1rocketjk
OK! I'm back for more fun. Three years ago, given my second full year of retirement and first year of Covid, I hit an amazing 82 books read, 31 of which I counted as "Off the shelf." Over the last two years, my reading totals and my "off-the-shelf" reading, were off somewhat, in part due to the fact that I took on quite a few longer books and because I joined a reading group for the first time in my life, and none of the group selections counted as "off the shelf" for mine, except those I selected myself. Anyway, my 2021 totals were 67 books read, with only 22 off-the-shelfers, well short of my 30-book O.T.S. goal. 2022 brought me 53 books read, and 24 O.T.S., just short of my 25-book goal. This year I'll challenge myself to make it to 30 books read from my very crowded shelves. In addition to the books I read straight through, I like to read anthologies, collections and other books of short entries one story/chapter at a time instead of plowing through them all at once. I have a couple of stacks of such books from which I read in this manner between the books I read from cover to cover (novels and histories, mostly). So I call these my "between books." When I finish an "Off the Shelf between book," I add it to my yearly list. I'm nearing the end of quite a few of these as the New Year begins, which helps explain my more optimistic goal for this year. Cheers, all!
Book 1: Show - The Magazine of the Performing Arts, January 1962 edited by Robert M. Wool
Book 2: The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Tales edited by Ray Bradbury
Book 3: Best American Short Stories 1957 edited by Martha Foley
Book 4: Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known by Dean Acheson
Book 5: Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography by William E Gienapp
Book 6: An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America by Andrew Young
Book 7: The River of Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker
Book 8: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
Book 9: Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between by Laila M. El-Haddad
Book 10: No Cheering in the Press Box edited by Jerome Holtzman
Book 11: Spring Sowing by Liam O'Flaherty
Book 12: Good for a Laugh: a New Collection of Humorous Tidbits and Anecdotes from Aardvark to Zythum by Bennett Cerf
Book 13: Mission to Moscow by Joseph E. Davies
Book 14: Out of the Red by Red Smith
Book 15: Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
Book 16: Life Magazine - October 24, 1969 edited by Ralph Graves
Book 17: Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Book 18: Call for the Dead by John le Carre
Book 19: Coronet Magazine - June 1, 1938 edited by Arnold Gingrich
Book 20: Intrigue in Paris by Sterling Noel
Book 21: Mapp & Lucia by E.F. Benson
Book 22: Those Other People by Mary King O'Donnell
Book 23: Life Magazine - July 2, 1965 edited by George P. Hunt
Book 24: Great Sports Stories edited by Herman L. Masin
Book 25: The Missouri Review - Volume 21 Number 2: Men edited by Morgan Speer
Book 26: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey
Book 27: An Old Guy Who Feels Good by Worden McDonald
2Jackie_K
Welcome back, good luck!
Also, your book 1 author has the best name ever! Is he even real?! :D
Also, your book 1 author has the best name ever! Is he even real?! :D
3rocketjk
>2 Jackie_K: "Is he even real?! :D"
No. The line is just a placeholder for when I finally read/finish an off-the-shelfer this year. It is a good name, though. :)
No. The line is just a placeholder for when I finally read/finish an off-the-shelfer this year. It is a good name, though. :)
4Jackie_K
>3 rocketjk: Haha, that's brilliant! I still think it's the best name ever!
5rocketjk
>4 Jackie_K: Thanks! The P. stands for Placeholder.
6rabbitprincess
Welcome back and have a great reading year! Love the idea of "between books".
7Jackie_K
>6 rabbitprincess: Yes. I'm thinking I might use litmags for that sort of thing, given that I've subscribed to a few but am not very good at getting round to actually reading them.
8MissWatson
Welcome back!
11rosalita
I take a similar approach to anthologies and story collections, Jerry. I've also made a habit of jotting down a one- or two-sentence comment for each story in a small notebook so that when I finally finish the book I can look back and assess what I thought of it as a whole, as well as the individual stories.
12curioussquared
Happy new year, Jerry! I have you starred. Happy ROOTing :)
13rocketjk
>11 rosalita: " I've also made a habit of jotting down a one- or two-sentence comment for each story in a small notebook so that when I finally finish the book I can look back and assess what I thought of it as a whole, as well as the individual stories.
"
Yes, I should start doing that. It's the case that by the time I've finished with a long-ish anthology, I often have to go back skimming through the stories to try to remember what I've read.
"
Yes, I should start doing that. It's the case that by the time I've finished with a long-ish anthology, I often have to go back skimming through the stories to try to remember what I've read.
14connie53
>11 rosalita: That is a very good suggestion I will follow.
15rosalita
>13 rocketjk: >14 connie53: I hope it works for both of you. I find it's really helped me be more thoughtful about engaging with the collection as a whole, similar to what Jerry said about only reading one story/chapter at a sitting.
16rocketjk
Book 1: Show - The Magazine of the Performing Arts, January 1962 edited by Robert M. Wool
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). I have a stack of old magazines in the closet of my home office that I've picked up along the way at thrift stores and used bookshops and such. I have been gradually reading through them with an eye toward the recycling bin, except for rare occasions when I find them worth keeping. Several on that stack are different editions of Show Magazine. Last year I read the July 1962 edition. And while this January 1962 edition was interesting, it didn't quite match its July cousin in quality.
There were a series of interesting reviews and columns, most notably Virgil Thompson's reviews of the recent operas adapted from the novels The Crucible and Wings of the Dove, John Simon's lament about the ennui of the theater of that day entitled "How to be Bored in Three Acts" and Leonard Feather's unfortunate (as seen from my own tastes) savaging of the avant garde jazz of his day, which he refers to as "anti-jazz." Of the feature stories, the most interesting are theater critic Harold Hobson's interview with John Gielgud, a complaint about the "current" condition of New York's 42nd Street area by Henry Hope Reed, Jr. and Gay Talese, and a feature about Otto Preminger's encampment in Washington, D.C. for the filming of the movie version of Advise and Consent.
The next magazine added to the rotation will be still another edition of Show, this one from March 1963.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). I have a stack of old magazines in the closet of my home office that I've picked up along the way at thrift stores and used bookshops and such. I have been gradually reading through them with an eye toward the recycling bin, except for rare occasions when I find them worth keeping. Several on that stack are different editions of Show Magazine. Last year I read the July 1962 edition. And while this January 1962 edition was interesting, it didn't quite match its July cousin in quality.
