, Mexican settlers of the "Old Californio" legendary interim (with some harrowing ghost or risible local "color" tales well told within), and the conniving military and land-grabbing Yankees who competed to undermine colonial rule, essay the brief upstart Bear Flag Republic in barely more than name only, before the Gold Rush upset seaside slumber, and statehood rapidly followed.

The WPA staff brings their usual blend of facts, history, archival research, and tours to the mix. Gentrified Carmel and Pacific Grove, the latter boasting the highest number of American-born residents of any incorporated city, so we learn, and trips down to Big Sur, where the highway had recently opened to tourists galore, all earn their place. You even get to glimpse Robinson Jeffers' Tor.

But not the environs north, such as Santa Cruz, or inland to Salinas. Steinbeck Country thanks to Cannery Row had already attracted the lookie-loos. But the real boom would follow as this strategic peninsula would see the Navy again, in far greater strength than nearly a century earlier. The beauty remains, but so do the crowds and subdivisions...as like San Diego, many inductees never leave here.

As for this reprint, Page Stegner's introduction doesn't add much value to this facsimile 1997 version. It's general comments about the estimable WPA effort, but only a few paragraphs of nothing that revelatory. However, it's welcome to have it published anew, and the period charm of the photos does enhance the presentation. A few maps accompany the text, and a surprisingly in-depth glossary of Spanish terms for those eager to increase their immersion into the Old Town ambiance still lingering, if faintly, before sailors, sprawl, and the usual population boom swept away this prewar atmosphere.
]]> <![CDATA[Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe]]> 81884 208 Martin J. Rees 0465036732 John 3
Which makes sense but doesn’t create an engrossing read. The chapters on the magic six feel unevenly paced, their style awkwardly alternating between insightful observations on cosmological phenomena and boilerplate recitation of commonalities. It’s an offhandedly casual approach which ambles through.

It was composed early in the year 2000, despite its 2008 edition. Not sure if as with the Big Crunch or gravitational waves if breakthrough discoveries as of a quarter century hence have fundamentally altered its arguments. However, applause for Sir Martin not capitulating to Ockham’s Razor when discussing the “probability� of simpler rationalizations applying to the mysteries of our cosmic speculation. While reverting to multiverses infinitely multiplied may seem a dodge (and he skims this crucial topic itself to my disappointment), Rees refuses to reduce the vast realm we may glimpse “only� ten-odd billion light years across as the end-all and be-all, literally.]]> 3.98 1999 Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe
author: Martin J. Rees
name: John
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
Like the similar Goldilocks Enigma popular book on fine-tuning, I found Rees to be alternately thoughtful and stolid. His default position is that we happen to live in a universe tuned for our evolutionary ability to perceive it. No God needed to fill gaps. No anthropic principle for us to vaunt our star cred. It’s just the way it is.

Which makes sense but doesn’t create an engrossing read. The chapters on the magic six feel unevenly paced, their style awkwardly alternating between insightful observations on cosmological phenomena and boilerplate recitation of commonalities. It’s an offhandedly casual approach which ambles through.

It was composed early in the year 2000, despite its 2008 edition. Not sure if as with the Big Crunch or gravitational waves if breakthrough discoveries as of a quarter century hence have fundamentally altered its arguments. However, applause for Sir Martin not capitulating to Ockham’s Razor when discussing the “probability� of simpler rationalizations applying to the mysteries of our cosmic speculation. While reverting to multiverses infinitely multiplied may seem a dodge (and he skims this crucial topic itself to my disappointment), Rees refuses to reduce the vast realm we may glimpse “only� ten-odd billion light years across as the end-all and be-all, literally.
]]> <![CDATA[Day Trips® from Portland, Oregon: Getaway Ideas for the Local Traveler, 2nd Edition (Day Trips Series)]]> 25766645 272 Kim Cooper Findling 1493012746 John 4
So if you want to see a dog splash park in Mill City, drink mead in Philomath, or buy fudge from monks in Amity (I can vouch for the candy’s taste), you’ll find tips which other travel companions may overlook. I’d add that the short journeys likely won’t be such if you’re hungry as stops along these often scenic routes will escalate. Maps are minimal but you’ll be relying on other resources for navigation anyhow.

There’s dollar sign ratings from one to three, rather than more precise rates, for dining and lodging, so you can at least do rough estimates of costs. And everything keeps going up anyway in prices recently…All in all, a handy tool for planning where to roam on a short leash, a tight schedule, or time off.]]> 4.57 2011 Day Trips® from Portland, Oregon: Getaway Ideas for the Local Traveler, 2nd Edition (Day Trips Series)
author: Kim Cooper Findling
name: John
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
This family-oriented guide may take in rather long hauls to Eugene, Coos Bay, or The Dalles, as day trips from Portland. Depending on patterns of traffic, weather, the trucks ahead or behind you on the highways. But as a sixth-generation Oregonian, the author knows her state. She offers a few personal sidebar comments about memories of her own experiences which enhance the tone of this compact compendium of various options for the main regions and terrains around the radius of the City Hall of Roses, and across the Columbia River into Washington State now and then. It’s six years ago when she completed this edition so pre-COVID; the entries may not be as updated as of course current conditions might have changed but overall the book probably will remain useful in general orientation.

So if you want to see a dog splash park in Mill City, drink mead in Philomath, or buy fudge from monks in Amity (I can vouch for the candy’s taste), you’ll find tips which other travel companions may overlook. I’d add that the short journeys likely won’t be such if you’re hungry as stops along these often scenic routes will escalate. Maps are minimal but you’ll be relying on other resources for navigation anyhow.

There’s dollar sign ratings from one to three, rather than more precise rates, for dining and lodging, so you can at least do rough estimates of costs. And everything keeps going up anyway in prices recently…All in all, a handy tool for planning where to roam on a short leash, a tight schedule, or time off.
]]> <![CDATA[A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England]]> 19024450 224 Michelle Higgs 1781592837 John 4
This period of course persists today with its royal term being used in a nearly unfailingly pejorative sense. But surprising factoids abound to undermine our facile snobbery. For better or worse, for much of the Queen's reign, the age of consent was twelve. Attendance at service was likely at least in urban areas around half of possible worshippers. If an unaccompanied man, you're best cautioned to avoid sitting in any rail car near a similarly solo female, for she might blackmail you for a supposed "insult" and threaten to damage your reputation as a gentleman by calling the police, unless she's paid off handsomely. Same if in public, a girl approaches you in a park as you stroll, asking you for the time.

Lots of details arrange this in topics, and they're in turn ordered sensibly. What "curling papers" are (for ladies wouldn't ask in a shop aloud for toilet paper), what remedy for tuberculosis might supposedly be snatched from your sidewalk (eating garden snails), or the hazards of that appealingly vividly colored Bath bun to nibble (it might be tinted with arsenic) all number among advice on call for the unwary. It's a smelly age, where a ride in a jolting coach may overwhelmingly overpower you with body odor, queasiness, and being crushed by crinolines. It's a dangerous foray, for pickpockets of both sexes lurk to find easy marks who can be relieved of their valuables however secured in waistcoat, or within the voluminous folds of petticoat-burdened women. Everyone does wear a hat and umbrellas can serve as weapons against thieves.

Illustrated by period graphics, especially the lovely engravings of the tabloids (with one hideous exception of three generations at a holiday door having arrived looking ghoulish) enhance the well-written contents. Journals from Beatrix Potter and Nathaniel Hawthorne feature, but novelists you'd expect such as George Eliot, Dickens, or Gissing aren't. Instead, the handbooks which the people would've consulted take precedence. This works to the narrative's favor, for you become immersed in the first-hand thoughts of millions bustling and scurrying about.]]> 3.71 2014 A Visitor's Guide to Victorian England
author: Michelle Higgs
name: John
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
Very good survey of daily life. Late Victorian mostly, as much comes from the 1870s to century's end. While my favorite subject, the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851 originally, gets rather scant direct attention, the coverage of diet, etiquette, hygiene, transport, health or its lack, sex, wages, and amusements all gain satisfaction. Efficiently, but with a bit of wit, and free of tut-tutting, you plunge into the 19c.

This period of course persists today with its royal term being used in a nearly unfailingly pejorative sense. But surprising factoids abound to undermine our facile snobbery. For better or worse, for much of the Queen's reign, the age of consent was twelve. Attendance at service was likely at least in urban areas around half of possible worshippers. If an unaccompanied man, you're best cautioned to avoid sitting in any rail car near a similarly solo female, for she might blackmail you for a supposed "insult" and threaten to damage your reputation as a gentleman by calling the police, unless she's paid off handsomely. Same if in public, a girl approaches you in a park as you stroll, asking you for the time.

Lots of details arrange this in topics, and they're in turn ordered sensibly. What "curling papers" are (for ladies wouldn't ask in a shop aloud for toilet paper), what remedy for tuberculosis might supposedly be snatched from your sidewalk (eating garden snails), or the hazards of that appealingly vividly colored Bath bun to nibble (it might be tinted with arsenic) all number among advice on call for the unwary. It's a smelly age, where a ride in a jolting coach may overwhelmingly overpower you with body odor, queasiness, and being crushed by crinolines. It's a dangerous foray, for pickpockets of both sexes lurk to find easy marks who can be relieved of their valuables however secured in waistcoat, or within the voluminous folds of petticoat-burdened women. Everyone does wear a hat and umbrellas can serve as weapons against thieves.

Illustrated by period graphics, especially the lovely engravings of the tabloids (with one hideous exception of three generations at a holiday door having arrived looking ghoulish) enhance the well-written contents. Journals from Beatrix Potter and Nathaniel Hawthorne feature, but novelists you'd expect such as George Eliot, Dickens, or Gissing aren't. Instead, the handbooks which the people would've consulted take precedence. This works to the narrative's favor, for you become immersed in the first-hand thoughts of millions bustling and scurrying about.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943]]> 1517195 Jerre Mangione 0815604157 John 3
There's necessary detail which scholars will appreciate as to the characters behind this entity. Perhaps overly so for such as myself, who's interested in the presentation more than the preparation. Yet it's a reminder of perpetual debates since. Boondoggle, hot air, a cover for the proletariat revolution, a sinecure for the lazy campus protester, a way to type one's Great Novel on Uncle Sam's pre-Roosevelt thin dime? He takes you through the various stages over six years of haphazard planning, fumbled fieldwork, and idealistic visions, amidst cynicism galore.

Mangione published this chronicle after many who labored on the scheme had passed away. But luckily, enough were then as young as he, so testimony from firsthand participants could still be documented. Certainly, as David Kipen notes in the U. of Cal. Press early 2010s reprints of the major entries among the Golden State's estimable volumes (see my reviews), referring to Mangione's own account in turn, the prodigious drinking among the San Francisco staffers might be outmatched only by the larger crew of Gotham City’s (real life) misfit scribes, bitter Trotskyists, and backpedaling Stalinists who, after all, gave a bible-thumping Texas congressman the chance to call out this perceived waste of taxpayer funds as agitprop.

