THE BOOK CORNER

with Advisory Group Leader, Kay Henderson
Welcome! The book corner will be about nonfiction and fiction with a variety of genres.
Most of the reviews will be of books that I have read and enjoyed.

decemBER 2023

Thought of the month: “Thanks to books, it’s possible to learn not only about the people around us every day, but to live in totally different worlds.” This applies to all of us: children, teens, and adults. I find that varying my reading material, and including children’s books, teen fiction, adult fiction and non-fiction, keeps me and my reading balanced.  Give it a try!

Christmas is almost upon us.  Books should be an integral part of our gift giving. In Iceland at this time of year they celebrate Jolabokaflod, or “book flood,” on Christmas Eve, which revolves around giving and receiving new books, often accompanied by delicious treats like hot cocoa, Icelandic chocolates, or even a special beer.  So, perhaps this year we can all be honorary Icelanders and give books! (Here are some suggestions:)

December’s Book Recommendations: This month, Kay is providing a list of books for different ages that will make great Christmas gifts.

Children’s books
“Each and every adult is a former eight-year-old, wide open with yearning and possibility, almost unbearably alert to the world’s wonders and its dangers all at once.”  ~ Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo is an American children's fiction author. She has published over 25 novels, including Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician's Elephant, the Mercy Watson series, and Flora & Ulysses.  She is a rare two-time winner of the Newberry medal. Her most recent book, The Puppets of Spelhorst, came out earlier this year.

The Magician’s Elephant (2009) is the story of an orphan boy Peter who sets out to find his missing sister. He asks a fortune teller if she is still alive. She advises him to find a magician with an elephant. Peter must then complete three difficult tasks.  An enjoyable read for all ages.

The Tale of Despereaux (2000) tells of a once thriving place of sunshine and delicious soup, the faraway kingdom of Dor, which has fallen into sadness. An accident leaves the king brokenhearted; the sunshine fades, and the soup disappears, and into this world is born Despereaux, a book-loving mouse and friend to Princess Pea. When Pea is kidnapped, Despereaux must find a knight's brave heart within his tiny body and rescue his friend.

Teen, Young Adult & Adult Fiction
Joanna Ho is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Eyes that Kiss in the Corners; Eyes that Speak to the Stars; Playing at the Border: A Story of Yo-Yo Ma; One Day; Say My Name; and The Silence that Binds Us, which received the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Young Adult Honor. Her passion for equity in books and education is matched only by her love of homemade chocolate chip cookies, outdoor adventures, and dance parties with her kids. Looking at her book Eyes that Kiss in the Corners inspired me to see if she had written anything other than children’s books.  She had!

The Silence that Binds Us (2022) is an exquisite, heart-rending debut young adult novel that masterfully explores timely themes of mental health, racism, and classism and will inspire all to speak truth to power. The central character, Maybelline Chen, isn't the Chinese Taiwanese American daughter her mother expects her to be. One of the lessons that I learned from this book is that we can change the narrative from what we were taught in the past. Every generation seems to go through this!

Markus Zusak began writing fiction at age 16 and pursued a degree in teaching. Before becoming a professional author, Zusak worked briefly as a house painter, a janitor and a high school English teacher. In 1999, Zusak's first novel, The Underdog, was published after many initial rejections.

The Book Thief was published in 2005 and has since been translated into more than 40 languages. The Book Thief was adapted as a film of the same name in 2013. It is a historical fiction novel by the Australian author Markus Zusak, set in Nazi Germany during World War II.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

Many things save this book from being all-out depressing. It's never morbid, for a start. A lively humor dances through the pages, and the richness of the descriptions as well as the richness of the characters' hearts cannot fail to lift you up. Also, it's great to read such a balanced story, where ordinary Germans - even those who are blond and blue-eyed - are as much at risk of losing their lives, of being persecuted, as the Jews themselves.

The Book Thief is not one of those books you read compulsively, desperate to find out what’s on the next page. No. It is, in fact, better to read it slowly, in small doses, in a way that allows you to savor every word and absorb the power and the magic it contains.

Both The Book Thief and the last recommendation (below) are books I have and have reread and are in my personal library.  

Calvin Miller held a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee and M.Div. and D. Min. degrees from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo. A former Southern Baptist pastor and professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Miller had served from 1999-2007 at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, most recently as professor of preaching and pastoral ministry.  He died in 2012 at the age of 75 from complications of open-heart surgery.  He was the author of more than 40 books, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry, he was described as a writer of love letters to the Lord.