There were a series of interesting reviews and columns, most notably Virgil Thompson's reviews of the recent operas adapted from the novels The Crucible and Wings of the Dove, John Simon's lament about the ennui of the theater of that day entitled "How to be Bored in Three Acts" and Leonard Feather's unfortunate (as seen from my own tastes) savaging of the avant garde jazz of his day, which he refers to as "anti-jazz." Of the feature stories, the most interesting are theater critic Harold Hobson's interview with John Gielgud, a complaint about the "current" condition of New York's 42nd Street area by Henry Hope Reed, Jr. and Gay Talese, and a feature about Otto Preminger's encampment in Washington, D.C. for the filming of the movie version of Advise and Consent.
The next magazine added to the rotation will be still another edition of Show, this one from March 1963.
17karenmarie
Hi Jerry!
First time visitor. I’m originally from Southern Cal, and if I ever returned to live in CA, it would definitely be Northern Cal, having visited family and camped many times over the decades. I love the pics on your profile page of things found in books. I volunteer for a non-profit, too, the Friends of the Library here in central NC, and while sorting through book donations for our semi-annual sales, we find fascinating things all the time.
Good luck with your reading and Between Book goals.
First time visitor. I’m originally from Southern Cal, and if I ever returned to live in CA, it would definitely be Northern Cal, having visited family and camped many times over the decades. I love the pics on your profile page of things found in books. I volunteer for a non-profit, too, the Friends of the Library here in central NC, and while sorting through book donations for our semi-annual sales, we find fascinating things all the time.
Good luck with your reading and Between Book goals.
18rocketjk
>17 karenmarie: Hi Karen, Thanks for dropping in. Yes, those found items are a lot of fun. Adds a whole other level to the story of the book itself. All the best!
19rocketjk
Book 2: The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories edited by Ray Bradbury
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Finally another off-the-shelfer! This is a fun old paperback, published in 1956. As Bradbury makes clear in his introduction, he has put together a collection of stories that are much more appropriately thought of as fantasy rather than science fiction. It's an entertaining set of stories, although somewhat hit or miss. The famous title story, really a novella, is a tour de force of surrealist storytelling. I'd never read it before and was absolutely entranced throughout. That story sets up a standard, however, that none of the other, shorter, entries never come close to matching, except maybe perhaps Shirley Jackson's well-known "The Summer People." Of the rest, Oliver La Farge's "The Resting Place," with it's elements of Native American legends, and Loren Eiseley's subtle "Buzby's Pertified Woman" were my favorites. Also intriguing was "Earth's Holocaust" by none other than Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Finally another off-the-shelfer! This is a fun old paperback, published in 1956. As Bradbury makes clear in his introduction, he has put together a collection of stories that are much more appropriately thought of as fantasy rather than science fiction. It's an entertaining set of stories, although somewhat hit or miss. The famous title story, really a novella, is a tour de force of surrealist storytelling. I'd never read it before and was absolutely entranced throughout. That story sets up a standard, however, that none of the other, shorter, entries never come close to matching, except maybe perhaps Shirley Jackson's well-known "The Summer People." Of the rest, Oliver La Farge's "The Resting Place," with it's elements of Native American legends, and Loren Eiseley's subtle "Buzby's Pertified Woman" were my favorites. Also intriguing was "Earth's Holocaust" by none other than Nathaniel Hawthorne.
20Robertgreaves
Good to see you back, Jerry. Sorry I missed your thread earlier.
21rocketjk
Book 4: Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known by Dean Acheson
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Dean Acheson was a high-ranking U.S. diplomat throughout the WW2 war years and into the years immediately afterwards. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations and International Conferences from December 1944 through August 1945, then Under Secretary of State until June 1947 and finally returned to government service to become Secretary of State in the Truman administration from 1949 through 1953. Acheson was Secretary of State between George Marshall and John Foster Dulles.
This book contains a series of reminiscences/portraits of the diplomats and politicians he worked with (or, in some cases, against) and/or under during his time in the diplomatic corps. The book opens with chapters about Ernest Bevin and Robert Shuman, Acheson's opposite numbers for England and France, respectively, during the years at the end of, and immediately after, the war, when the large Western democracies were figuring out how they wanted to administer Western Europe and how to negotiate with Soviet Russia and create a united front against what they saw as Soviet plans for further expansion. There is a chapter, also, on Acheson's dealing with several Russian diplomats and their negotiating tactics. The chapters cover negotiations around the establishment of the United Nations, the administration of the post-war occupation of Germany and the establishment of the western alliance that became NATO. Of particular interest to me were the deliberations that led to the decision to bring West Germany into the alliance (i.e., to rearm them, a development that was viewed with some alarm, as I've learned from other reading, in many parts of Europe). While there was serious reluctance to take this step in some quarters, in the end the West Germans were seen by the U.S. and the Western European powers as a pivotal member of any alliance that would be able to stand up to Stalin and his successors.
Other politicians Acheson profiles here include Winston Churchill, Arthur Vandeberg (a Republican leader in the Senate whom Acheson describes as a tough opponent of the policies of the Truman administration who could nevertheless come around to support individual initiatives if he saw that the administration was, in fact, on the right track), George Marshall and Conrad Adenauer.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Dean Acheson was a high-ranking U.S. diplomat throughout the WW2 war years and into the years immediately afterwards. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations and International Conferences from December 1944 through August 1945, then Under Secretary of State until June 1947 and finally returned to government service to become Secretary of State in the Truman administration from 1949 through 1953. Acheson was Secretary of State between George Marshall and John Foster Dulles.
This book contains a series of reminiscences/portraits of the diplomats and politicians he worked with (or, in some cases, against) and/or under during his time in the diplomatic corps. The book opens with chapters about Ernest Bevin and Robert Shuman, Acheson's opposite numbers for England and France, respectively, during the years at the end of, and immediately after, the war, when the large Western democracies were figuring out how they wanted to administer Western Europe and how to negotiate with Soviet Russia and create a united front against what they saw as Soviet plans for further expansion. There is a chapter, also, on Acheson's dealing with several Russian diplomats and their negotiating tactics. The chapters cover negotiations around the establishment of the United Nations, the administration of the post-war occupation of Germany and the establishment of the western alliance that became NATO. Of particular interest to me were the deliberations that led to the decision to bring West Germany into the alliance (i.e., to rearm them, a development that was viewed with some alarm, as I've learned from other reading, in many parts of Europe). While there was serious reluctance to take this step in some quarters, in the end the West Germans were seen by the U.S. and the Western European powers as a pivotal member of any alliance that would be able to stand up to Stalin and his successors.