Although nuanced perusal of Mangione's aptly titled analysis proves that the deeply embedded Left did burrow into thousands of pages attesting to the populist tone, the fervent scrutiny, and the sassy exuberance which can be discerned within these American Guides.to the states, alongside folklore, African-American (Wright, Ellison, Hurston among those hired on), ethnic, municipal, avocational, and thematic supplements, there's ample space allotted for equally persistent cussed streaks of contrarian, anti-authoritarian, gossipy, and downright patriotic strains mingled, churning, and competing. Whitman's "barbaric yawp," these demonstrate the partial realization of an ambitious national enterprise, cut short by ideological factions, booze, party machines (more often in Democratic constituencies), strikes, unions, incompetence, bureaucracy, goldbrickers. By the time the final state, Oklahoma, weighed in, Pearl Harbor would loom in less than a month. ]]> 3.60 1972 The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943
author: Jerre Mangione
name: John
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:
Jerre Mangione begins this 1998 study when, almost sixty years before, he met with none other than the First Lady to discuss the future of the WPA Writers Project. The interview proved a formality, for already thanks to Red-baiting, anti-intellectualism, and suspicion of any facts that might upset the fat-cats, FDR's New Deal scheme to hire over six thousand (supposedly, as lots of lying enabled some conniving or desperate applicants to pose as paupers) contributors to compose over three hundred state, regional, and specialized guides to America.

There's necessary detail which scholars will appreciate as to the characters behind this entity. Perhaps overly so for such as myself, who's interested in the presentation more than the preparation. Yet it's a reminder of perpetual debates since. Boondoggle, hot air, a cover for the proletariat revolution, a sinecure for the lazy campus protester, a way to type one's Great Novel on Uncle Sam's pre-Roosevelt thin dime? He takes you through the various stages over six years of haphazard planning, fumbled fieldwork, and idealistic visions, amidst cynicism galore.

Mangione published this chronicle after many who labored on the scheme had passed away. But luckily, enough were then as young as he, so testimony from firsthand participants could still be documented. Certainly, as David Kipen notes in the U. of Cal. Press early 2010s reprints of the major entries among the Golden State's estimable volumes (see my reviews), referring to Mangione's own account in turn, the prodigious drinking among the San Francisco staffers might be outmatched only by the larger crew of Gotham City’s (real life) misfit scribes, bitter Trotskyists, and backpedaling Stalinists who, after all, gave a bible-thumping Texas congressman the chance to call out this perceived waste of taxpayer funds as agitprop.

Although nuanced perusal of Mangione's aptly titled analysis proves that the deeply embedded Left did burrow into thousands of pages attesting to the populist tone, the fervent scrutiny, and the sassy exuberance which can be discerned within these American Guides.to the states, alongside folklore, African-American (Wright, Ellison, Hurston among those hired on), ethnic, municipal, avocational, and thematic supplements, there's ample space allotted for equally persistent cussed streaks of contrarian, anti-authoritarian, gossipy, and downright patriotic strains mingled, churning, and competing. Whitman's "barbaric yawp," these demonstrate the partial realization of an ambitious national enterprise, cut short by ideological factions, booze, party machines (more often in Democratic constituencies), strikes, unions, incompetence, bureaucracy, goldbrickers. By the time the final state, Oklahoma, weighed in, Pearl Harbor would loom in less than a month.
]]> <![CDATA[Insiders' Guide® to Portland, Oregon (Insiders' Guide to Portland, OR)]]> 35518178 280 Rachel Dresbeck 1493028227 John 4
As are the sections on shopping. They go beyond the stereotypes for Portland. Toys, crafts, indoor and outdoor activities, attractions for a range of ages beyond the tatted and blue-haired hordes, and even bookstores aplenty besides the inevitable Powell's. Dresbeck also looks at farms to visit, day-trips, and parks for recreation. Transit is thoroughly explained as to options beyond gridlock both within the confusing one-way labyrinth downtown, and she provides a variety of alternatives to get about.

She introduces her book with a history of the area, and while maps aren't a strong point, the Kindle version I read from 2017 embedded hyperlinks to resources. It's ideally a handbook, therefore, to be consulted as paired with the net. Together, they'd add up to valuable suggestions highs within the city limits and the sprawling surrounding region, again an advantage for this particular item on a shelf.]]> 4.00 Insiders' Guide® to Portland, Oregon (Insiders' Guide to Portland, OR)
author: Rachel Dresbeck
name: John
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves:
review:
Although any guidebook dates itself, this comprehensive companion stands out in a few ways. Unlike other competitors, it covers, if briefly, the surrounding suburbs. It addresses relocation, and takes a considerable amount of space for seniors, children, and elementary education. Useful for families...

As are the sections on shopping. They go beyond the stereotypes for Portland. Toys, crafts, indoor and outdoor activities, attractions for a range of ages beyond the tatted and blue-haired hordes, and even bookstores aplenty besides the inevitable Powell's. Dresbeck also looks at farms to visit, day-trips, and parks for recreation. Transit is thoroughly explained as to options beyond gridlock both within the confusing one-way labyrinth downtown, and she provides a variety of alternatives to get about.

She introduces her book with a history of the area, and while maps aren't a strong point, the Kindle version I read from 2017 embedded hyperlinks to resources. It's ideally a handbook, therefore, to be consulted as paired with the net. Together, they'd add up to valuable suggestions highs within the city limits and the sprawling surrounding region, again an advantage for this particular item on a shelf.
]]> <![CDATA[San Francisco in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay (WPA Guides)]]> 9886777 San Francisco in the 1930s, originally published in 1940. This would surely come as a surprise to the millions who know and love the Golden Gate Bridge or recognize the Transamerica Building’s pyramid. This invaluable Depression-era guide to San Francisco relates the city’s history from the vantage point of the 1930s, describing its culture and highlighting the important tourist attractions of the time. David Kipen’s lively introduction revisits the city’s literary heritage—from Bret Harte to Kenneth Rexroth, Jade Snow Wong, and Allen Ginsberg—as well as its most famous landmarks and historic buildings. This rich and evocative volume, resonant with portraits of neighborhoods and districts, allows us a unique opportunity to travel back in time and savor the City by the Bay as it used to be.]]> 560 Work Projects Administration 0520268806 John 4
Not knowing that, I’d not dipped into the city volumes, which are delightful and poignant as they feature a hopeful Golden Gated and GG Parked port coming out of the Depression which in turn created the New Deal leadership which sponsored this worthy project of tax dollars. The lefty bias without surprise slants these WPA endeavors but, given the ravages of capitalism inflicted upon billions by the billionaire class whose wealth made San Francisco both a monument to greed and a tribute to culture, the wry, sad, but also heartfelt and dignified tones within these hundreds of dense pages cannot be balked at.

Amidst the flood of facts, funny and fascinating factoids, bawdy and snide anecdotes, and a love for humanity’s folly and nature’s perseverance shine. Look at what “Uncle John� McLaren, still active at the time this was composed, at his age of 92, did to serve the true public interest as superintendent since 1882, of sand dunes converted into Golden Gate Park.

I also wish to commend the photographers whose work graces these chapters. While I wish the span encompassed the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay region, given the already broad compass of space scrutinized herein, it’s a treasure trove whose rich lode offers us nearly a century later an extraordinary montage of this magnificent, misled, and muddled testament to creation within a place both impressive and impracticable, a symbol of hubris and heart. ]]> 4.08 2011 San Francisco in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay (WPA Guides)
author: Work Projects Administration
name: John
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
This fantastic compendium deserves far more than my brief review tapped out via iPhone. But suffice to say that David Kipen’s blend of erudition and wit matched the formidable if too anonymous committee’s contributions to this 1940 volume in the WPA American Guide series. It’s critical to note that the municipality is just part of the presentation as the substantive volume expands rather than merely excerpts the content of the California 1939 itself. Same for the Los Angeles and San Diego companion pieces, also reissued around the early 2010s by, of course, the University of California Press in facsimile editions. Except for the foldout touring maps, alas�

Not knowing that, I’d not dipped into the city volumes, which are delightful and poignant as they feature a hopeful Golden Gated and GG Parked port coming out of the Depression which in turn created the New Deal leadership which sponsored this worthy project of tax dollars. The lefty bias without surprise slants these WPA endeavors but, given the ravages of capitalism inflicted upon billions by the billionaire class whose wealth made San Francisco both a monument to greed and a tribute to culture, the wry, sad, but also heartfelt and dignified tones within these hundreds of dense pages cannot be balked at.

Amidst the flood of facts, funny and fascinating factoids, bawdy and snide anecdotes, and a love for humanity’s folly and nature’s perseverance shine. Look at what “Uncle John� McLaren, still active at the time this was composed, at his age of 92, did to serve the true public interest as superintendent since 1882, of sand dunes converted into Golden Gate Park.

I also wish to commend the photographers whose work graces these chapters. While I wish the span encompassed the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay region, given the already broad compass of space scrutinized herein, it’s a treasure trove whose rich lode offers us nearly a century later an extraordinary montage of this magnificent, misled, and muddled testament to creation within a place both impressive and impracticable, a symbol of hubris and heart.
]]> <![CDATA[That Balance So Rare: The Story of Oregon]]> 791772 133 Terence O'Donnell 087595202X John 4
Therefore, the titular balance sustains the narrative. We see missionaries, educators, political reformers, and environmental activists. The delays in roads along the coast retarded its development by private owners, and this has encouraged its protection along the publicly accessible beaches and the controls over half its lovely land today.

McDonnell relates facts overlooked by others who relate for the general public the settlements of Oregon ancient and modern. Take an apocryphal yarn that on the Trail west, a gold-quartz cairn signalled the way to California. And a sign, "To Oregon," for those who could read. The tenor of those who entered the Willamette Valley in Calistoga days tended towards sobriety, Midwest Methodists or Maine-bred farmers, determined to convert the indigenous.

I've read (I think in the 1941 WPA American Guide series) that the colleges the pioneers founded in the lush interior were meant to distance the young from the perceived corruption of the ports, where as the author reminds us, the European residents descended from the French-Canadien trappers and fur traders whom were allowed to retire by the formidable Dr. John McLoughlin, of Fort Vancouver, who dominated the British territory and the initial capitalist transcontinental commerce which first attracted those who contended with the Yankee rivals and "Indian" residents.

Speaking of which, I never knew that the notorious Whitman Massacre which precipitated the debate over the Territory becoming under American rule was preceded by the poisoning of dogs belonging to the native people and the vigilant patriarch’s injecting his coveted melon crop with emetics to discourage their pilfering by the dispossessed inhabitants�

I'd have preferred better maps, though there's a backwoods charm to the endpapers looking as if scrawled on birch bark. (As Jefferson advised Lewis + Clark to record, the better to repel damp; they ignored his astute counsel.) The historian does include A.B. Guthrie's The Way West and Victor Thomas' now-forgotten Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Honey in the Horn, both dramatizing the wagon trains, and this little volume itself remains a thoughtful chronicle.]]> 3.88 1988 That Balance So Rare: The Story of Oregon
author: Terence O'Donnell
name: John
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
This elegantly composed short history of the Beaver State would serve as an ideal introduction for students, families, and visitors. Composed a third of a century ago, it's not dated, as it tactfully fades before the postwar boom leading to giant leaps in population, tourism, and publicity given this region recently. Well illustrated from the archives of its publisher, The Oregon Historical Society, it fairly treats both immigrants and natives as to the depredations inflicted and the damages incurred. O'Donnell refrains from pontificating, striving for honest amity.