A reviewer of Miller’s best-selling 1975 trilogy “The Singer Trilogy” described Miller as a “troubadour, singing a love song to his Lord,” written by Beeson dean Timothy George. Books contained in The Singer Trilogy are The Singer, The Song and The Finale; these books also come as separate books.  I first read The Singer in 1976.  When the trilogy was published, I acquired that book.  The illustrations are amazing.

Through the story of The Singer, his Star-Song and his battles with the World Hater, Calvin Miller has created a book full of life. The trilogy is a powerful tale of incarnation and redemption.  The Singer quickly became a favorite of a variety of readers, pastors, students, teachers, etc.  The books recount the story of Christ through an allegorical and poetic narrative of a Singer whose Song could not be silenced. 

A quote from The Singer:

“Hate sometimes stands quite close to love. God too stands often near to evil - like silent chessmen - side by side. Only the color of the squares is different.”

Thanks for reading this past year.  I sincerely hope that a few of the books that have been reviewed have touched you in some way. Either in learning something new, an exploration of a different genre than you usually read or made you see things from another angle or even made you laugh just a little.  Thanks, Kay

NOVEMBER 2023

Quote of the month: “You can’t skip chapters, that’s not how life works. You have to read every line, meet every character. You won’t enjoy all of it. Hell, some chapters will make you cry for weeks. You will read things you don’t want to read; you will have moments when you don’t want pages to end. But you have to keep going. Stories keep the world revolving. Live yours, don’t miss out.” - Courtney Peppernell, Healing the Heart

November’s Book Recommendations: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Matsukawa

I am fascinated by the concept of time. I know nothing of quantum physics or Einstein's theories or God’s explanations.  I just know that I don’t get it. On that note, one of my favorite themes in literature is time travel, journeying to either the past or the future.  

This month’s books turned out to be time travel and travel to other worlds in a blink of an eye and are both by Japanese authors.  These books are relatively short and what I consider a quick read. Both books impressed me through the thought-provoking and imaginative story telling.

TWO QUESTIONS:  What would you change if you could travel back or forward in time? If you could go back, who would you want to meet?

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (b. Osaka, Japan, 1971).  Selling over a million copies worldwide, Before the Coffee Gets Cold was originally an award-winning play written by the author, adapted into a series of best-selling, internationally translated novels. Time travel is at the heart of this series, set in a peculiar, back-street-Tokyo cafe, where a cup of coffee offers more than just a caffeine buzz, and the opportunity to go back in time is open to anyone who can follow the strange set of rules. After the first book’s huge success, Kawaguchi went on to write three more in the series, with the latest, Before We Say Goodbye, having been released this year on the 14th of September. In this tale, there are as many curious and magical details to the time travel itself as there are characters to meet. The customers of cafe Funiculi Funicula may travel back in time, to any time they like, for any reason they may have. However, they must return before their cup of coffee is cold. And there are a few more caveats to keep in mind too: you can only time travel when sitting in a particular seat within the cafe and you must not move from that seat when you do travel to the past. Oh, and whatever is said and done when you do go back will never change the future. There is a powerful message through the stories of the four characters, emphasizing that, while the past is unchangeable, the future is always within reach.

The Cat Who Saved Books (Sosuke Natsukawa, 2021; translated by Louise Heal Kawai)

“Books can't live your life for you. The reader who forgets to walk on his own two feet is like an old encyclopedia, his head stuffed with out-of-date information. Unless someone else opens it up, it's nothing but a useless antique.” ~ The Cat Who Saved Books

Sosuke Natsukawa is a doctor in Nagano, Japan. His first book Kamisama No Karute (God’s Medical Records) won the Shogakukan Fiction Prize and received 2nd Place at the Japan Bookseller Awards. It sold over 1.5 million copies and was adapted into a film in Japan.  (As far as I could find, this first book has not been translated.) 

This charming book takes the reader on a quick adventure through many facets of ‘why we love books.’ Although it is light and an easy read, it presents some important thoughts on the concept of books and reading and is therefore more than simply a book to entertain the reader. 