Other politicians Acheson profiles here include Winston Churchill, Arthur Vandeberg (a Republican leader in the Senate whom Acheson describes as a tough opponent of the policies of the Truman administration who could nevertheless come around to support individual initiatives if he saw that the administration was, in fact, on the right track), George Marshall and Conrad Adenauer.
22rocketjk
Whoops, I just realized I never included here my review of my third Off-the-Shelfer, so here it is:
Book 3: The Best American Short Stories 1957 edited by Martha Foley
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Going by what's found in this collection, the late 1950s was certainly a fertile time for American fiction. This excellent volume includes stories by Nelson Algren, Gina Berriault, Evan S. Connell, Jr., William Eastlake, Flannery O'Connor ("Greenleaf"), and Tillie Olson, to name the more famous authors.
Of the writers who were new to me, the highlights were "Man's Courage" about a Black officer at an Army training camp in the South, by Wyatt Blasingame, "Run, Run Away, Brother," about a man thinking back ruefully about his boyhood treatment of his brother, who has died in World War 2, by John Campbell Smith, "Saturday is a Poor Man's Sport," a story about sadness and loneliness (but still somehow beautiful) in a boarding house, by Henrietta Wiegel, and a quiet lovely story, again about brothers, called "Escape to the City," by Gordon Woodward.
Book 3: The Best American Short Stories 1957 edited by Martha Foley
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Going by what's found in this collection, the late 1950s was certainly a fertile time for American fiction. This excellent volume includes stories by Nelson Algren, Gina Berriault, Evan S. Connell, Jr., William Eastlake, Flannery O'Connor ("Greenleaf"), and Tillie Olson, to name the more famous authors.
Of the writers who were new to me, the highlights were "Man's Courage" about a Black officer at an Army training camp in the South, by Wyatt Blasingame, "Run, Run Away, Brother," about a man thinking back ruefully about his boyhood treatment of his brother, who has died in World War 2, by John Campbell Smith, "Saturday is a Poor Man's Sport," a story about sadness and loneliness (but still somehow beautiful) in a boarding house, by Henrietta Wiegel, and a quiet lovely story, again about brothers, called "Escape to the City," by Gordon Woodward.
23rocketjk
Book 5: Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography by William E. Gienapp
This is a very enjoyable, well written and relatively brief (200 pages) biography of Abraham Lincoln. The title infers that the book describes only Lincoln's term as president, but in fact it is neatly divided, pretty much in half. The first 100 pages provide a description of Lincoln's childhood and then his career in law and politics leading up to his Civil War administration, from his farm-bound childhood through his early adulthood working any odd job to keep afloat, to his apprenticeship in the legal field, his coming into his own as a lawyer and his career in Illinois state politics. It was interesting to learn that the upshot of the famous Lincoln-Douglass debates was that Lincoln lost the subsequent election to Douglas. This was all great, as far as I was concerned, because while I had read several accounts of Lincoln's presidency and handling of the war, my knowledge of Lincoln's pre-White House life was essentially made up of legend and shadow.
It was nice to learn that many of the legends surrounding Lincoln were essentially true. He did spend his early childhood living with his family in a log cabin. He did quickly become physically strong, able to wield an axe and cut wheat for hours, though he essentially disliked this sort of labor. He did become an almost unbeatable wrestler, and he was self-taught, taking any moment between farm labors to open a book. Also, he did, indeed, earn himself (and keep throughout his life), a reputation for honest dealings and personal integrity. And finally, he retained throughout his life a genuine humane touch and a desire to speak with and learn from farmers, laborers and merchants, men and women. Also, he was, indeed, afflicted with melancholy and depression throughout his life.
The second half of the book covers Lincoln's presidency and the war years. I already mostly knew the details of the progression of the war and Lincoln's struggles to get the commanders of the Army of the Potomac (from McClellan onward) to go on the offensive against the Confederate armies in the east, but Gienapp also did a fine job of filling in the political details of Lincoln's presidency, as he strove just as hard to hold together the coalition of extreme and moderate Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans wanted to press the war and were in favor of emancipation (gradually in the case of the moderates, immediately and fully in the case of the extremists). The other difference between the two were the degrees to which they believed the Southern states should be punished after the war's end. The Democrats believed in pressing the war only to keep the Southern state from seceding, but wanted to leave slavery in place. The extreme Democrats, who came to be known as Copperheads, were actually opposed to the war and wanted to begin negotiations to end it, allowing the Confederacy to remain in place. Though Lincoln, a mostly moderate Republican, had no patience for the Copperheads, he was skillful in keeping a mix of the rest in his cabinet and even in insisting on political appointments of generals of all political camps in order to ensure that all parties felt they had a stake in the outcome of the war. This ability to give his political rivals some ground, and the thick skin that enabled him to shrug off personal attacks and avoid grudge holding, Gienapp describes as among Lincoln's greatest strengths as a politician.
Book note: This book has been sitting in my Biography bookcase since my LT Big Bang, when I first posted my library here in 2008.
This is a very enjoyable, well written and relatively brief (200 pages) biography of Abraham Lincoln. The title infers that the book describes only Lincoln's term as president, but in fact it is neatly divided, pretty much in half. The first 100 pages provide a description of Lincoln's childhood and then his career in law and politics leading up to his Civil War administration, from his farm-bound childhood through his early adulthood working any odd job to keep afloat, to his apprenticeship in the legal field, his coming into his own as a lawyer and his career in Illinois state politics. It was interesting to learn that the upshot of the famous Lincoln-Douglass debates was that Lincoln lost the subsequent election to Douglas. This was all great, as far as I was concerned, because while I had read several accounts of Lincoln's presidency and handling of the war, my knowledge of Lincoln's pre-White House life was essentially made up of legend and shadow.
It was nice to learn that many of the legends surrounding Lincoln were essentially true. He did spend his early childhood living with his family in a log cabin. He did quickly become physically strong, able to wield an axe and cut wheat for hours, though he essentially disliked this sort of labor. He did become an almost unbeatable wrestler, and he was self-taught, taking any moment between farm labors to open a book. Also, he did, indeed, earn himself (and keep throughout his life), a reputation for honest dealings and personal integrity. And finally, he retained throughout his life a genuine humane touch and a desire to speak with and learn from farmers, laborers and merchants, men and women. Also, he was, indeed, afflicted with melancholy and depression throughout his life.