Therefore, the titular balance sustains the narrative. We see missionaries, educators, political reformers, and environmental activists. The delays in roads along the coast retarded its development by private owners, and this has encouraged its protection along the publicly accessible beaches and the controls over half its lovely land today.

McDonnell relates facts overlooked by others who relate for the general public the settlements of Oregon ancient and modern. Take an apocryphal yarn that on the Trail west, a gold-quartz cairn signalled the way to California. And a sign, "To Oregon," for those who could read. The tenor of those who entered the Willamette Valley in Calistoga days tended towards sobriety, Midwest Methodists or Maine-bred farmers, determined to convert the indigenous.

I've read (I think in the 1941 WPA American Guide series) that the colleges the pioneers founded in the lush interior were meant to distance the young from the perceived corruption of the ports, where as the author reminds us, the European residents descended from the French-Canadien trappers and fur traders whom were allowed to retire by the formidable Dr. John McLoughlin, of Fort Vancouver, who dominated the British territory and the initial capitalist transcontinental commerce which first attracted those who contended with the Yankee rivals and "Indian" residents.

Speaking of which, I never knew that the notorious Whitman Massacre which precipitated the debate over the Territory becoming under American rule was preceded by the poisoning of dogs belonging to the native people and the vigilant patriarch’s injecting his coveted melon crop with emetics to discourage their pilfering by the dispossessed inhabitants�

I'd have preferred better maps, though there's a backwoods charm to the endpapers looking as if scrawled on birch bark. (As Jefferson advised Lewis + Clark to record, the better to repel damp; they ignored his astute counsel.) The historian does include A.B. Guthrie's The Way West and Victor Thomas' now-forgotten Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Honey in the Horn, both dramatizing the wagon trains, and this little volume itself remains a thoughtful chronicle.
]]> <![CDATA[Oregon Off the Beaten Path: A Guide to Unique Places]]> 3129427 261 Myrna Oakley 076274877X John 3
But inland, in the lesser-known southern interior and especially eastern stretches, the guide lives up to its title. However, prices are lacking. On one hand, this doesn't date the contents. Yet, it doesn't allow a planner to judge realistic budgets. Instead, you do find ghost towns, remote hospitality on tap, and dirt and gravel road accessible, or maybe not, attractions. It's not a hipster compendium, note...

For instance, Bend gets barely a nod and that for breakfasts, Portland for gardens rather than gauche hangouts, which may be refreshing for those of us of a certain age, and byways to such as the Trappist and Brigittine monasteries selling tasty goods (I recommend both) and a side road off 99N at Canby typify family-friendly sights suitable for children or grandparents, which other books tend to skim.

If data are inevitably superseded by Fodors or Moon for Oregon, or Lonely Planet for the entire Pacific Northwest (see my reviews), the beauty of painted desert hills, mountain peaks, foggy shores, and verdant farms doesn't fade--we hope as population increases, Instagram hype, and heightened traffic all threaten the peace for those seeking respite from cars, bars, congestion, and camera-toting and phone-obsessed throngs. May havens apart from big-box this, retail chain logo'd that, or pop-up fads remain in the Beaver State. Not all of us, settled or roaming, demand incessant stimulation via screen.

So there's that balance despite the plain-wrap presentation. Writing this thirteen years at least since this information came out (and odds are much of it wasn't revised or fact-checked for what'd closed), it's beyond my largely armchair perspective to judge. But for the GR reviewer ticked off that City of Books aka Powell's didn't get a shout-out, I remind that the premise of this is to discover what's not been already praised, overrun, hyped, or done to death already by the millions residing or passing by.]]> 3.64 1991 Oregon Off the Beaten Path: A Guide to Unique Places
author: Myrna Oakley
name: John
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:
I am reviewing the 10th ed. 2013, a different cover. Unsure if still more printings followed, but this is what my library had. The ebook is very bare bones. It does list plenty of restaurants, accommodations, and sights. Along the coast, there's not much off any beaten track in this heavily touristed long strip.

But inland, in the lesser-known southern interior and especially eastern stretches, the guide lives up to its title. However, prices are lacking. On one hand, this doesn't date the contents. Yet, it doesn't allow a planner to judge realistic budgets. Instead, you do find ghost towns, remote hospitality on tap, and dirt and gravel road accessible, or maybe not, attractions. It's not a hipster compendium, note...

For instance, Bend gets barely a nod and that for breakfasts, Portland for gardens rather than gauche hangouts, which may be refreshing for those of us of a certain age, and byways to such as the Trappist and Brigittine monasteries selling tasty goods (I recommend both) and a side road off 99N at Canby typify family-friendly sights suitable for children or grandparents, which other books tend to skim.

If data are inevitably superseded by Fodors or Moon for Oregon, or Lonely Planet for the entire Pacific Northwest (see my reviews), the beauty of painted desert hills, mountain peaks, foggy shores, and verdant farms doesn't fade--we hope as population increases, Instagram hype, and heightened traffic all threaten the peace for those seeking respite from cars, bars, congestion, and camera-toting and phone-obsessed throngs. May havens apart from big-box this, retail chain logo'd that, or pop-up fads remain in the Beaver State. Not all of us, settled or roaming, demand incessant stimulation via screen.

So there's that balance despite the plain-wrap presentation. Writing this thirteen years at least since this information came out (and odds are much of it wasn't revised or fact-checked for what'd closed), it's beyond my largely armchair perspective to judge. But for the GR reviewer ticked off that City of Books aka Powell's didn't get a shout-out, I remind that the premise of this is to discover what's not been already praised, overrun, hyped, or done to death already by the millions residing or passing by.
]]> <![CDATA[Fodor's Oregon (Full-color Travel Guide Book 6)]]> 25603797 384 1101879246 John 4
I’d say Fodors, while less immediately attractive in its layout than LP, gives more details, closer to Moon in its depth albeit for a slightly more upscale clientele, which is Fodors� audience. But Oregon isn't a cheap destination. Fodors is strong on cultural attractions such as an art museum in a small college town in overlooked Eastern territory, or both a tribute to survivors of the Holocaust and a site for exhibitions about Jewish life in Portland, which the other surveys of the state had not mentioned.

One user-friendly aspect. Unlike the Moon guide, the Fodors hops over the Columbia Gorge now and then. So you can see what's on the Evergreen side of the river as to places to dine, dally, or dog-walk. This enhances the practicality of this, although Moon gets the nod for foci left out of the latter as to culinary options, curios or curiosities from modest merchants, and dogged emphasis on sustainability.

For boutique browsing, finer dining, and higher end lodging, too, Fodors tilts towards the consumer who wants quality, and can afford the expense. As this expanse tends to cater to the affluent traveler, this reference may suit the millions who seek a getaway which will reward their investment and meet expectations for comfort rather than roughing it. Which meets family-friendly and "mature" needs.]]> 3.72 2015 Fodor's Oregon (Full-color Travel Guide Book 6)
author: Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.
name: John
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:
Lonely Planet Pacific Northwest and Fodors Oregon share an editor, Maggie Bigg, so there’s an overlap of emphasis perhaps. In my review of the former I noted the guidebook gave a brisk, visually appealing, and broad overview of the region. In addition my ŷ take on the Moon competitor for the Beaver State observed its focus on locally produced products and family-owned rather than corporate entities and enterprises. Not that Fodors=big-box or outlet mall. But it aims at propriety.

I’d say Fodors, while less immediately attractive in its layout than LP, gives more details, closer to Moon in its depth albeit for a slightly more upscale clientele, which is Fodors� audience. But Oregon isn't a cheap destination. Fodors is strong on cultural attractions such as an art museum in a small college town in overlooked Eastern territory, or both a tribute to survivors of the Holocaust and a site for exhibitions about Jewish life in Portland, which the other surveys of the state had not mentioned.

One user-friendly aspect. Unlike the Moon guide, the Fodors hops over the Columbia Gorge now and then. So you can see what's on the Evergreen side of the river as to places to dine, dally, or dog-walk. This enhances the practicality of this, although Moon gets the nod for foci left out of the latter as to culinary options, curios or curiosities from modest merchants, and dogged emphasis on sustainability.

For boutique browsing, finer dining, and higher end lodging, too, Fodors tilts towards the consumer who wants quality, and can afford the expense. As this expanse tends to cater to the affluent traveler, this reference may suit the millions who seek a getaway which will reward their investment and meet expectations for comfort rather than roughing it. Which meets family-friendly and "mature" needs.
]]> <![CDATA[Northwest Passages: A Literary Anthology of the Pacific Northwest from Coyote Tales to Roadside Attractions]]> 1081457 In this vibrant anthology about the region and its people, editor Bruce Barcott endeavors to define the literary soul of the Northwest. Spanning two hundred years, Northwest Passages brings together writing from such natives, notables, and newcomers as Chief Seattle, Rudyard Kipling, Jack Kerouac and Sherman Alexie.

]]> 329 Bruce Barcott 1570610053 John 4
Coming from L.A. myself, if that megapolis continues to be stereotyped and reduced to Hollywood or coastal cliches of sun-baked airheads, the PNW suffers as an asylum filled with taciturn natives with and without a capital letter. Huddled amidst rain, fog, and a natural stretch attracting immigrants while repelling those who can't handle a wet winter. Reading this collection after nearly a third-of-a-century, I wonder how the logging, population growth (Jonathan Raban sadly documents the late-1980s destruction of Seattle, and that's before most of Microsoft, prior to Amazon, Costco, and their high-tech bros stomped among the grunge, hipster and other supposedly non-conformist hordes), blue-state shifters, and those red-staters resisting the incursions into these heartlands keep faring.

Barcott reasons, although others on ŷ have criticized this, that including those who've not been born or at least raised here gives a better range of reactions to the varied cultures, trends, fads, and propaganda (Wobblies, Oregon or Bust pioneers, evangelical nutcases, Beats, profs, tree huggers) which compel millions, as in Canada, the West, and for that matter the rest of the U.S. nowadays, to move into the sylvan slopes and verdant valleys. Even as they lament the loss of timber and the rise of subdivisions, as John Steinbeck did in his Travels with Charley going on two-thirds of a century past, when he couldn't recognize the lowslung, modest Seattle of the Depression, anymore than my father-in-law (who went to the same high school as Jimi Hendrix would quite a few classes on), would've.

For they like many come and go. Raymond Carter captures this well in his "Boxes." Those who tried to establish the first colony on the Pacific up there (see my review of Peter Stark, Astoria) didn't succeed.

The climate drove its indigenous inhabitants indoors too, unlike the nations of the Plains. In vast longhouses, they turned towards totems, brooding figures, and with tales passed down of an ancient Great Flood. I wish Barrett had found a version to illustrate this, by the by. He does cover Idaho, but not Montana, argue the latter doesn't sustain the legends of the wetter landscape. But the sparser territory of the other side of the Cascades doesn't get much notice, and the bulk, being after all where the peoples from whichever origin tend to land, tilts towards the ocean rather than peers inland, same as with California. The contents veer wildly, with a lot of second rate at best prose and poetry, but it's representative of the many registers of what then as now's deemed marketable irrespective of its inherent worth. So, less the cream than the dregs swirling up from the scribbling crop. For this blend, and the clever if inevitable title he's snagged against all comers, a useful compendium from its era.