The premise concerns a bookish high school student, Rintaro Natsuki, a young man who is poised to sell his grandfather's used-book shop after his grandfather’s death. Our hero is, as he constantly reminds us, a very ordinary person... but with the help of a magical cat, a charming friend-who-is-a-girl, and a classic hero's journey plot device, the story unfolds, whereby our hero discovers more about books, and much about himself, by story's end.

An enthralling tale of books, first love, fantasy, and an unusual friendship with a talking cat, The Cat Who Saved Books is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words. The writing here is very crisp and simple. There's no attempt to impress the reader with flowery language or big words; it's just the simple telling of a tale... and therefore, a fast and easy read. But the adventures our hero experiences provoke thoughtful responses in the reader, regarding the nature of books and what they mean to us.

“My takeaway from this sweet fable was the idea that books have souls, if they are read and loved. As a reader, I have always felt that good books give me something, a window into their characters' lives and perils, but I never thought of the reciprocal action, that my reading and appreciating a book might help give it a soul, to keep it viable, even if it was no longer a popular read.” (An Amazon book reviewer)

October 2023

Quote of the month: “Now, I read only books that please me, and at the very first sense of drudgery I fling the offending text into the fire and it’s on to the next. Life is not so short as they say, but it’s too short to suffer in our leisure and entertainments” ~ Patrick deWitt

October's Book Recommendation: The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt

Patrick deWitt is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. Born on Vancouver Island, Patric deWitt lives in Portland, Oregon and has acquired American citizenship. As of 2023, he has written five novels: Ablutions, The Sisters Brothers, Undermajordomo Minor, French Exit and The Librarianist.

It started in 2011, when Canadian-born writer Patrick deWitt rustled up praise from around the world for his weirdly witty western, The Sisters Brothers. The best-selling novel about a pair of sibling assassins was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and later became the basis for a movie starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix.

That international success set expectations high, but deWitt, who seems as unflappable as his deadpan assassins, has shown no signs of feeling boxed in. His next novel, Undermajordomo Minor, was a gothic adventure, and then, in another course change, came a brittle comedy of manners called French Exit.

A quotes from deWitt:

“For some of us, the shape and sound of a line is as important as it’s content.” 

“Now, I read only books that please me, and at the very first sense of drudgery I fling the offending text into the fire and it’s on to the next.  Life is not so short as they say, but it’s too short to suffer in our leisure and entertainments”

For those of you that have read previous reviews by me, you will know that these quotes plays a major role in the books that I finish.  I, also like this quote as I’m grateful that I have learned it and sad that it took me soon long to apply it:

Here are just a couple of other quotes from The Librarianist that I most enjoyed:

“The language-based life of the mind was a needed thing in the syrup-slow era of our elders, but who has time for it now? There aren’t any metalsmiths anymore, and soon there’ll be no authors, publishers, booksellers — the entire industry will topple into the sea, like Atlantis; and the librarianists will be buried most deeply in the silt.” 

“There was defiance in his eyes but also a measure of apology.  It was clear he suffered both from poor luck and authentic stupidity”

“She had been holding onto her response during the duffer’s interruption; now she passed it off for Bob to hold…” 

Bob Comet, deWitt’s sepia-toned hero, is 71 years old, healthy, tidy and  “not unhappy.” Since retiring from the public library where he spent his entire professional career, he’s enjoyed a life of almost uninterrupted solitude in the house his mother left to him decades earlier. “He had no friends, per se,” deWitt writes. “He communicated with the world partly by walking through it, but mainly by reading about it. Bob had read novels exclusively and dedicatedly from childhood and through to the present.”

I liked this book after the first chapter. It is such a lovely portrayal of a quiet man getting through life the best he can. There are so many little details that give so much depth to the story, I really found myself reading slowly so I wouldn't miss anything. It is also giving a look at the older population and how they cope with their final years. It is a beautifully written book.

Bob is more an introvert than truly melancholy — taking joy where he can find it, but never really seeking it outside of books over his many years — and it all adds up to a plot that is recognizable as a real, human life.

What quickly becomes clear, however, is that this not-unhappiness comes from decades unruffled by the drama of other people. Instead, Bob lives vicariously through literature, first poring over adventure stories and later graduating to “the dependable literary themes of loss, death, heartbreak, and abject alienation.”