The second half of the book covers Lincoln's presidency and the war years. I already mostly knew the details of the progression of the war and Lincoln's struggles to get the commanders of the Army of the Potomac (from McClellan onward) to go on the offensive against the Confederate armies in the east, but Gienapp also did a fine job of filling in the political details of Lincoln's presidency, as he strove just as hard to hold together the coalition of extreme and moderate Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans wanted to press the war and were in favor of emancipation (gradually in the case of the moderates, immediately and fully in the case of the extremists). The other difference between the two were the degrees to which they believed the Southern states should be punished after the war's end. The Democrats believed in pressing the war only to keep the Southern state from seceding, but wanted to leave slavery in place. The extreme Democrats, who came to be known as Copperheads, were actually opposed to the war and wanted to begin negotiations to end it, allowing the Confederacy to remain in place. Though Lincoln, a mostly moderate Republican, had no patience for the Copperheads, he was skillful in keeping a mix of the rest in his cabinet and even in insisting on political appointments of generals of all political camps in order to ensure that all parties felt they had a stake in the outcome of the war. This ability to give his political rivals some ground, and the thick skin that enabled him to shrug off personal attacks and avoid grudge holding, Gienapp describes as among Lincoln's greatest strengths as a politician.
Book note: This book has been sitting in my Biography bookcase since my LT Big Bang, when I first posted my library here in 2008.
24rosalita
>23 rocketjk: while I had read several accounts of Lincoln's presidency and handling of the war, my knowledge of Lincoln's pre-White House life was essentially made up of legend and shadow
If you're interested in a different slant on Lincoln's pre-presidency years, I can heartily recommend Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan. I enjoyed learning about Lincoln's literary influences and how he used writing to work out his own views on the matter at hand.. If I may be so immodest as to direct you to my 2018 review: https://www.librarything.com/work/5555812/reviews/131171039
If you're interested in a different slant on Lincoln's pre-presidency years, I can heartily recommend Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan. I enjoyed learning about Lincoln's literary influences and how he used writing to work out his own views on the matter at hand.. If I may be so immodest as to direct you to my 2018 review: https://www.librarything.com/work/5555812/reviews/131171039
25rocketjk
>24 rosalita: Thanks! I will check out your review. Gienapp talks about those issues some. I was also interested to see that Lincoln would work out his opinions, often, by finding people to discuss them with, but taking up, in those discussions, the opposite side of the matter than the one he was leaning toward.
26rocketjk
Book 6: An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America by Andrew Young
Andrew Young's memoir of his life and, most importantly, his experiences working alongside Martin Luther King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is extremely detailed and, at 531 pages, takes a while to get through. However, the journey is very much worthwhile for anyone interested in reading a comprehensive history of the Civil Rights Movement in America. As a young Congregationalist minister and Civil Rights worker in the Deep South, Young, through his strong organizational skills and ability to communicate with young workers, eventually rose to a leadership position in the SCLC. Young's blow by blow account of Martin Luther King's growing prominence and the SCLC's growing importance on the national stage is truly fascinating and he recounts in detail the individual campaigns organized and carried out by the SCLC, either on their own or (most frequently) in tandem with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The rise and fall of the SCLC, SNCC and other organizations, and the Civil Rights Movement itself, all placed firmly within the context of a broad range of cultural, historical, political and economic factors, makes for very enlightening reading. Since this is a memoir rather than a straight history, Young is able to provide, also, a personal dimension that frames the events extremely well.
Andrew Young's memoir of his life and, most importantly, his experiences working alongside Martin Luther King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is extremely detailed and, at 531 pages, takes a while to get through. However, the journey is very much worthwhile for anyone interested in reading a comprehensive history of the Civil Rights Movement in America. As a young Congregationalist minister and Civil Rights worker in the Deep South, Young, through his strong organizational skills and ability to communicate with young workers, eventually rose to a leadership position in the SCLC. Young's blow by blow account of Martin Luther King's growing prominence and the SCLC's growing importance on the national stage is truly fascinating and he recounts in detail the individual campaigns organized and carried out by the SCLC, either on their own or (most frequently) in tandem with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The rise and fall of the SCLC, SNCC and other organizations, and the Civil Rights Movement itself, all placed firmly within the context of a broad range of cultural, historical, political and economic factors, makes for very enlightening reading. Since this is a memoir rather than a straight history, Young is able to provide, also, a personal dimension that frames the events extremely well.
27rocketjk
Book 7: The River of Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker
Wanting something a little lighter to read after An Easy Burden, I decided to visit our pulp fiction shelves. The River of Dancing Gods is the first book in Jack L. Chalker's 5-book Dancing Gods fantasy series, vintage 1980s. Joe is a cross country trucker, divorced and cut off from seeing his child barreling across a lonely nighttime highway. Marge is a woman in her 30s, on her own after leaving an abusive marriage and out on that same highway going she knows not where. Jumping out of the car of a would-be molester, Marge is hitchhiker through the night, when Joe picks her up. Soon, however, the road becomes hazy and seems to split in two. They take what seems to be the correct fork but in moments are confronted by a strange character standing in the middle of the road, which has, in fact, now disappeared. Long story short, Joe and Marge are recruited to come with this fellow to an alternate world where they will be able to help the good guys in a battle between good and evil in a world that's pre-technology. Well, of course they will. And of course they go. (Joe's alternative, so says the stranger, is to go back to the main road and die in a truck crash within minutes.)
Anyway, after a bit of training, Joe is super strong and has a magic sword. Marge has become a witch (that's a good thing) with ever heightening knowledge of magic spells. Off they are sent, with a few others, on a quest. Well, of course they are! All in all, I'd say there are some very clever bits, and even some humor. (Joe is instructed to give this magic sword a name, and is pleased to settle on calling it Irving, for example.) But there are a lot of holes left where the reader is left to fill in the blanks, world-building wise. Well there are plusses and minuses to fantasy series where each entry is only 263 pages rather than what seems to be the requisite 600 nowadays. There are lots of lazy use of empty-calorie adverbs like "incredibly" and "unbelievable" but otherwise the sentence-level cliches are kept down to a dull roar. We also get a fair helping of 80s-era sexism. Other than that, I found the whole thing to rather genial, but not particularly satisfying, and I won't be reading any more in the series.
Book note: I purchased this paperback from the "used-books for sale" shelf on the second floor of a pub somewhere in the middle of Ireland during a vacation there my wife and I took seven or so years back, so I do have a bit of sentimental attachment to my copy.