I'd consult Powell's City of Books for a sampler of what's come out from these parts since. Allowing for their staff's strenuously eclectic and self-consciously sensitive slant. But the steady shifts towards favoring fringe constituencies, small-press voices, and radical proponents themselves typify the savvy appeal of a restive strain, in more than one sense, which Barcott tracks from a hundred years ago, as a similar championing of ragged and/or upright holdouts to the power of a dominant system of capital.

P.S. Why aren't maps included in books more? One showing where each entry took place would have graced this well, and increased comprehension of a region where the smaller burgs and little rivers aren't familiar probably to audiences even of those raised in these states. However, his introductions to the pieces tend towards insight, and anyone closing this will have compiled a to-read-next listicle.]]> 3.87 1994 Northwest Passages: A Literary Anthology of the Pacific Northwest from Coyote Tales to Roadside Attractions
author: Bruce Barcott
name: John
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:
I heard about this via Barcott's Measure of a Mountain, about Mt. Rainier. As he notes in his preface to this 1994 anthology, the Pacific Northwest tends to be marginalized by the literati and East Coasters. It's written off as spotted owl loonies, backwoods hicks, tattooed clans, and reclusive hippie potheads.

Coming from L.A. myself, if that megapolis continues to be stereotyped and reduced to Hollywood or coastal cliches of sun-baked airheads, the PNW suffers as an asylum filled with taciturn natives with and without a capital letter. Huddled amidst rain, fog, and a natural stretch attracting immigrants while repelling those who can't handle a wet winter. Reading this collection after nearly a third-of-a-century, I wonder how the logging, population growth (Jonathan Raban sadly documents the late-1980s destruction of Seattle, and that's before most of Microsoft, prior to Amazon, Costco, and their high-tech bros stomped among the grunge, hipster and other supposedly non-conformist hordes), blue-state shifters, and those red-staters resisting the incursions into these heartlands keep faring.

Barcott reasons, although others on ŷ have criticized this, that including those who've not been born or at least raised here gives a better range of reactions to the varied cultures, trends, fads, and propaganda (Wobblies, Oregon or Bust pioneers, evangelical nutcases, Beats, profs, tree huggers) which compel millions, as in Canada, the West, and for that matter the rest of the U.S. nowadays, to move into the sylvan slopes and verdant valleys. Even as they lament the loss of timber and the rise of subdivisions, as John Steinbeck did in his Travels with Charley going on two-thirds of a century past, when he couldn't recognize the lowslung, modest Seattle of the Depression, anymore than my father-in-law (who went to the same high school as Jimi Hendrix would quite a few classes on), would've.

For they like many come and go. Raymond Carter captures this well in his "Boxes." Those who tried to establish the first colony on the Pacific up there (see my review of Peter Stark, Astoria) didn't succeed.

The climate drove its indigenous inhabitants indoors too, unlike the nations of the Plains. In vast longhouses, they turned towards totems, brooding figures, and with tales passed down of an ancient Great Flood. I wish Barrett had found a version to illustrate this, by the by. He does cover Idaho, but not Montana, argue the latter doesn't sustain the legends of the wetter landscape. But the sparser territory of the other side of the Cascades doesn't get much notice, and the bulk, being after all where the peoples from whichever origin tend to land, tilts towards the ocean rather than peers inland, same as with California. The contents veer wildly, with a lot of second rate at best prose and poetry, but it's representative of the many registers of what then as now's deemed marketable irrespective of its inherent worth. So, less the cream than the dregs swirling up from the scribbling crop. For this blend, and the clever if inevitable title he's snagged against all comers, a useful compendium from its era.

I'd consult Powell's City of Books for a sampler of what's come out from these parts since. Allowing for their staff's strenuously eclectic and self-consciously sensitive slant. But the steady shifts towards favoring fringe constituencies, small-press voices, and radical proponents themselves typify the savvy appeal of a restive strain, in more than one sense, which Barcott tracks from a hundred years ago, as a similar championing of ragged and/or upright holdouts to the power of a dominant system of capital.

P.S. Why aren't maps included in books more? One showing where each entry took place would have graced this well, and increased comprehension of a region where the smaller burgs and little rivers aren't familiar probably to audiences even of those raised in these states. However, his introductions to the pieces tend towards insight, and anyone closing this will have compiled a to-read-next listicle.
]]> <![CDATA[Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix]]> 53566838
Today, Jimi Hendrix (1942�1970) is celebrated as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. But before he was setting guitars and the world aflame, James Marshall Hendrix was a shy kid in Seattle, plucking at a broken ukulele. Bringing Hendrix’s story to vivid life against the backdrop of midcentury rock, and interweaving new interviews with friends, lovers, bandmates, and his family, Wild Thing vividly reconstructs Hendrix’s remarkable career, from playing segregated clubs on the Chitlin� Circuit to achieving stardom in Swinging London.]]> 415 Philip Norman 1631495909 John 3 Dutiful survey

I have reviewed Norman's autobiography, his bios of Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney, Clapton, and Jagger. I liked his takes on the 60s and rock culture, and he's a reliable storyteller who mingles appreciation, critique, and investigation smoothly. But as he opens this on Jimi, he admits he had tired of chronicling the scene he helped publicize as a young contemporary, and document as a veteran scribe.

And so this tale becomes more straightforward reporting. I wanted to find out about an aspect probably far less prominent. Yet one that Norman shares, as his family background improbably overlaps, as does mine, with Hendrix' birthplace. I'd always assumed that, it being 1942, his father had moved there to work in the aircraft industry during WWII, as so many blacks from the South had been drawn to then. Yet, turns out his father's parents had stayed in Vancouver in 1919, after their tour in a minstrel show, to settle down. Jimi was born across the border, as was my father-in-law, around the same time as Al Hendricks (earlier spelling). And he went too the same high school of Garfield in the ethnically mixed Central District of the city, as would Jimi, who dropped out in 1960. But I didn't find out much beyond his unhappy teens, raised by a tough paternal figure who reminded me uneasily of the tyrants who spawned Beach Boys and the Jackson clans, eerily. However, I did glimpse a sense of a Seattle more integrated at least in the first half of the past century than its stereotypes may lead readers today to think. And, Jimi was equally proud of his native Cherokee roots, which caused some uneasiness in his later career when his dalliances to gain street credibility among Black Panthers, Harlem militants, and Miles Davis caused the FBI to take notice. Norman attends to this as he examines the rumors that Jimi was done in by foul play rather than far too much red wine.

As for the music, it gets less fanfare. Norman prefers to tell of the dalliances, discrimination, drugs, and debauchery as expected in any look at this icon. Still, it moves along efficiently, similar to the parallel arcs of Eric and Mick. It's fine, but the drawn out doings of the various managerial, sexual, chemical, and logistical complications accompanying fame and its discontents rouse less than they chasten.]]> 4.00 202 Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix
author: Philip Norman
name: John
average rating: 4.00
book published: 202
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:
Dutiful survey

I have reviewed Norman's autobiography, his bios of Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney, Clapton, and Jagger. I liked his takes on the 60s and rock culture, and he's a reliable storyteller who mingles appreciation, critique, and investigation smoothly. But as he opens this on Jimi, he admits he had tired of chronicling the scene he helped publicize as a young contemporary, and document as a veteran scribe.

And so this tale becomes more straightforward reporting. I wanted to find out about an aspect probably far less prominent. Yet one that Norman shares, as his family background improbably overlaps, as does mine, with Hendrix' birthplace. I'd always assumed that, it being 1942, his father had moved there to work in the aircraft industry during WWII, as so many blacks from the South had been drawn to then. Yet, turns out his father's parents had stayed in Vancouver in 1919, after their tour in a minstrel show, to settle down. Jimi was born across the border, as was my father-in-law, around the same time as Al Hendricks (earlier spelling). And he went too the same high school of Garfield in the ethnically mixed Central District of the city, as would Jimi, who dropped out in 1960. But I didn't find out much beyond his unhappy teens, raised by a tough paternal figure who reminded me uneasily of the tyrants who spawned Beach Boys and the Jackson clans, eerily. However, I did glimpse a sense of a Seattle more integrated at least in the first half of the past century than its stereotypes may lead readers today to think. And, Jimi was equally proud of his native Cherokee roots, which caused some uneasiness in his later career when his dalliances to gain street credibility among Black Panthers, Harlem militants, and Miles Davis caused the FBI to take notice. Norman attends to this as he examines the rumors that Jimi was done in by foul play rather than far too much red wine.

As for the music, it gets less fanfare. Norman prefers to tell of the dalliances, discrimination, drugs, and debauchery as expected in any look at this icon. Still, it moves along efficiently, similar to the parallel arcs of Eric and Mick. It's fine, but the drawn out doings of the various managerial, sexual, chemical, and logistical complications accompanying fame and its discontents rouse less than they chasten.
]]> <![CDATA[San Diego in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to America's Finest City]]> 19691177 160 Work Projects Administration John 4 A snapshot of the late Depression

As David Kipen astutely notes in the 2011 U of Cal Pr reprint, even before WWII led to the military boom for this port, savvy, cynical San Diegans knew how to get Uncle Sam to foot the bill for already nearly a century of development along this strategic harbor near the border of Mexico. Their boosterism, plot grabs from the indigenous and Californios, and lack of scruple all perpetuated that typical marketing mix of sunny skies, balmy beaches, laid-back Lotusland affluence, and subservient "service industry" to cater to the tourists.

This city, although maybe a tenth of what it sprawls as now, nevertheless already established itself as a haven for old salts. A tenth of the residents were retired from the Navy. The dependence on the government for subsidies had embedded itself early into its citizens.

Luckily, some at City Hall managed some civic pride, protecting over a thousand acres from land sharks, as the writers aptly name a hardy breed who've never retreated from the shores of the Golden State. Their wisdom enabled Balboa Park in all its Spanish glory, full of museums, gardens, and artistic nooks which a century later attest to duty creating beauty for all. As for the outskirts, both beyond n the downtown and across the frontier, Into once-rural expanses of farms, ranches, orchards, and open space, the tours appended give you an appreciation for North County and the stretches south of the urban bustle, before red-tile subdivisions, freeways, and malls...

It's instructive that the statewide WPA volume devoted scant coverage to "America's Finest City" as this slim entry in that estimable series (when tax dollars were put to worthy causes and deserving employees) had already surveyed the subject. There's only a few maps and photos, as back then, not much of the area had been ground down to asphalt and concrete. But your imagination can fill in the inland itineraries, as you pretend to journey in your open-top jalopy along rutted roads, dodging cacti, and stopping for ethyl...]]> 4.33 2013 San Diego in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to America's Finest City
author: Work Projects Administration
name: John
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:
A snapshot of the late Depression

As David Kipen astutely notes in the 2011 U of Cal Pr reprint, even before WWII led to the military boom for this port, savvy, cynical San Diegans knew how to get Uncle Sam to foot the bill for already nearly a century of development along this strategic harbor near the border of Mexico. Their boosterism, plot grabs from the indigenous and Californios, and lack of scruple all perpetuated that typical marketing mix of sunny skies, balmy beaches, laid-back Lotusland affluence, and subservient "service industry" to cater to the tourists.