September 2023

Quote of the month: “We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content” ~ Emile Zola, French novelist

September's Book Series Recommendation: The Arkady Renko Novels by Martin Cruz Smith (Kay references Gorky Park and Independence Square. There are 10 novels in the series)

The end of summer is in sight and there is still time for some light reading. If you’re up for a fun and fast detective novel, author Martin Cruz Smith, offers us something special. After graduation from college with a BA in creative writing, Mr. Smith worked as a journalist from 1965 to 1969, and he began writing fiction in the early 1970’s. He wrote as Martin Smith and then discovered there were other Martin Smiths. His publisher asked him to add a name, and he picked his paternal grandmother’s surname “Cruz.” He has written several novels using a pen name.

The series of his, of which I have read all, features a detective named Arkady Renko, who is the son of a Stalin-loving Red Army General. Arkady is a man wary of Soviet corruption who tries his best to remain honest in a society that does not necessarily appreciate that quality. The cases that Arkady pursues are scattered all over Russia, so fortunately Smith’s books usually contain a map. His characters often reflect real people in modern day Russia, such as journalists and dissidents. The first book in the series is Gorky Park (1981), and I am currently reading the tenth book Independence Square (2023), which features a case that happens during the run up to Putin’s war against Ukraine. One reviewer stated that he thought Gorky Park was such an instant success because the idea of a Russian hero was new and intriguing to the reader. You can find a list of Martin’s books on the internet. I personally don’t think that you have to read them in order, although he does refer to previous people as well as previous incidents in the novels. If you are a purest, then you would want to read them in order.

A final note from the back flap: “Few fiction writers have better captured contemporary Russia with more insight or authenticity than Martin Cruz Smith. He does the same here (Independence Square) for Ukraine and the events that preceded Russia’s invasion. This book is a timely and uniquely personal mystery-novel-meets-political thriller…”

August 2023

Quote of the month: “He envied Schiff the way he spent his time alone inside a book, the way he always had a written page in front of him - a document, a manual - alive in two worlds at the same time, the world outside, the “real” one, and a world enclosed on the page.”  ~ Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins.

August’s Book Recommendation(s): Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins (2023, Simon & Schuster, 544 pages) and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015, Milkweed Editions; 408 pages)

Both books are outstanding. In my opinion, Properties of Thirst, a novel set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American Dream, is written in an exceptional format and style. The only other writing that has struck me in this fashion I found in the books of Hilary Mantel (i.e., The Mirror and the Light, Wolf Hall, & Bring Up the Bodies; someday I’ll review this series). Check out the NY times book review for Properties of Thirst.

I listened to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowing and the Teachings of Plants, a collection of essays, and was introduced to another way of seeing our environment and the biology around us, one that we often take for granted and either don’t understand and/or about which we don’t bother to educate ourselves.

Marianne Wiggins is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction. She was nominated for Evidence of Things Unseen. She married Salman Rushdie in January of 1988, and they were later divorced. In 2016 Wiggins suffered a stroke, leaving her unable to read, write, or remember what she had written as she prepared Properties. She regained those abilities and completed her novel Properties of Thirst over the course of several years. She was assisted by her daughter Lara Porzak. In the end notes of Properties of Thirst, she writes about this experience.

With Properties Wiggins returns with a powerful epic set on a Southern California ranch during WWII. Rocky Rhodes named the ranch Three Chairs, after Thoreau’s idea that three chairs are for “society”—or “company,” as Rocky puts it. A widowed scion of a wealthy family back east, he lives there with his daughter, Sunny, and his twin sister. Sunny has a twin brother, Stryker, who is presumed to have died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Rocky has spent much of his fortune battling the Los Angeles Water Board, furious that the city has stolen all the local water. Things get worse when Schiff, a young lawyer from the Department of the Interior, is sent to the area to establish an internment camp for Japanese Americans. Morally outraged himself, Schiff befriends the Rhodes family and falls for Sunny, a self-taught cook who takes inspiration from notes left by her mother. Here, Wiggins’ wordplay is stellar, as when the properties of a souffle become a metaphor for the emotions of those about to eat it: “Sunny folded one thing—the inflated egg whites—into the other, le fond—with the greatest care, aware of both their fragile properties.” The dialogue is full of grit, and Wiggins manages to capture a big swath of mid-century America by placing a blue-blooded family into a desert inland complete with adobe haciendas, desert blooms, and Hollywood movie sets, while throughout, the Rhodes hold out hope for Stryker’s survival. Wiggins’ masterpiece is one for the ages. 