Wanting something a little lighter to read after An Easy Burden, I decided to visit our pulp fiction shelves. The River of Dancing Gods is the first book in Jack L. Chalker's 5-book Dancing Gods fantasy series, vintage 1980s. Joe is a cross country trucker, divorced and cut off from seeing his child barreling across a lonely nighttime highway. Marge is a woman in her 30s, on her own after leaving an abusive marriage and out on that same highway going she knows not where. Jumping out of the car of a would-be molester, Marge is hitchhiker through the night, when Joe picks her up. Soon, however, the road becomes hazy and seems to split in two. They take what seems to be the correct fork but in moments are confronted by a strange character standing in the middle of the road, which has, in fact, now disappeared. Long story short, Joe and Marge are recruited to come with this fellow to an alternate world where they will be able to help the good guys in a battle between good and evil in a world that's pre-technology. Well, of course they will. And of course they go. (Joe's alternative, so says the stranger, is to go back to the main road and die in a truck crash within minutes.)
Anyway, after a bit of training, Joe is super strong and has a magic sword. Marge has become a witch (that's a good thing) with ever heightening knowledge of magic spells. Off they are sent, with a few others, on a quest. Well, of course they are! All in all, I'd say there are some very clever bits, and even some humor. (Joe is instructed to give this magic sword a name, and is pleased to settle on calling it Irving, for example.) But there are a lot of holes left where the reader is left to fill in the blanks, world-building wise. Well there are plusses and minuses to fantasy series where each entry is only 263 pages rather than what seems to be the requisite 600 nowadays. There are lots of lazy use of empty-calorie adverbs like "incredibly" and "unbelievable" but otherwise the sentence-level cliches are kept down to a dull roar. We also get a fair helping of 80s-era sexism. Other than that, I found the whole thing to rather genial, but not particularly satisfying, and I won't be reading any more in the series.
Book note: I purchased this paperback from the "used-books for sale" shelf on the second floor of a pub somewhere in the middle of Ireland during a vacation there my wife and I took seven or so years back, so I do have a bit of sentimental attachment to my copy.
28rocketjk
Book 8: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
This is a reread, picked up again because it was my turn to make a selection, this month, for my reading group, and this is what I picked. I originally finished the collection in 2021, and I'm just going to repost my review from that first reading:
This is a wonderful collection of short stories, full of writing that manages to be heartbreaking and life affirming at the same time. The tales are loosely interconnected and reflective of Berlin's own life. Teaching, single parenthood, childhood time spent in South America, dealing with the grim lifestyle of the alcoholic and the relative peace of recovery, odd jobs, teaching, lovers and marriages, loneliness, spending time in Mexico City with her sister who is dying of cancer . . . the stories in this collection circle back around to these themes, inspecting them from a variety of perspectives. The observations are acute and Berlin's sentence-and paragraph-level writing often made me stop and reread. The title story is a tour de force, the building of a life on the page, minute detail by detail.
From the next to last story in the collection, "Wait a Minute:"
Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. You stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the globe on the desk. Persia, the Belgian Congo. The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. All is suspect, a trick to lull us, rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time.
When someone has a terminal disease, the soothing churn of time is shattered. Too fast, no time, I love you, have to finish this, tell him that. Wait a minute! I want to explain. Where is Toby, anyway? Or time turns sadistically slow. Death just hangs around while you wait for it to be night and then wait for it to be morning. Every day you've said good-bye a little. . . . The camote man whistles in the street below and then you help your sister into the sala to watch Mexico City news and then U.S. news with Peter Jennings. Her cats sit on her lap. She has oxygen but still their fur makes it hard to breathe. "No! Don't take them away. Wait a minute."
This is a reread, picked up again because it was my turn to make a selection, this month, for my reading group, and this is what I picked. I originally finished the collection in 2021, and I'm just going to repost my review from that first reading:
This is a wonderful collection of short stories, full of writing that manages to be heartbreaking and life affirming at the same time. The tales are loosely interconnected and reflective of Berlin's own life. Teaching, single parenthood, childhood time spent in South America, dealing with the grim lifestyle of the alcoholic and the relative peace of recovery, odd jobs, teaching, lovers and marriages, loneliness, spending time in Mexico City with her sister who is dying of cancer . . . the stories in this collection circle back around to these themes, inspecting them from a variety of perspectives. The observations are acute and Berlin's sentence-and paragraph-level writing often made me stop and reread. The title story is a tour de force, the building of a life on the page, minute detail by detail.
From the next to last story in the collection, "Wait a Minute:"
Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren't at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You're reading People in a surgery waiting room, or shivering outside on a balcony smoking all night long. You stare into space, sitting in your childhood bedroom with the globe on the desk. Persia, the Belgian Congo. The bad part is that when you return to your ordinary life all the routines, the marks of the day, seem like senseless lies. All is suspect, a trick to lull us, rock us back into the placid relentlessness of time.
When someone has a terminal disease, the soothing churn of time is shattered. Too fast, no time, I love you, have to finish this, tell him that. Wait a minute! I want to explain. Where is Toby, anyway? Or time turns sadistically slow. Death just hangs around while you wait for it to be night and then wait for it to be morning. Every day you've said good-bye a little. . . . The camote man whistles in the street below and then you help your sister into the sala to watch Mexico City news and then U.S. news with Peter Jennings. Her cats sit on her lap. She has oxygen but still their fur makes it hard to breathe. "No! Don't take them away. Wait a minute."