This city, although maybe a tenth of what it sprawls as now, nevertheless already established itself as a haven for old salts. A tenth of the residents were retired from the Navy. The dependence on the government for subsidies had embedded itself early into its citizens.

Luckily, some at City Hall managed some civic pride, protecting over a thousand acres from land sharks, as the writers aptly name a hardy breed who've never retreated from the shores of the Golden State. Their wisdom enabled Balboa Park in all its Spanish glory, full of museums, gardens, and artistic nooks which a century later attest to duty creating beauty for all. As for the outskirts, both beyond n the downtown and across the frontier, Into once-rural expanses of farms, ranches, orchards, and open space, the tours appended give you an appreciation for North County and the stretches south of the urban bustle, before red-tile subdivisions, freeways, and malls...

It's instructive that the statewide WPA volume devoted scant coverage to "America's Finest City" as this slim entry in that estimable series (when tax dollars were put to worthy causes and deserving employees) had already surveyed the subject. There's only a few maps and photos, as back then, not much of the area had been ground down to asphalt and concrete. But your imagination can fill in the inland itineraries, as you pretend to journey in your open-top jalopy along rutted roads, dodging cacti, and stopping for ethyl...
]]> <![CDATA[Adventures on the Columbia River: Including the Narrative of the Residence of Six Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains, Among Various ... with a Journey Across the American Continent]]> 1049103 259 Ross Cox 1589762347 John 3
Of course, as the reality behind this globalization two centuries ago proves, there's far less enchantment once Cox hits the mainland. Forget any noble savage stereotypes. He longs for conversion of the natives worldwide, for what he reports--much admittedly hearsay, or at least secondhand at best: the 1957 editors (I read this complete ed. not the public domain copies ŷ tends to multiply) strive to document where the original account deviates from the patchy, contradictory, or sparse if any historical record in this chaotic, raw, and self-aggrandizing era--doesn't play up the romantic notions of peaceable tribes anymore than the cunning traders, brawling voyageurs, or drunken layabouts among the American, Canadian, and British...plus truly diverse, polyglot, semi-inclusive, multinational-crew. The actual travels after a spirited start out West grow less involving as the band heads towards Montreal, a pacing repeated in Stark's retelling on the bicentennial of the expedition Cox had joined.

Being all of nineteen, he understandably scrutinizes the plight and power plays of the fairer sex, among not only n the rare representative Jane Barnes from England, but of the women old and young, exploited, sold, abducted, and contended for, and not infrequently cast aside, by their masculine mates, both white and "Indian." Those seeking to comprehend how females were regarded in these mercantile, pitiless, and transactional times may find much within.

Tall tales may populate the initial, livelier portions. Lost in today's central Washington State, attacked by hawks and wolves, watched by bears, tormented by the elements without and hunger within. It always makes for a good story.

This was excerpted in Bruce Barcott's 1994 anthology Northwest Passages. Well, the most rousing man vs nature moments. But Cox also does his best to set down the features of the various European and indigenous characters who fill these pages. He later became a newspaper man in Britain and Ireland, and even if scholars with the luxury of hindsight may quibble over his biases, granted the limitations of frontier knowledge, I'd say he tried to provide as comprehensive a version as possible. Even if as editors suspect, he tended to set himself in a starring role too often.

While aimed at the blinkered sensibilities of what Christian civilization could bring to the great hordes of those left out of the Empire, the nation newly independent, and the Latin American colonies recently freed, this chronicle does capture the attitude of an everyday observer who participated in this epoch. Cox conveys the tedious daily struggles instead of the dramatic discoveries. He examines the truths as best he can, despite his emissions, elisions, evasions.

It's about a trek in reverse over five months from "New Caledonia" or today's British Columbia, to Quebec. Not at all limited to the titular tributary, it nevertheless expresses the experiences of a footsore tenderfoot who manages to keep up with contenders far more skilled, the vying laborers from French, Metis, Scots, and North American origins. As well as from Hawaii, Africa, the East Indies, and ports of call which remind us of how, then as now, international may be the workforces of many a corporation which seeks to profit off natural resources hunted, fished, trapped...]]> 3.83 Adventures on the Columbia River: Including the Narrative of the Residence of Six Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains, Among Various ... with a Journey Across the American Continent
author: Ross Cox
name: John
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:
In Peter Stark's Astoria, he in passing mentions this early 19c report by an Irishman in the employ of the upstart North-West fur trading company, after the debacle of Astor's attempt to compete on the Pacific Coast against the Hudson Bay monopoly. Cox's adventures begin in the Sandwich Islands, and this may remain the most appealing section. Imagining the "queens" on Oahu beating the sailors at checkers, for instance, conjures up its own charm.

Of course, as the reality behind this globalization two centuries ago proves, there's far less enchantment once Cox hits the mainland. Forget any noble savage stereotypes. He longs for conversion of the natives worldwide, for what he reports--much admittedly hearsay, or at least secondhand at best: the 1957 editors (I read this complete ed. not the public domain copies ŷ tends to multiply) strive to document where the original account deviates from the patchy, contradictory, or sparse if any historical record in this chaotic, raw, and self-aggrandizing era--doesn't play up the romantic notions of peaceable tribes anymore than the cunning traders, brawling voyageurs, or drunken layabouts among the American, Canadian, and British...plus truly diverse, polyglot, semi-inclusive, multinational-crew. The actual travels after a spirited start out West grow less involving as the band heads towards Montreal, a pacing repeated in Stark's retelling on the bicentennial of the expedition Cox had joined.

Being all of nineteen, he understandably scrutinizes the plight and power plays of the fairer sex, among not only n the rare representative Jane Barnes from England, but of the women old and young, exploited, sold, abducted, and contended for, and not infrequently cast aside, by their masculine mates, both white and "Indian." Those seeking to comprehend how females were regarded in these mercantile, pitiless, and transactional times may find much within.

Tall tales may populate the initial, livelier portions. Lost in today's central Washington State, attacked by hawks and wolves, watched by bears, tormented by the elements without and hunger within. It always makes for a good story.

This was excerpted in Bruce Barcott's 1994 anthology Northwest Passages. Well, the most rousing man vs nature moments. But Cox also does his best to set down the features of the various European and indigenous characters who fill these pages. He later became a newspaper man in Britain and Ireland, and even if scholars with the luxury of hindsight may quibble over his biases, granted the limitations of frontier knowledge, I'd say he tried to provide as comprehensive a version as possible. Even if as editors suspect, he tended to set himself in a starring role too often.

While aimed at the blinkered sensibilities of what Christian civilization could bring to the great hordes of those left out of the Empire, the nation newly independent, and the Latin American colonies recently freed, this chronicle does capture the attitude of an everyday observer who participated in this epoch. Cox conveys the tedious daily struggles instead of the dramatic discoveries. He examines the truths as best he can, despite his emissions, elisions, evasions.

It's about a trek in reverse over five months from "New Caledonia" or today's British Columbia, to Quebec. Not at all limited to the titular tributary, it nevertheless expresses the experiences of a footsore tenderfoot who manages to keep up with contenders far more skilled, the vying laborers from French, Metis, Scots, and North American origins. As well as from Hawaii, Africa, the East Indies, and ports of call which remind us of how, then as now, international may be the workforces of many a corporation which seeks to profit off natural resources hunted, fished, trapped...
]]> <![CDATA[Lonely Planet Washington, Oregon & the Pacific Northwest (Travel Guide)]]> 217105914 Lonely Planet's local travel experts reveal all you need to know to plan the trip of a lifetime to Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

Discover popular and off the beaten track experiences from visiting Vancouver's Stanley Park for breathtaking oceanfront views to soaking in geothermal water in the middle of a forest in Oregon, and exploring Washington's Diablo Lake by boat or kayak.

Build a trip to remember with Lonely Planet's Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest travel

Our classic guidebook format provides you with the most comprehensive level of information for planning multi-week tripsUpdated with an all new structure and design so you can navigate Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and connect experiences together with easeCreate your perfect trip with exciting itineraries for extended journeys combined with suggested day trips, walking tours, and activities to match your passionsGet fresh takes on must-visit sights including Malahat Skywalk; Sol Duc Hot Springs; and Seattle's Lincoln ParkSpecial features on exploring national parks, Seattle walking tour, Highway 101 road tripExpert local recommendations on when to go, eating, drinking, nightlife, shopping, accommodation, adventure activities, festivals, and moreEssential information toolkit containing tips on arriving; transport; making the most of your time and money; LGBTIQ+ travel advice; accessibility; and responsible travelConnect with Pacific Northwest culture through stories that delve deep into local life, history, and traditionsInspiring full-colour travel photography and maps including a pull out map of SeattleCovers Seattle, Northwestern Washington and the San Juan Islands, Olympic Peninsula and Washington Coast, Washington Cascades, Eastern Washington, Portland, the Willamette Valley, Columbia River Gorge, Central Oregon and the Oregon Cascades, The Oregon Coast, Ashland and Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon, Vancouver, Vancouver Island

eBook (Best viewed on tablet devices and smartphones)Add notes to personalise your guidebook experienceSeamlessly flip between pagesBookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flashEmbedded links to recommendations' websitesZoom-in on maps and images

Create a trip that's uniquely yours and get to the heart of this extraordinary part of the world with Lonely Planet's Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. ]]> 943 Margot Bigg 1837585873 John 4
The scope offers possibilities for a place or stretch of the coast or inland if one's limited to a day or two vs. five or seven, too. There's locals who weigh in with tips for their region, emphases on nature, and a team of contributing writers versed in the area enabling you to hear from various perspectives.

You don't get actual prices, unlike competitors' volumes. This may help or hinder in our current burst of inflation. Instead, a dollar sign system gives a rough idea for food and lodging, but again, LP here lacks the contact information that other guides may provide. I guess they suppose that you're already online to search for such, but it would have been better, given that not all travellers always are, to have these data embedded. But there are throughout hyperlinks within the digital text to ease the interior navigation. And the overall ease of use makes up for the reduced amount of hard information.

However, I'd have cut some superfluous images, like a giant marijuana leaf, or the filler stock images. This could have been used for more text, as many lists tally a few general statements rather than as directions or depth. They're akin to notes you might jot down, but without the necessary elaboration.

But the scope remains worthy of investigation. And afterwords on the impact of short-term rentals on Seattle, the debate among the Klamath people over fishing rights, and the charts easily grasped of the transport options for getting from the major airports to city centers show thoughtful editorial care.

I can't vouch for the dazzling if to me suspiciously filtered or enhanced photography abundant in these pages, but it pops out on my screen as spectacular. Which encapsulates the lure of the Pacific Northwest. The reason you're reading this comment and the rationale for putting this on your shelf.]]> 4.00 Lonely Planet Washington, Oregon & the Pacific Northwest (Travel Guide)
author: Margot Bigg
name: John
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
In the Kindle version, the visuals, layout, sidebars, and itinerary maps appeal to the portable format. While nowhere near the depth, say, of the Moon Oregon (see my take on its 2023 ed.) as to cuisine or detail on sites, the Lonely Planet packs lots on both Washington State and Oregon, plus up over the border into Vancouver. It's less a reference for the planner at home, but a companion for one en route.