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director for the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Kimmerer has said about the book that, "I wanted readers to understand that Indigenous knowledge and Western science are both powerful ways of knowing, and that by using them together we can imagine a more just and joyful relationship with the Earth." Plants described in the book include squash, algae, goldenrod, etc. This concept has gained traction in the last few years. Listening to Braiding Sweetgrass by Ms. Kimmerer, I enjoyed her voice, expressions, and intonations.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

“Most people don’t really see plants or understand plants or what they give us,” Kimmerer explains, “so my act of reciprocity is, having been shown plants as gifts, as intelligences other than our own, as these amazing, creative beings – good lord, they can photosynthesize, that still blows my mind! – I want to help them become visible to people. People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how it’s a gift.”

July 2023

Quote of the month: “You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword, and we'll try and kill each other like civilized people?" ~The Man in Black from The Princess Bride

July’s Book Recommendation: The Princess Bride by William Goldman

It’s summer and some fun reading is in store.  However, it is not a beach read genre (well it can be if you want) I read this book years ago, in fact, I think I was living in Park City, Utah when I read it.  For me, this was a ‘close the book and laugh out loud” type of read.  Not found very often.

I would guess that many of you have seen the movie.  I have watched it several times (I normally don’t watch movies a second time).  In fact, if you haven’t seen the movie, you can borrow my copy.  The movie is as good as the book (unusual, I know), probably because Goldman wrote the book as well as the screenplay.

William Goldman (died 2018) was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men.

The premise behind this novel is touching. Before leaving his daughters for a business trip to California, Goldman promised he would write them a story about anything they wanted. One of his daughters wanted a story about a princess and the other a bride, so Goldman fashioned those terms together into his title.

As one reviewer said: “And as you read, just remember the books that molded you into who you are today. Think about the stories that taught you life's lessons before life got around to doing it. Think about them and appreciate them, and remember that every book is a lesson, one way or another....”

The book is fun, romantic, adventurous and has: Fencing, Fighting, Torture, Poison, True Love, Hate, Revenge, Giants, Hunters, Bad Men, Good Men, Beautifulest Ladies, Snakes, Spiders, Beasts, Pain, Death, Brave Men, Coward Men, Strongest Men, Chases, Escapes, Lies, Truths, Passion, AND Miracles.

Enjoy the writing, imagine the actors and slip back to the time when you weren’t worried about climate change, hostilities and all the other issues that prey on us each day.

I’ll get back to those next time.  Happy July!

June 2023

Quote of the month:  “I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them. After my father died, the book that sort of saved my life was Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Because of that experience, I firmly believe there are books whose greatness actually enables you to live, to do something. And sometimes, human beings need story and narrative more than they need nourishment and food.” - Emma Thompson in @Oprah’s O Magazine.

June Book Recommendations: The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I have a confession to make.  I like really well written (in my opinion), thick books.  You know the ones that are over 600 pages.  If you don’t appreciate them, then you won’t appreciate this month’s selections.  I like those well-written, thick books because I don’t want the writing or the story to end.  With that caveat for June, I have an author to tell you about: Abraham Verghese.

Verghese is an American physician, author, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford University Medical School.  An interesting side note for me is that Dr. Verghese did a residency in Johnson City, Tennessee, where I lived for two years.

The books of his that I have read are Cutting for Stone, and The Covenant of Water, his most recent release.  Having just finished “Covenant,” I knew that I had to recommend this amazing author. The books are as follows:

The Covenant of Water: An epic new work of historical fiction which the author, in a letter to his readers, says is based on his own mother's stories. It is set in Kerala, India, spanning the years from 1900 to 1977. The book is about families, relationships, culture, religion, art and medicine (notably leprosy).  Kerala is the location where “Doubting Thomas,” of the gospels purportedly brought Christianity, in approximately 52 AD. 

Cutting for Stone is historical fiction but borrows liberally from Verghese's life experiences. It tells the story of twin brothers who are born in Missing, an Ethiopian hospital, into shocking and tragic circumstances.  The twins come of age as Ethiopia enters its revolution.  “An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.”