29rocketjk
Book 9: Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between by Laila M. El-Haddad
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post) Laila El-Haddad is a very influential Palestinian blogger and journalist from Gaza (although I can't find much about her that's recent and even her own blog hasn't been updated since 2016). Gaza Mom is a compilation of her blog posts and other writing from Gaza and elsewhere throughout the 2000s. She chronicles the oppressive tactics of the Israeli government and, especially, military to keep the Gazan people bottled up and subjugated. She describes everything from indiscriminate deadly gunfire, frequent flyovers by fighter jets to create havoc- and depression-inducing sonic booms, closing of border gates for weeks at a time to prevent people from getting in or out of Gaza, trade and import embargoes to create artificial shortages in goods and services . . . the list goes on and on. El-Haddid also describes the disfunction of the Gazan government and the inter-party violence that occasionally fills the streets of the city. She notes with mounting frustration the worldwide public inattention to all this and the information vacuum, courtesy of the international press, that prevents even well-meaning people around the world from understanding the real plight of the Palestinian people. This is all described within the context of El-Haddid's own family frustrations, including life as experienced by her own parents and her own young child, as well as the fact that her husband is prevented from joining them in Gaza because the Israeli government refuses to supply him the proper visa. The book is very detailed and, quite properly, depressing to read, which is the reason I decided early on to go through the volume one chapter at a time as one of my "between books." El-Haddid makes no attempt to create a "balanced" or "objective" journalistic account. This is the story of her own experiences and that of her family, as well as her observations of the maddening cruelty imposed by Israel. It's a tough read. You have to take El-Haddid's account at face value, and whether or not she's leaving any "balancing" information out, what she does provide is vivid enough to be convincing. Even if things were, let's say, not quite as bad as she was portraying them because she was leaving out this or that bit of information, it's all bad enough to be a demoralizing education, especially for those of us who grew up being taught to think of Israel as a country with a strong moral compass. Well, I was disabused of that myth long ago, but the details here are still difficult, and extremely important, to read. I can't imagine things have gotten any better over the 14 years or so since this book was published.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post) Laila El-Haddad is a very influential Palestinian blogger and journalist from Gaza (although I can't find much about her that's recent and even her own blog hasn't been updated since 2016). Gaza Mom is a compilation of her blog posts and other writing from Gaza and elsewhere throughout the 2000s. She chronicles the oppressive tactics of the Israeli government and, especially, military to keep the Gazan people bottled up and subjugated. She describes everything from indiscriminate deadly gunfire, frequent flyovers by fighter jets to create havoc- and depression-inducing sonic booms, closing of border gates for weeks at a time to prevent people from getting in or out of Gaza, trade and import embargoes to create artificial shortages in goods and services . . . the list goes on and on. El-Haddid also describes the disfunction of the Gazan government and the inter-party violence that occasionally fills the streets of the city. She notes with mounting frustration the worldwide public inattention to all this and the information vacuum, courtesy of the international press, that prevents even well-meaning people around the world from understanding the real plight of the Palestinian people. This is all described within the context of El-Haddid's own family frustrations, including life as experienced by her own parents and her own young child, as well as the fact that her husband is prevented from joining them in Gaza because the Israeli government refuses to supply him the proper visa. The book is very detailed and, quite properly, depressing to read, which is the reason I decided early on to go through the volume one chapter at a time as one of my "between books." El-Haddid makes no attempt to create a "balanced" or "objective" journalistic account. This is the story of her own experiences and that of her family, as well as her observations of the maddening cruelty imposed by Israel. It's a tough read. You have to take El-Haddid's account at face value, and whether or not she's leaving any "balancing" information out, what she does provide is vivid enough to be convincing. Even if things were, let's say, not quite as bad as she was portraying them because she was leaving out this or that bit of information, it's all bad enough to be a demoralizing education, especially for those of us who grew up being taught to think of Israel as a country with a strong moral compass. Well, I was disabused of that myth long ago, but the details here are still difficult, and extremely important, to read. I can't imagine things have gotten any better over the 14 years or so since this book was published.
30rocketjk
Book 10: No Cheering in the Press Box edited by Jerome Holtzman
Another "Between Book" finished (see first post). The full title of this collection, as you might be able to see in the cover image, is No Cheering in the Press Box: Recollections--Personal & Professional--by Eighteen Veteran American Sportswriters. And that pretty much sums up this marvelous book, first published in 1974. The interviewer and editor of the book, Jerome Holtzman, was himself a very well known sportswriter at the time, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sporting News and other national sports publications. Holtzman set out to record interviews with, as noted, 18 famous veteran sportswriters. One thing I appreciated about Holtzman's approach was that, in the presentation of these interviews, Holtzman took himself out of the narrative entirely. These aren't, then, question and answer type interviews. We have only the interview subjects speaking, so what we get are much more akin to oral histories.
Cumulatively, these oral histories present a picture of American sportswriting, and very much the American newspaper world, in general from the 1920s through the 1960s. For one thing, there were no journalism schools in those days. Most of these writers became newspapermen by showing up in newsrooms and wrangling a position whereby they made coffee and emptied wastepaper baskets. Maybe, eventually, they'd be sent out to cover a high school basketball game when whoever was originally assigned called in sick. If you did a good job, you might get another assignment.
Another part of that world described by many of the interviewees is the different relationship the reporters built with the players and managers (I should have noted earlier that the interviews deal mainly with baseball writing) in the earlier decades of the 20th century. The writers rode in the same trains during road trips, played in the same poker games, and often went on the same hunting and fishing trips. The writers describe the difficulty of still having to criticize a player's performance or a manager's decision making when it was someone you were friends with otherwise. On the other hand, they were much less likely to write about a player's personal flaws or misadventures of the field than sportswriters today are. Many of the writers offer their memories and impressions of particular players, people like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams, and even earlier players and managers. All in all, these writers were fine storytellers, which makes their oral histories fun to read. They paint a mostly romantic picture of that bygone era of American sports, though the difficulties of spending so much time on the road and in hotels are noted, as are the pressures of writing on deadline.
Of the eighteen journalists interviewed, I had only heard of seven: Paul Gallico, Shirley Povich, Abe Kemp, Ford Frick, Red Smith, John R. Tunis and Jimmy Cannon. Anyway, I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in baseball and baseball history, or even maybe just in the history of American journalism in general, as seen through the lens of the sports section.
Another "Between Book" finished (see first post). The full title of this collection, as you might be able to see in the cover image, is No Cheering in the Press Box: Recollections--Personal & Professional--by Eighteen Veteran American Sportswriters. And that pretty much sums up this marvelous book, first published in 1974. The interviewer and editor of the book, Jerome Holtzman, was himself a very well known sportswriter at the time, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sporting News and other national sports publications. Holtzman set out to record interviews with, as noted, 18 famous veteran sportswriters. One thing I appreciated about Holtzman's approach was that, in the presentation of these interviews, Holtzman took himself out of the narrative entirely. These aren't, then, question and answer type interviews. We have only the interview subjects speaking, so what we get are much more akin to oral histories.
Cumulatively, these oral histories present a picture of American sportswriting, and very much the American newspaper world, in general from the 1920s through the 1960s. For one thing, there were no journalism schools in those days. Most of these writers became newspapermen by showing up in newsrooms and wrangling a position whereby they made coffee and emptied wastepaper baskets. Maybe, eventually, they'd be sent out to cover a high school basketball game when whoever was originally assigned called in sick. If you did a good job, you might get another assignment.