The scope offers possibilities for a place or stretch of the coast or inland if one's limited to a day or two vs. five or seven, too. There's locals who weigh in with tips for their region, emphases on nature, and a team of contributing writers versed in the area enabling you to hear from various perspectives.

You don't get actual prices, unlike competitors' volumes. This may help or hinder in our current burst of inflation. Instead, a dollar sign system gives a rough idea for food and lodging, but again, LP here lacks the contact information that other guides may provide. I guess they suppose that you're already online to search for such, but it would have been better, given that not all travellers always are, to have these data embedded. But there are throughout hyperlinks within the digital text to ease the interior navigation. And the overall ease of use makes up for the reduced amount of hard information.

However, I'd have cut some superfluous images, like a giant marijuana leaf, or the filler stock images. This could have been used for more text, as many lists tally a few general statements rather than as directions or depth. They're akin to notes you might jot down, but without the necessary elaboration.

But the scope remains worthy of investigation. And afterwords on the impact of short-term rentals on Seattle, the debate among the Klamath people over fishing rights, and the charts easily grasped of the transport options for getting from the major airports to city centers show thoughtful editorial care.

I can't vouch for the dazzling if to me suspiciously filtered or enhanced photography abundant in these pages, but it pops out on my screen as spectacular. Which encapsulates the lure of the Pacific Northwest. The reason you're reading this comment and the rationale for putting this on your shelf.
]]> <![CDATA[Moon Oregon: Coastal Getaways, Craft Beer & Wine, Hiking & Camping (Travel Guide)]]> 124949158 Stunning coastline, quirky towns, and a breathtaking array of natural Experience the best of the Beaver State with Moon Oregon. Inside you'll Flexible itineraries, whether you're visiting the Oregon Coast, checking out the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood, or road-tripping the wholestate Strategic advice for outdoors-lovers, foodies, culture and history buffs, and more Can't-miss experiences and unique Sample clam chowderin quaint seaside towns on a coastal road trip or get to know Portland's renowned craft beer scene. Catch a performance at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, shop for organic produce at a local farmers market, or sip your way through Oregon's best wineries Outdoor Hike to rushing waterfalls, soak in hidden hot springs, and spot wild mustangs, gray whales, or eagles. Trek to unbeatable views of Crater Lake (the deepest lake in America!), cycle alongthe Willamette River, or ski the fresh powder on Mount Hood Expert insightfrom Oregon localMatt Wastradowski on when to go, how to get around, and where to stay Full-color photos and detailed maps throughoutThorough background information on the culture, landscape, climate, and wildlife, plus handy recommendations for international visitors, families with kids, travelers of color, women travelers, and more Focused coverage of Portland, Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood, the Willamette Valley, the OregonCoast, Crater Lake and Southern Oregon, Bend and Central Oregon, and EasternOregon With Moon's expert tips and local know-how, you can experience the best of Oregon.

Sticking to one spot? Try Moon Coastal Oregon or Moon Columbia River Gorge & Mount Hood. Looking for outdoor adventure? Check out Moon Oregon Hiking.
About Moon Travel Moon was founded in 1973 to empower independent, active, and conscious travel. We prioritize local businesses, outdoor recreation, and traveling strategically and sustainably. Moon Travel Guides are written by local, expert authors with great stories to tell—and they can't wait to share their favorite places with you.

For more inspiration, follow @moonguides on social media.]]> 999 Matt Wastradowski 1640497153 John 4
Oregon provides an appropriate advantage as it's renowned for its cuisine--note those subtitles. And much of its charm, draw, and acclaim comes in thanks to its farms, fisheries, vineyards, breweries, and gardens. This range is covered well throughout, whether on the coast, in Portland and the mellow "college towns," the tourist attractions, ranches, or mountain lodges and river resorts. There's an impressive litany of appealing eateries, along with a range of suitable accommodations to meet one's own budget. But few bargains, as the Beaver State's rather for upscale traveling, at least for my bank balance. All the same, estimates help you anticipate how much to pay. But I see already unfortunately some costs even two years in aren't current, an inevitable blowback from our inflation rates, alas...

Not to sound hypocritical, but it's noteworthy to add how precipitous has been the decline in timber harvesting since half a century ago. I'd have liked to understand the impact this had on plenty of locales presumably mentioned in these (digital not pulp in my case) pages. Did they lose jobs? Have folks turned to agricultural and recreational services to survive off those who flock to their hamlets?

There's a gap between this recent past and today. The "racist" legacy of the founders of the territory gets a sidebar, and the treatment of the Japanese during WWII, alongside African-Americans and of course Native nations receives proper and necessary coverage. But the Scandinavian and Continental backgrounds of many who settled doesn't get but cursory notice (hinted maybe in a restaurant or hotel here and there?) and the labor struggles of many workers of all nationalities weren't expanded.

General history, geographical diversity, ethnic heritages, and sights all gain some if uneven attention. I didn't find a wide selection of recommended reading, and no fiction. I doubt many consulting typical guidebooks seek out such counsel, but as you're reading this review, you might share my preferences. But overall, if coming to this on an empty stomach as my notes document (for my foodie family), a satisfying entry in this dependable series. Commendable for looking out for our ma + pa merchants.

Albeit being Oregon, those configurations may vary from that traditional norm. Which makes some quirky places listed herein often more appealing. The edition I cover dates 2023, so after lockdowns.]]> 4.75 Moon Oregon: Coastal Getaways, Craft Beer & Wine, Hiking & Camping (Travel Guide)
author: Matt Wastradowski
name: John
average rating: 4.75
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:
As a visitor to the Big Island of Hawai'i, and a resident of Ecuador, on both counts, I can vouch for the accuracy of Moon Handbooks. They highlight local, family-owned, non-corporate, non-retail chain, establishments. They pivot to whatever indigenous, veggie-friendly, and sustainable eateries might be found, no small feat for those of us who might not chow down on steak, wings, or pork, for instance.

Oregon provides an appropriate advantage as it's renowned for its cuisine--note those subtitles. And much of its charm, draw, and acclaim comes in thanks to its farms, fisheries, vineyards, breweries, and gardens. This range is covered well throughout, whether on the coast, in Portland and the mellow "college towns," the tourist attractions, ranches, or mountain lodges and river resorts. There's an impressive litany of appealing eateries, along with a range of suitable accommodations to meet one's own budget. But few bargains, as the Beaver State's rather for upscale traveling, at least for my bank balance. All the same, estimates help you anticipate how much to pay. But I see already unfortunately some costs even two years in aren't current, an inevitable blowback from our inflation rates, alas...

Not to sound hypocritical, but it's noteworthy to add how precipitous has been the decline in timber harvesting since half a century ago. I'd have liked to understand the impact this had on plenty of locales presumably mentioned in these (digital not pulp in my case) pages. Did they lose jobs? Have folks turned to agricultural and recreational services to survive off those who flock to their hamlets?

There's a gap between this recent past and today. The "racist" legacy of the founders of the territory gets a sidebar, and the treatment of the Japanese during WWII, alongside African-Americans and of course Native nations receives proper and necessary coverage. But the Scandinavian and Continental backgrounds of many who settled doesn't get but cursory notice (hinted maybe in a restaurant or hotel here and there?) and the labor struggles of many workers of all nationalities weren't expanded.

General history, geographical diversity, ethnic heritages, and sights all gain some if uneven attention. I didn't find a wide selection of recommended reading, and no fiction. I doubt many consulting typical guidebooks seek out such counsel, but as you're reading this review, you might share my preferences. But overall, if coming to this on an empty stomach as my notes document (for my foodie family), a satisfying entry in this dependable series. Commendable for looking out for our ma + pa merchants.

Albeit being Oregon, those configurations may vary from that traditional norm. Which makes some quirky places listed herein often more appealing. The edition I cover dates 2023, so after lockdowns.
]]> <![CDATA[Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival]]> 20971584 The Lost City of Z and Skeleton in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Pegter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing.

Six years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition.

Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.]]> 403 Peter Stark 006221831X John 3 Great start, then wanders

The opening conjures up the forces from the Pacific and the forests, the fog and rain, arrayed against the tiny band of adventurers who wind up at the first American colony on the West Coast, not long after John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson meet to support Astor's grand vision. To join the Chinese trade in furs from the Northwest, the around Tierra del Diego sea commercial voyages from New York, and the European enterprises of transatlantic trafficking into a 24/7 global network of goods catering to vanity and luxury worldwide.

After this heady start, Stark backtracks to set up the contestants. French-Canadien trappers, native purveyors, Scots traders, the often Métis voyageurs who rowed and portaged, their English bosses, and the upstart Americans itching to establish a continental enterprise. They all clash, collude, and contend for control. Stark relates their adventures in the partial footsteps of Lewis and Clark. They turn to depressing outcomes, as the party decides to evade the feared Blackfeet Nation and to veer across unmapped territory which takes them to the Grand Tetons, Hells Canyon, lava flows turned narrow river gorges, and over the Continental Divide to the Columbia River.

It's certainly a saga deserving retelling two centuries later. I admit I'd no inkling that Astoria, Oregon, was named after this expedition. It remains an overlooked chapter as does this region, where neither gold nor mining, cowboys nor cattle compelled wars or inspired romanticism. While a welcome filling of the gap for an accessible history, it draws less upon the Astorian clerks' various journals and recollections (if they, like Washington Irving's once-popular narrative prove faulty, I'd like to have known where, when, and how; Stark stints on sustained elucidation). However, as in its more dramatic moments, it surely retells events as these eyewitnesses or nearby participants set them to pen, these now-nearly forgotten chroniclers get their audience, two hundred years after these grueling journeys.]]> 4.15 2014 Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
author: Peter Stark
name: John
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
Great start, then wanders

The opening conjures up the forces from the Pacific and the forests, the fog and rain, arrayed against the tiny band of adventurers who wind up at the first American colony on the West Coast, not long after John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson meet to support Astor's grand vision. To join the Chinese trade in furs from the Northwest, the around Tierra del Diego sea commercial voyages from New York, and the European enterprises of transatlantic trafficking into a 24/7 global network of goods catering to vanity and luxury worldwide.

After this heady start, Stark backtracks to set up the contestants. French-Canadien trappers, native purveyors, Scots traders, the often Métis voyageurs who rowed and portaged, their English bosses, and the upstart Americans itching to establish a continental enterprise. They all clash, collude, and contend for control. Stark relates their adventures in the partial footsteps of Lewis and Clark. They turn to depressing outcomes, as the party decides to evade the feared Blackfeet Nation and to veer across unmapped territory which takes them to the Grand Tetons, Hells Canyon, lava flows turned narrow river gorges, and over the Continental Divide to the Columbia River.

It's certainly a saga deserving retelling two centuries later. I admit I'd no inkling that Astoria, Oregon, was named after this expedition. It remains an overlooked chapter as does this region, where neither gold nor mining, cowboys nor cattle compelled wars or inspired romanticism. While a welcome filling of the gap for an accessible history, it draws less upon the Astorian clerks' various journals and recollections (if they, like Washington Irving's once-popular narrative prove faulty, I'd like to have known where, when, and how; Stark stints on sustained elucidation). However, as in its more dramatic moments, it surely retells events as these eyewitnesses or nearby participants set them to pen, these now-nearly forgotten chroniclers get their audience, two hundred years after these grueling journeys.
]]> <![CDATA[Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery: An Illustrated History]]> 500771
In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of Discovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.