Perhaps you would never have encountered Verghese and his world. Take this as a sign to find out more!

may 2023

Quote of the day: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the world, but then you read.” James Baldwin, author 

May’s Book Recommendations: Africa is Not A Country by Dipo Faloyin, King Leopold’ Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild & Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado

Among the many qualities that I appreciate about Pinnacle is the encouragement to acquire and pursue knowledge. I had planned another review for May; however, with all that is happening in the world and some of my recent reading, I switched gears. This month I am reviewing two non-fiction books that I read recently. They are about Africa, and if you are paying any attention to world news, you know that there is a great deal of trouble there. Plus, to lighten things up a little, I’m offering one memoir that was enjoyable fun to read. I hope you find them interesting, enlightening, and helpful.

Africa is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin. Dipo was born in Chicago, raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and now lives in London.  The author explains how Europe’s powers carved up the African continent during the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 with no thought for the existing ethnic and linguistic boundaries.

There are today 54 states in Africa with between 1,200 and 3,000 languages.  In the book, the author writes about the many misconceptions people have about Africa, about the “do gooders” who actually did a significant amount of harm, as well as about the problems with tribal boundaries.  He does not offer a remedy (nothing is ever simple) to a problem rooted in a centuries-old global power imbalance.  Again, if you are reading world news, that same global power imbalance continues.

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild. During the 19th-century Berlin Conference, King Leopold of Belgium was able to ‘obtain’ the Congo as his own personal country through deception and manipulation. This book also talks about the explorations and influence of both Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone, much of which I had never known! Hochschild reveals not only the horrific context of European colonialism, but gives us an intimate snapshot of the lives of those African peoples most affected by such devastation.

Both of the Africa books offer historical and personal information, bringing new light to what we have historically deemed the “Dark Continent.”

The final book is Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado. Gesine is a well-known pastry chef who lives in Vermont. Recently I was at the library searching for a specific cookbook I had read a review of, but when I checked, I found Gesine’s instead. It was a fun and quick read. Gesine is Sandra Bullock’s sister and was the head of a production company in Hollywood. She states, “Back then in Hollywood, I was resentful of healthy living and becoming so emotionally guarded…so I baked in search of balance and hope.” The book reveals her transition from LA to Vermont, her discovery of baking and her struggles of owning and working in a bakery. One of the nice rewards is that there is a recipe at the end of each chapter. It might even inspire you to give some of them a try.

ENJOY!

april 2023

Quote of the day: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read." Groucho Marx

April’s Book Recommendation: The Vineyards of Champagne by Juliet Blackwell

I just finished this book for a book group that I attend and was surprised at how much I learned and how much I enjoyed the book.

For those who may not be familiar with the history of Champagne, France, it was a region caught up in the middle of many wars throughout the history of the country, but in particular, World War I had a devastating effect on the people and vineyards of the area. So much so, that the city of Reims was all but destroyed during the War, forcing its people underground into the Champagne caves for safety from the bombings. In these underground caves, entire communities were formed where people lived, worked, and survived during a time when it was almost a guaranteed death if they stayed above ground. It was here where the Rémois lived for years while the Great War raged above.

There is a lot to see across the fields and forests where French and Allied forces fought Germans for 303 days on the Western Front.  There are battle fields of Verdun and the history that was World War I. It is not hard to get to Verdun if you are staying in Champagne or even the Alsace regions, as the battlefield is only about an hour and a half drive from Reims.

But, beneath the fields and forest there are intersections of tunnels and enormous carved out rooms 125 feet below ground.  These were originally carved as quarries in the Early Middle Ages by the Romans for their buildings and roads.  Now they are used by the various houses of Champagne growers and vineyards to age their wines.  This is by law the only designated beverage named Champagne.  The rest of us sell “sparkling wine”.

This book is full of love, loss and finding yourself.

In present day, Rosalyn Acosta travels to Champagne to select vintages for her Napa-based employer. Rosalyn doesn't much care for champagne--or France, for that matter. Since the untimely death of her young husband, Rosalyn finds it a challenge to enjoy anything at all. But as she reads through a precious cache of WWI letters and retraces the lives lived in the limestone tunnels, Rosalyn will unravel a mystery hidden for decades...and find a way to savor her own life again.