Another part of that world described by many of the interviewees is the different relationship the reporters built with the players and managers (I should have noted earlier that the interviews deal mainly with baseball writing) in the earlier decades of the 20th century. The writers rode in the same trains during road trips, played in the same poker games, and often went on the same hunting and fishing trips. The writers describe the difficulty of still having to criticize a player's performance or a manager's decision making when it was someone you were friends with otherwise. On the other hand, they were much less likely to write about a player's personal flaws or misadventures of the field than sportswriters today are. Many of the writers offer their memories and impressions of particular players, people like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams, and even earlier players and managers. All in all, these writers were fine storytellers, which makes their oral histories fun to read. They paint a mostly romantic picture of that bygone era of American sports, though the difficulties of spending so much time on the road and in hotels are noted, as are the pressures of writing on deadline.
Of the eighteen journalists interviewed, I had only heard of seven: Paul Gallico, Shirley Povich, Abe Kemp, Ford Frick, Red Smith, John R. Tunis and Jimmy Cannon. Anyway, I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in baseball and baseball history, or even maybe just in the history of American journalism in general, as seen through the lens of the sports section.
31rosalita
>30 rocketjk: Pretty sure you already got me with this one, Jerry. I need to look for it at the library next time I go.
32rocketjk
Book 11: Spring Sowing by Liam O'Flaherty
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). The short story collection was published in 1926 by Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty. The stories are almost all "naturalist" (I don't know if that's a real term) in style. Some of the stories depict small town/rural Irish life of the era, and some actually see the world through the eyes of animals: a cow in a fever over the loss of her calf, a young seagull learning to fly, a rabbit being chased by a young boy and his hunting dog. The human-centric stories show us events like a humorous hoax perpetrated by one villager over his neighbors over a so-called treasure, group of villagers waiting anxiously on shore, hoping against hope that their friends, sons, husbands will return from the days' fishing expedition despite a fierce, unexpected storm that has suddenly blown their way, snipers on opposite roofs--and opposite sides--during the 1916 Easter Uprising. The two best stories are the collection's first and last. The opening title story shows us the first day of married life of a young farming couple. Clearly in love and exulting on their strength and energy for the day's tasks, the day passes wonderfully. And yet we are clued into the lifetime's worth of repetition and labor awaiting the two. The final story, "Going Into Exile," brings us the moving tale of a loving farming family whose two oldest children are about to depart, probably forever, for America. For the most part beautifully and simply written, in this collection O'Flaherty has provided us a vivid, humorous and affection (if occasionally melancholy) picture of life in rural Ireland during the early 20th century.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). The short story collection was published in 1926 by Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty. The stories are almost all "naturalist" (I don't know if that's a real term) in style. Some of the stories depict small town/rural Irish life of the era, and some actually see the world through the eyes of animals: a cow in a fever over the loss of her calf, a young seagull learning to fly, a rabbit being chased by a young boy and his hunting dog. The human-centric stories show us events like a humorous hoax perpetrated by one villager over his neighbors over a so-called treasure, group of villagers waiting anxiously on shore, hoping against hope that their friends, sons, husbands will return from the days' fishing expedition despite a fierce, unexpected storm that has suddenly blown their way, snipers on opposite roofs--and opposite sides--during the 1916 Easter Uprising. The two best stories are the collection's first and last. The opening title story shows us the first day of married life of a young farming couple. Clearly in love and exulting on their strength and energy for the day's tasks, the day passes wonderfully. And yet we are clued into the lifetime's worth of repetition and labor awaiting the two. The final story, "Going Into Exile," brings us the moving tale of a loving farming family whose two oldest children are about to depart, probably forever, for America. For the most part beautifully and simply written, in this collection O'Flaherty has provided us a vivid, humorous and affection (if occasionally melancholy) picture of life in rural Ireland during the early 20th century.
33rocketjk
Book 12: Good for a Laugh: a New Collection of Humorous Tidbits and Anecdotes from Aardvark to Zythum by Bennett Cerf
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Back in the days when publishers and columnists could be celebrities, Bennett Cerf lived the life. He was an observational humor columnist, frequent story-telling raconteur guest on the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffith shows and the like, and also a serious publisher. If you've ever seen the documentary made about John and Yoko's "Bed-In For Peace," you might recall Cerf as the smug, condescending "establishment" interviewer trying to trick John into admitting that the whole thing was a gag. On the other hand, in 1925, at the age of 27, Cerf, a vice-president at Modern Library, bought the company, and soon founded Random House, as well. Part of Cerf's public reputation was as a jokester and punster. Good for a Laugh is a 220-page collection of puns and humorous anecdotes, gathered roughly into topics like "D is for Doctors" and "I is for Intoxicants." Not all of them are knee slappers. In fact, relatively few of them are. Given that the book was published in 1952, you'll not be surprised to learn that there is plenty of sexism disguised as yuks. Somehow or other, I found browsing gradually through these chapters amusing, but I think it was more a case of happily imagining my father enjoying these jokes than of enjoying them myself. A note that I've just spent a few minutes paging through the volume again hoping to come up with something actually humorous enough to post here as a positive example, but couldn't really find anything worth sharing. Oh, well.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Back in the days when publishers and columnists could be celebrities, Bennett Cerf lived the life. He was an observational humor columnist, frequent story-telling raconteur guest on the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffith shows and the like, and also a serious publisher. If you've ever seen the documentary made about John and Yoko's "Bed-In For Peace," you might recall Cerf as the smug, condescending "establishment" interviewer trying to trick John into admitting that the whole thing was a gag. On the other hand, in 1925, at the age of 27, Cerf, a vice-president at Modern Library, bought the company, and soon founded Random House, as well. Part of Cerf's public reputation was as a jokester and punster. Good for a Laugh is a 220-page collection of puns and humorous anecdotes, gathered roughly into topics like "D is for Doctors" and "I is for Intoxicants." Not all of them are knee slappers. In fact, relatively few of them are. Given that the book was published in 1952, you'll not be surprised to learn that there is plenty of sexism disguised as yuks. Somehow or other, I found browsing gradually through these chapters amusing, but I think it was more a case of happily imagining my father enjoying these jokes than of enjoying them myself. A note that I've just spent a few minutes paging through the volume again hoping to come up with something actually humorous enough to post here as a positive example, but couldn't really find anything worth sharing. Oh, well.