The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders—the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy, gregarious friend William Clark� was to be the United States' first exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every corner of the young soldiers from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Kentucky, French Canadian boatmen, several sons of white fathers and Indian mothers, a slave named York, and eventually a Shoshone Indian woman, Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son.

Together they would cross the continent, searching for the fabled Northwest Passage that had been the great dream of explorers since the time of Columbus. Along the way they would face incredible hardship, disappointment, and danger; record in their journals hundreds of animals and plants previously unknown to science; encounter a dizzying diversity of Indian cultures; and, most of all, share in one of America's most enduring adventures. Their story may have passed into national mythology, but never before has their experience been rendered as vividly, in words and pictures, as in this marvelous homage by Dayton Duncan.

Plentiful excerpts from the journals kept by the two captains and four enlisted men convey the raw emotions, turbulent spirits, and constant surprises of the explorers, who each day confronted the unknown with fresh eyes. An elegant preface by Ken Burns, as well as contributions from Stephen E. Ambrose, William Least Heat-Moon, and Erica Funkhouser, enlarge upon important threads in Duncan's narrative, demonstrating the continued potency of events that took place almost two centuries ago. And a wealth of paintings, photographs, journal sketches, maps, and film images from the PBS documentary lends this historic, nation-redefining milestone a vibrancy and immediacy to which no American will be immune.]]> 272 Dayton Duncan 0375706526 John 0 to-read 4.18 1997 Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery: An Illustrated History
author: Dayton Duncan
name: John
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ecotopia 550165 Ecotopia is a hopeful antidote to the environmental concerns of today, set in an ecologically sound future society.

Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a “stable-state� ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, this isolated, mysterious nation is welcoming its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston.

Skeptical yet curious about this green new world, Weston is determined to report his findings objectively. But from the start, he’s alternately impressed and unsettled by the laws governing Ecotopia’s earth-friendly agenda: energy-efficient “mini-cities� to eliminate urban sprawl, zero-tolerance pollution control, tree worship, ritual war games, and a woman-dominated government that has instituted such peaceful revolutions as the twenty-hour workweek and employee ownership of farms and businesses. His old beliefs challenged, his cynicism replaced by hope, Weston meets a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman and undertakes a relationship whose intensity will lead him to a critical choice between two worlds.

]]> 181 Ernest Callenbach 0553348477 John 2 3.59 1975 Ecotopia
author: Ernest Callenbach
name: John
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1975
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Sometimes a Great Notion 529626 The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...

Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century." This wild-spirited tale tells of a bitter strike that rages through a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.]]> 628 Ken Kesey 0140045295 John 0 to-read 4.26 1964 Sometimes a Great Notion
author: Ken Kesey
name: John
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance]]> 128727
Combining the adrenaline high of extreme sports with the startling facts of physiological reality, Stark narrates a series of outdoor adventure stories in which thrill can cross the line to mortal peril. Each death or brush with death is at once a suspense story, a cautionary tale, and a medical thriller. Stark describes in unforgettable detail exactly what goes through the mind of a cross-country skier as his body temperature plummets-- apathy at ninety-one degrees, stupor at ninety. He puts us inside the body of a doomed kayaker tumbling helplessly underwater for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. He conjures up the physiology of a snowboarder frantically trying not to panic as he consumes the tiny pocket of air trapped around his face under thousands of pounds of snow.

These are among the dire situations that Stark transforms into harrowing accounts of how our bodies react to trauma, how reflexes and instinct compel us to fight back, and how, why, and when we let go of our will to live.

In an increasingly tamed and homogenized world, risk is not only a means of escape but a path to spirituality. As Peter Stark writes, "You must try to understand death intimately and prepare yourself for death in order to live a full and satisfying life." In this fascinating, informative book, Stark reveals exactly what we’re getting ourselves into when we choose to live-- and die-- at the extremes of endurance.]]> 320 Peter Stark 0345441508 John 0 to-read 4.01 2001 Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance
author: Peter Stark
name: John
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier]]> 19445813 In The Measure of a Mountain, Seattle writer Bruce Barcott sets out to know Rainier. His method is exploratory, meandering, personal. In a masterful work of narrative journalism, Barcott adroitly explores not only the natural place of Rainier, but also the psychology and meaning of all mountains.]]> 290 Bruce Barcott 1570618003 John 3 Invigorating and intriguing

I've never climbed any peak, but as an armchair traveller, living beneath a volcanic cousin to Rainier on the Pacific Ring of Fire that's just as high (nearly 15k ft.), I understand Barcott's mingled enthusiasm and unease. As a Northwest native, he's acclimated to seeing the sight from his Seattle home. And having driven into the national park myself to get closer to it, I can attest to its hypnotic looming power. As he notes at the start of this narrative, it can mesmerize you. It did him, at the cost (which he regards with equanimity, of his marriage. I'm not sure how he managed to make a living after devoting his all to the quest to confront the mountain, nevertheless...

He covers the pull of the summit, and glaciers, fatalities, insects, outhouses, REI stores and their guides, religion, native lore, and the sheer difficulties of going up and coming down (the latter of course being more dangerous) all earn their due in chatty chapters. Their tone varies from reverential to jocular, mordant to giddy, and self-deprecating to mocking. For justifiably, he gets in plenty of digs at the egotism pervading today's shelf of memoirs. 150-plus years ago, the summit impelled the publication; now the contract and the sponsorship precedes the telling of the tall tale by too many of the boastful bands able to afford bespoke extreme adventures aloft. These elitists truly grated on me.

The prose rambles, which fits the subject. Barcott keeps the proceedings steady in his presentation. It reminds me of long-form journalism, a series of pieces that range beyond the actual locale. For he examines the awe of these rocky rises throughout history, and how their appeal to some can blend in dread for others, once untethered from horizontal safety, sufficient air, and stable bearings. He brings in his eclectic knowledge gleaned from those who've studied these elevated expanses, and thus you'll get a crash course in mountaineering. But he takes pains to relate his own novice steps, easing the trek into byways which encompass a far broader investigation, perhaps which could have been either a companion book, as the focus on Rainier proper comes and goes out of view, in his voracious quest.

While the scope and pace both satisfied, the arrangement of the sections can feel scattershot. The photos are oddly grainy impressions rather than resembling the expected contours in Washington State. This may be intended to mirror the wooziness of an oxygen-scant ascendant, but it doesn't assist those flatlanders like me who haven't the foggiest what the slopes fka Mt Tacoma register as up close.

And lacking decent maps (one only, too fuzzy, drawn too vaguely, and it cuts off the borders of the park, at least in Kindle), the routes taken by Barcott and his predecessors can't be consulted. However, he's done his research and documents findings in a reader-friendly account which balances specialized insider details with enough context to orient clueless readers like me.]]> 4.03 1997 The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier
author: Bruce Barcott
name: John
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves:
review:
Invigorating and intriguing

I've never climbed any peak, but as an armchair traveller, living beneath a volcanic cousin to Rainier on the Pacific Ring of Fire that's just as high (nearly 15k ft.), I understand Barcott's mingled enthusiasm and unease. As a Northwest native, he's acclimated to seeing the sight from his Seattle home. And having driven into the national park myself to get closer to it, I can attest to its hypnotic looming power. As he notes at the start of this narrative, it can mesmerize you. It did him, at the cost (which he regards with equanimity, of his marriage. I'm not sure how he managed to make a living after devoting his all to the quest to confront the mountain, nevertheless...

He covers the pull of the summit, and glaciers, fatalities, insects, outhouses, REI stores and their guides, religion, native lore, and the sheer difficulties of going up and coming down (the latter of course being more dangerous) all earn their due in chatty chapters. Their tone varies from reverential to jocular, mordant to giddy, and self-deprecating to mocking. For justifiably, he gets in plenty of digs at the egotism pervading today's shelf of memoirs. 150-plus years ago, the summit impelled the publication; now the contract and the sponsorship precedes the telling of the tall tale by too many of the boastful bands able to afford bespoke extreme adventures aloft. These elitists truly grated on me.

The prose rambles, which fits the subject. Barcott keeps the proceedings steady in his presentation. It reminds me of long-form journalism, a series of pieces that range beyond the actual locale. For he examines the awe of these rocky rises throughout history, and how their appeal to some can blend in dread for others, once untethered from horizontal safety, sufficient air, and stable bearings. He brings in his eclectic knowledge gleaned from those who've studied these elevated expanses, and thus you'll get a crash course in mountaineering. But he takes pains to relate his own novice steps, easing the trek into byways which encompass a far broader investigation, perhaps which could have been either a companion book, as the focus on Rainier proper comes and goes out of view, in his voracious quest.

While the scope and pace both satisfied, the arrangement of the sections can feel scattershot. The photos are oddly grainy impressions rather than resembling the expected contours in Washington State. This may be intended to mirror the wooziness of an oxygen-scant ascendant, but it doesn't assist those flatlanders like me who haven't the foggiest what the slopes fka Mt Tacoma register as up close.

And lacking decent maps (one only, too fuzzy, drawn too vaguely, and it cuts off the borders of the park, at least in Kindle), the routes taken by Barcott and his predecessors can't be consulted. However, he's done his research and documents findings in a reader-friendly account which balances specialized insider details with enough context to orient clueless readers like me.
]]> Garcia: An American Life 23569452 Dylan went electric, when a generation danced naked at Woodstock, and when Ken Kesey started experimenting with acid. Jerry Garcia was one of the most gifted musicians of all time, and he was a member of one of the most worshiped rock 'n' roll bands in history. Now, Blair Jackson, who covered the Grateful Dead for twenty-five years, gives us an unparalleled portrait of Garcia--the musical genius, the brilliant songwriter, and ultimately, the tortured soul plagued by his own addiction. With more than forty photographs, many of them previously unpublished, An American Life is the ultimate tribute to the man who, Bob Dylan said, "had no equal."]]> 532 Blair Jackson 1101664061 John 4 Solid read for fans, accessible for the rest of us

I'd rank this alongside publicist Dennis McNally's Long Strange Trip as the best surveys of respectively Jerry and the band. While sharing with Robert Greenfield's oral history Dark Star a comprehensive narrative of the entire arc of Garcia's life, career, music, and legacy, I aver that Jackson, as a veteran journalist, possesses the skills to provide a study which incorporates Robert Hunter's lyrics and the songs which in their melodic and technical structures articulate the reasons why his subtitle might resonate. He doesn't belabor the rationale.

Jackson begins with a glimpse of Garcia's paternal roots in La Coruña, in Spanish Galicia, demonstrating a broad context within which to place Garcia and his colleagues, as they gravitated towards San Francisco, the Peninsula, and the California scene of beatnik to hippies. In the opening, Jackson admits he's leaning towards the better nature inherent in his flawed subject. Like Greenfield, another longtime witness to many a classic rock spectacle, Jackson draws on intimate knowledge, personal interviews, and wide research. He takes time to document details, such as where in the Santa Cruz Mountains the family getaway cabin lurked (Lompico, built 1945) which other guides to this topic never bother to mention. I found it comprehensive without being nitpicking. While the author tends towards interpreting events directed by Garcia, or not so managed, with a generous spirit, he calls out Jerry when the record, or testimony, demands truth.