Pour yourself a glass of Champagne (or Sparkling wine) and enjoy this book.  I did.

march 2023

Quote of the day: "A book is a dream that you hold in your hand."  Neil Gaiman, English author

Happy March!  Instead of a book review, I thought I would do an author review.  It seems that my library books on hold all of a sudden released books by Erik Larson.  For years, I have appreciated him as an author.  He writes non-fiction in a readable, entertaining way. I first read “The Devil in the White City” years ago and it remains one of my favorite books and is often mentioned when people, who are talking about books they enjoyed, relate the memorable ones. I thought I would list the books of his I have read with a short synopsis of each book.

The Devil in the White City
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. 

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into the enchantment of the Guilded Age, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

In The Garden of Beasts
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

Thunderstruck
In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.

Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect murder.

The Splendid and the Vile
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

ENJOY.

february 2023

Quote of the day: “We are like books.  Most people only see our cover, the minority read the introduction, many people believe the critics.  Few will know our intent.”   Emile Zola

February’s Book Recommendation: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

I first read this book in August 2021 after I had seen Arctic Terns nesting in Iceland.  Whenever someone asks me for a book that I would recommend, this book comes into the conversation.  (Of course, anytime you ask me about a book recommendation you must know that it won’t be a short conversation.)

Migrations is for “the lovers, the wanderers, and those who are drawn to the beauty of the earth. The book is set in the near future.  The main character, Franny Stone, might be the focus of the novel…but the ocean, the birds in the sky, and the arctics are all equally important.”

Author Charlotte McConaghy, an Australian author who lives in Sydney has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film and Television and Radio School. Charlotte relates that the book came from learning about the Arctic Tern and their courageously long migration which is about 25,000 miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic and the forces of climate change that is making the journey harder for them each year.  She notes the rapid rate of extinction of our planet’s wild animals and states that this “stark truth forced me to imagine the world without animals and how that might look and feel, which became the setting for Migrations”. In Migrations, there are no more monkeys, chimps, apes or gorillas, big cats, bears or reptiles living in their natural habitat. The last known wolf died in captivity the previous winter.

As a side note: Many experts now believe that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. The last one was 65.6 million years ago which wiped out dinosaurs.

Published as The Last Migration in Australia and the U.K., the book follows Franny Stone, a tempestuous young woman who lands in Greenland to track the migration of the Arctic Tern. She elbows her way onto the Saghani, one of the few fishing boats allowed to overturn the oceans for the last scraps of sea life in a world that’s like ours but with one key difference: climate change, and particularly the extinction of nearly all the world’s wildlife, has accelerated to a devastating pitch.

One of the few species left is the Arctic Tern.  Franny, an ornithologist of sorts, has managed to attach tracking bands to three birds but has no way to follow their path.  She enlists the Saghani’s prickly captain, who agrees to follow the terns in hopes that the birds will lead them to fish. What the Saghani crew doesn’t know is that Franny, harboring an ocean’s worth of guilt, is bent on self-destruction and can’t always control the collateral damage.

The Southern Bookseller Review published a review about this book that says it better than I could.  “Migrations is for the lovers, the wanderers, and those who are drawn to the beauty of the earth. The main character, Franny Stone, might be the focus of the novel…but the ocean, the birds in the sky, and the arctic are all equally important. Franny convinces a fishing crew to let her hitch a ride on their ship in the North Atlantic so that she can conduct an individual study on Arctic Terns and their migration. The fish are in short supply, the crew is a band of misfits, and Franny has an ulterior motive stemming from a troubled past. Little by little, all of the truths revealed are colored by the settings of Galway, Ireland and Scotland, Newfoundland/Greenland and ultimately the Antarctic continent.  For me, there are two stories in this book: 1) The wanderlust that exists in many of us looking for a place (or a person) to call home. And though we may find it, the need for exploration never ceases. And 2) The conservation of the natural world and all of its occupants should not be discarded by humanity. All in all, the writing was excellent; the settings were majestic; the epilogue was magnificent.”

A Fun Note:  The high stakes of her novel, and its extraordinary twists, have attracted Hollywood: Claire Foy and Benedict Cumberbatch are teaming up to adapt Migrations, with Foy set to play Franny and Cumberbatch as coproducer at his shingle, SunnyMarch. Dec 22, 2023

January 2023

Quote of the day:  "If a book told you something when you were 15, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book"  Ursula K. LeGuin

January’s Book Recommendation: The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina  (translated by Lucy Rand) 

"A disconnected phone on which you could talk to your lost loved ones. Could something like that really console people? And what would she say to her mother anyway? What could she possibly say to her little girl? The thought alone made her dizzy.”  

In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami that followed a 9.0 earthquake in Japan;  20,000 lives were lost, and an untold number of families were devastated by the loss, a loss that continues to haunt these families. This international bestselling novel has been sold in 21 countries.  It is about grief, mourning and the job of survival. It is inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnect "wind" phone and is a place of pilgrimage and solace since the tsunami.  It is a story of both love and loss, the phone really exists and is still in use today.  Furthermore, there is one in the rainforest in Olympia, Wa. that was inspired by "The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World".  (I've attached a news article describing the Washington one.)

When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward:  Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain.  Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden.  There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief.  As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around.

Soon Yui makes her own pilgrimage to the phone booth.  But once there, she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver.  Instead she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of her mother's death.

Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, this book points to a healing that can come after great pain and loss.

Each main chapter in the book is separated by a concise interluding chapter that acts as a random fragmented memory. A receipt for a frame, a description of an object, a list of the ten most vivid memories of a person, what Yui's mother and daughter were wearing of the morning of 11 March 2011, etc.  If you have traveled in Japan, you will recognize many of them.

As mentioned above.  Here is an article from "Seattle Refined" titled "An old phone placed in an Olympia park is a tool for grieving, hope." Click here to read it.

December 2022

For December, I found I was having mixed feelings about a book review. Is it too sad, is it too violent, should it have a Christmas theme, etc. etc. etc.? So, I thought I would relate a custom that we celebrated in our family when my daughters were young. We would give a book usually a reference book like a good dictionary (before google), a book of maps and geography, a book of trivia about history, you can fill in the gaps.

Which bring to mind the current custom in Iceland. Which is fitting since Iceland is one of my favorite countries.

Jolabokaflod is one of the most unique and charming Iceland Christmas traditions. The people of Iceland celebrate that tradition on Christmas Eve. Jolabokaflod translates into "Christmas Book Flood". The tradition is to give or receive new books on Christmas Eve. It's not just about the giving though---it's also about the reading. In the United States, popular holiday gifts come and go from year to year. But in Iceland, the best Christmas gift is a book---and it has been that way for decades.

Two theories seem to pop up about Jolabokaflod. It began as a way to promote literacy in Iceland. A study from 1800's found that only 50% of the population could read. So, giving and receiving new books on Christmas Eve may have been a way to encourage people to learn how to read. Today, the literacy rate in Iceland is 99%.

The second theory dates to World War II, when strict currency restrictions limited the amount of imported giftware in Iceland. So giving books was the answer for a gift. Rosie Goldsmith of the BBC says that Iceland "has more writers, more book published and more books read per head than anywhere else in the world.

november 2022

November’s Book Recommendation: Lethal Tides by Catherine Musemeche.
All books that I review can be found at Scottsdale Public Libraries.

Lethal Tides by Catherine Musemeche: I am two-thirds through this book and I find it fascinating as well as informative. Former Admiral Wm. H McRaven stated "Magnificently researched, brilliantly written...immensely entertaining and reads like an action novel."

This book is about Mary Sears and the Marine Scientists who helped win World War II. Mary Sears was an oceanographer who was recruited at the beginning of WWII to provide intelligence about wave and tide predictions, currents and landing beaches in the Pacific as well as the Atlantic Oceans. One of her first projects dealt with studying undersea temperatures, which were especially significant for submarines as the report included intelligence especially about hazards like tides, reefs, and waves. I lived and worked in the Marianas and so appreciated her chapter on charting the landing sites for this historic battle. The review from the Lone Star Literary Life is lengthy and informative, click here to read it.

October 2022

October’s Book Recommendation: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. This book is about the 4-day Battle of Gettysburg and is not the usual dry, detailed battle scene, war story. Each chapter in the book alternates between a Confederate and a Union point of view by a general officer. (think Stonewall Jackson, Joshua Chamberlin) The title is a metaphor of the conflict between the dual nature of humans--good and bad--which lies at the heart of this novel. The battle isn't just on the ground in Gettysburg; it is also in the hearts of each of the novel's characters.

I was so impressed with this book that upon my suggestion four of my friends also read the book and then we traveled to Gettysburg and saw the scenes described through the pages of "The Killer Angels." The battle field docents were well acquainted with this book. Perhaps this is a vacation for you and your family.