One correction: Wally Legate, an early crony in Palo Alto, probably didn't attend the College of the Redwoods (Eureka, CA) but the U. of Redlands down at the other end of the Golden State, if Wally's drug trip revealed none majesty of a "gingerbread" chapel. The latter, formerly Baptist-founded, campus in the Inland Empire has that. I doubt a public junior college has a match...But overall, that's the only slip I caught, with only one misspelling, rare among publications nowadays. It finds the right pacing, like an ideal gig of the man himself.]]> 4.40 1999 Garcia: An American Life
author: Blair Jackson
name: John
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
Solid read for fans, accessible for the rest of us

I'd rank this alongside publicist Dennis McNally's Long Strange Trip as the best surveys of respectively Jerry and the band. While sharing with Robert Greenfield's oral history Dark Star a comprehensive narrative of the entire arc of Garcia's life, career, music, and legacy, I aver that Jackson, as a veteran journalist, possesses the skills to provide a study which incorporates Robert Hunter's lyrics and the songs which in their melodic and technical structures articulate the reasons why his subtitle might resonate. He doesn't belabor the rationale.

Jackson begins with a glimpse of Garcia's paternal roots in La Coruña, in Spanish Galicia, demonstrating a broad context within which to place Garcia and his colleagues, as they gravitated towards San Francisco, the Peninsula, and the California scene of beatnik to hippies. In the opening, Jackson admits he's leaning towards the better nature inherent in his flawed subject. Like Greenfield, another longtime witness to many a classic rock spectacle, Jackson draws on intimate knowledge, personal interviews, and wide research. He takes time to document details, such as where in the Santa Cruz Mountains the family getaway cabin lurked (Lompico, built 1945) which other guides to this topic never bother to mention. I found it comprehensive without being nitpicking. While the author tends towards interpreting events directed by Garcia, or not so managed, with a generous spirit, he calls out Jerry when the record, or testimony, demands truth.

One correction: Wally Legate, an early crony in Palo Alto, probably didn't attend the College of the Redwoods (Eureka, CA) but the U. of Redlands down at the other end of the Golden State, if Wally's drug trip revealed none majesty of a "gingerbread" chapel. The latter, formerly Baptist-founded, campus in the Inland Empire has that. I doubt a public junior college has a match...But overall, that's the only slip I caught, with only one misspelling, rare among publications nowadays. It finds the right pacing, like an ideal gig of the man himself.
]]> <![CDATA[Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia]]> 19120394 406 Robert Greenfield 0062268317 John 3
The testimonies of those in his circle, some critique, lacked the band's input. But this appeared in its first stages of composition a year after Garcia's death in 1995. As Greenfield explains in his preface, and he reinforces in the coda, his project collates, rather than comments upon, the recollections and the reactions of those who knew Garcia intimately. To a point. For as more than one confidante here confides, Jerry created a cocoon against the demands of touring to support his own appetites, those of his mates however defined, and those who relied on the GR to make a living as their fame accelerated.

He also stinted on commitments, could be ruthless or oblivious about those who failed to meet his demands whether as spouses or as partners in business, as he blithely shunted aside problems about management, and ignored too often the interventions, information, and insight that concerned people provided. Might lunch organic, but pig out post-gig at a convenience store on ice cream and a hot dog.

Perhaps Dark Star, as its title symbolizes in subtle ways, attests to the ideals he was seen to embody for maybe millions of his fellow citizens, as well as the follies to hedonism, rationalization, and self-delusion so common not only to his hippie postwar generation, but those of us before and after the peaks of the mythic Sixties. His potential realized and squandered serves as cautionary tale, or legend.]]> 4.17 1996 Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia
author: Robert Greenfield
name: John
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves:
review:
As I expected after reviewing Greenfield on Bear and Timothy Leary respectively. While some fans of the Grateful Dead bristle at the extended decline described by his wives, colleagues, and their children, I found it fairly balanced. For quibble that "technically" the cigarettes, booze, and junk food habits did him in rather than heroin, Jerry's heart, obesity, and sleep apnea surely weren't eased by addiction to whatever "Persian opium" meant in street terms translated into prolonged damage for far too long.

The testimonies of those in his circle, some critique, lacked the band's input. But this appeared in its first stages of composition a year after Garcia's death in 1995. As Greenfield explains in his preface, and he reinforces in the coda, his project collates, rather than comments upon, the recollections and the reactions of those who knew Garcia intimately. To a point. For as more than one confidante here confides, Jerry created a cocoon against the demands of touring to support his own appetites, those of his mates however defined, and those who relied on the GR to make a living as their fame accelerated.

He also stinted on commitments, could be ruthless or oblivious about those who failed to meet his demands whether as spouses or as partners in business, as he blithely shunted aside problems about management, and ignored too often the interventions, information, and insight that concerned people provided. Might lunch organic, but pig out post-gig at a convenience store on ice cream and a hot dog.

Perhaps Dark Star, as its title symbolizes in subtle ways, attests to the ideals he was seen to embody for maybe millions of his fellow citizens, as well as the follies to hedonism, rationalization, and self-delusion so common not only to his hippie postwar generation, but those of us before and after the peaks of the mythic Sixties. His potential realized and squandered serves as cautionary tale, or legend.
]]> Why the Grateful Dead Matter 26778523 185 Michael Benson 1611688515 John 3
And now I learned what ataraxia means. Apparently Bob Weir entered this state of transport beyond doubt or worry during China Cat one concert around 1970, and it cheers me to know of a condition that's transcended both the fear of death and worry about an afterlife among its features. Given my current mindset, welcome news. I'm by the by about five years younger than the author, so having come of age well after the "Pigpen" era, given he died when I wasn't even an adolescent yet. But like Benson, I share albeit in attenuated arrival his desire to figure out why the GR managed to endure.

The book, although nothing fanciful, assembles short chapters riffing, usually at brief length, on themes about the GR. While he repeats certain chestnuts that his diligent chronicling predecessors have challenged (Jerry likely didn't watch his father drown; he's not "Mexican" but might have been mistaken as such rather than Galician Spanish/ S.F. Irish Catholic; the Stones may not have deliberately delayed their Altamont appearance until after dark, the better to spotlight their filmed presence), he nods to academic respect paid the ensemble: that indeed matters for future generations.

And for once, personal anecdotes, of a 1977 Berkeley JGB gig and the GR Englishtown concert, don't drag the proceedings down. Burton recounts his encounters vividly, with allowances for being under various influences at the time, and they added verisimilitude and verve. I still can't fathom the order if any of the volume itself. But as a gathering of stream-of-consciousness takes, quick looks at key players and moments, and assorted mumbles of moments maybe only fans will understand, it's that.]]> 4.02 2016 Why the Grateful Dead Matter
author: Michael Benson
name: John
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:
A grab bag, an assortment of musings from a fan, with no particular rhyme nor reason other than to expound at varying length on his titular assertion. As I've recently reviewed ambitious studies by David Brown, Dennis McNally, and Peter Richardson on the Grateful Dead, I enjoyed the ramblings. I am not a Deadhead, however, but a sympathetic bystander intrigued by their legacy and long impacts.

And now I learned what ataraxia means. Apparently Bob Weir entered this state of transport beyond doubt or worry during China Cat one concert around 1970, and it cheers me to know of a condition that's transcended both the fear of death and worry about an afterlife among its features. Given my current mindset, welcome news. I'm by the by about five years younger than the author, so having come of age well after the "Pigpen" era, given he died when I wasn't even an adolescent yet. But like Benson, I share albeit in attenuated arrival his desire to figure out why the GR managed to endure.

The book, although nothing fanciful, assembles short chapters riffing, usually at brief length, on themes about the GR. While he repeats certain chestnuts that his diligent chronicling predecessors have challenged (Jerry likely didn't watch his father drown; he's not "Mexican" but might have been mistaken as such rather than Galician Spanish/ S.F. Irish Catholic; the Stones may not have deliberately delayed their Altamont appearance until after dark, the better to spotlight their filmed presence), he nods to academic respect paid the ensemble: that indeed matters for future generations.

And for once, personal anecdotes, of a 1977 Berkeley JGB gig and the GR Englishtown concert, don't drag the proceedings down. Burton recounts his encounters vividly, with allowances for being under various influences at the time, and they added verisimilitude and verve. I still can't fathom the order if any of the volume itself. But as a gathering of stream-of-consciousness takes, quick looks at key players and moments, and assorted mumbles of moments maybe only fans will understand, it's that.
]]> Fires in the Mirror 24613315 210 Anna Deavere Smith 1101911298 John 3 4.29 1993 Fires in the Mirror
author: Anna Deavere Smith
name: John
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi]]> 11285051 City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, William Dalrymple explores the seven "dead" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city-today's Delhi. Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed spirits that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like regeneration no matter how many times it is destroyed. Entertaining, fascinating, and informative, City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure.]]> 352 William Dalrymple 0007378785 John 3
It makes for more engaging telling with his landlady, Mrs Puri, and the antic order she tries to impose on the chaos, amidst the monsoons, heat, and squalor. I wish Dalrymple had stuck with the present-day helter-skelter, which is fascinating enough. But his academic bent instead burrows, in reverse chronology, into the striated layers of lore and fact upon which Delhi has been burnt, built, and then the cycle all over, perhaps dozens of times. Going back into the Mahabharata, he traces these tracks.

As with the previous books I've read of his, it's a combination of somewhat eye-glazing recitals of bygone events and sparkling vignettes when those who share his passion for a past few care about spark the narrative with characters and conversations. Here, rather than the assembly of vast stores of information, is where Dalrymple shines. When he listens to those around him, the pace oft quickens. ]]> 4.22 1993 City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
author: William Dalrymple
name: John
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:
Since I reviewed his new history of Greater India, The Golden Road; his journalism on the modern subcontinent from a generation ago, The Age of Kali; his first travelogue, To Xanadu,and his wandering among the Christians of the Near East, To the Holy Mountain, I figured I'd give this account, from what's now going on half a century ago in a Delhi doubtless far altered since and likely little for the better. He's placed to be able to capture the remnants of the Raj, the incursions of both Sikhs and immigrants from Punjab after Partition, and the disintegrating edifices of imperial Lutyens.

It makes for more engaging telling with his landlady, Mrs Puri, and the antic order she tries to impose on the chaos, amidst the monsoons, heat, and squalor. I wish Dalrymple had stuck with the present-day helter-skelter, which is fascinating enough. But his academic bent instead burrows, in reverse chronology, into the striated layers of lore and fact upon which Delhi has been burnt, built, and then the cycle all over, perhaps dozens of times. Going back into the Mahabharata, he traces these tracks.

As with the previous books I've read of his, it's a combination of somewhat eye-glazing recitals of bygone events and sparkling vignettes when those who share his passion for a past few care about spark the narrative with characters and conversations. Here, rather than the assembly of vast stores of information, is where Dalrymple shines. When he listens to those around him, the pace oft quickens.
]]>