34rocketjk
Book 13: Mission to Moscow by Joseph E. Davies
Mission to Moscow is Joseph E. Davies' memoir, sort of, of his two years (1936 through 1938) as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. I say "sort of" because the book is not a narrative but a series of journal and diary entries as well as many of Davies' official reports and correspondences with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, President Roosevelt, and other government officials. There is quite a bit of repetition, as sometimes, for example, a report to Hull is immediately followed by a very similar report to Roosevelt. That said, the accumulation of information and insights that Davies provides ends up being pretty interesting for someone (like me) with an interest in the events of this era. Davies was in Moscow, and part of the inner diplomatic circle, during the purge trials and the run-up to World War Two. Interestingly, this book was published in October 1941, just 6 weeks or so before Pearl Harbor.
Davies was not a career diplomat, but a lawyer and businessman. He'd met Roosevelt when they were both in the Wilson administration, where Davies was first Commissioner of Corporations and then the first Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Because of his interest in industry, and because he thought it was his job, Davies spent a lot of time touring Soviet Union examining the progress the country had made in the realm of factories, mining and agriculture. He was surprised and extremely impressed with how far they'd come so fast since the Revolution. Davies reports on this are interesting at first, but they become extremely detailed and repetitive, sad to say, long past the time that the point has been made.
Davies writes about the Soviet Purge Trials at some length. Davies wondered whether the execution of so many high ranking officers would cause the Red Army to turn against Stalin, but concluded in the end that the Stalin administration had instead cemented its power quite effectively. Davies also tells us that many in the Diplomatic Corps (in other words, other countries' ambassadors to Russia) concluded that many of the defendants were probably actually guilty. Davies describes a period of "terror" in which the arrests and executions numbered into the tens of thousands, and reached from the highest levels of military and government down onto the factory floor. In hindsight, in an addendum added in 1941, Davies also observed that Russia had been the only country invaded by Germany that hadn't had a significant problem of fifth columnists creating trouble from within. He concluded that the Purge trials had served to eliminate any potential fifth columnists. I haven't read any more contemporary histories of these trials and their actual purposes and results, so I don't know how accurate Davies observations are now considered.
Davies reports on the Soviet government's increasing frustration with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement politics towards Germany and their eventual outrage when they are left out of the negotiations that led to the infamous Munich Agreement. In fact, according to Davies, the Russians had been prepared to come to the aid of the Czechs militarily (as per the mutual defense treaty the had with Czechoslovakia and France). From the Munich Agreement, says Davies, the Soviets concluded that England and France were willing to give away Eastern Europe to Hitler in order to keep from being attacked themselves, and were probably willing to let Russia have to take on Hitler by themselves. This led them to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that would allow them to at least forestall a German attack.
In the book's opening sections, there is much talk of an American loan to Russia that hadn't been paid back, and had become a diplomatic sticking point. As I understood the issue, the U.S. Government didn't officially recognized the Soviet Government as the legitimate government of Russia until 1933. At that point, the Russians began to be attacked by Japan. Wishing to be able to purchase arms from the U.S., the Soviets had concluded a deal with the U.S. that included the proviso that, in exchange for official recognition, they would agree to pay back a loan that the U.S. had given to the Kerensky government. By 1936, the Russians had followed through with actual payment, and it was getting to be a problem between the two countries. During Davies time this matter was finally settled, with Stalin's direct intervention. The whole thing was evidently a big deal at the time but has been pretty much forgotten now, I mention it here only because it takes up so much of Davies' descriptions. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't until 1933 that the U.S. recognized the Soviet government, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been.
Davies prediction that a post-war Soviet Union would have little interest in trying to expand Communism further into Europe turned out to be short-sighted.
Well, that turned into a long review! But then again, the book is 513 pages plus another hundred or so pages of appendices. It is always of interest to me to read books about this era written before the war has played itself out. In 1936 and 1937, Davies was writing about trying to figure out ways to keep the peace in Europe. By 1938, he was writing about the importance of being prepared for war. The book can be very dry at times, but I did learn a lot about what the perspective of an ambassador in the Soviet Union would have been like during these years.
Book notes: My copy of Mission to Moscow is a sixth printing of the 1941 first edition. It's been on my shelf since before my 2008 LT "Big Bang."
Mission to Moscow is Joseph E. Davies' memoir, sort of, of his two years (1936 through 1938) as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. I say "sort of" because the book is not a narrative but a series of journal and diary entries as well as many of Davies' official reports and correspondences with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, President Roosevelt, and other government officials. There is quite a bit of repetition, as sometimes, for example, a report to Hull is immediately followed by a very similar report to Roosevelt. That said, the accumulation of information and insights that Davies provides ends up being pretty interesting for someone (like me) with an interest in the events of this era. Davies was in Moscow, and part of the inner diplomatic circle, during the purge trials and the run-up to World War Two. Interestingly, this book was published in October 1941, just 6 weeks or so before Pearl Harbor.
Davies was not a career diplomat, but a lawyer and businessman. He'd met Roosevelt when they were both in the Wilson administration, where Davies was first Commissioner of Corporations and then the first Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Because of his interest in industry, and because he thought it was his job, Davies spent a lot of time touring Soviet Union examining the progress the country had made in the realm of factories, mining and agriculture. He was surprised and extremely impressed with how far they'd come so fast since the Revolution. Davies reports on this are interesting at first, but they become extremely detailed and repetitive, sad to say, long past the time that the point has been made.
Davies writes about the Soviet Purge Trials at some length. Davies wondered whether the execution of so many high ranking officers would cause the Red Army to turn against Stalin, but concluded in the end that the Stalin administration had instead cemented its power quite effectively. Davies also tells us that many in the Diplomatic Corps (in other words, other countries' ambassadors to Russia) concluded that many of the defendants were probably actually guilty. Davies describes a period of "terror" in which the arrests and executions numbered into the tens of thousands, and reached from the highest levels of military and government down onto the factory floor. In hindsight, in an addendum added in 1941, Davies also observed that Russia had been the only country invaded by Germany that hadn't had a significant problem of fifth columnists creating trouble from within. He concluded that the Purge trials had served to eliminate any potential fifth columnists. I haven't read any more contemporary histories of these trials and their actual purposes and results, so I don't know how accurate Davies observations are now considered.
Davies reports on the Soviet government's increasing frustration with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement politics towards Germany and their eventual outrage when they are left out of the negotiations that led to the infamous Munich Agreement. In fact, according to Davies, the Russians had been prepared to come to the aid of the Czechs militarily (as per the mutual defense treaty the had with Czechoslovakia and France). From the Munich Agreement, says Davies, the Soviets concluded that England and France were willing to give away Eastern Europe to Hitler in order to keep from being attacked themselves, and were probably willing to let Russia have to take on Hitler by themselves. This led them to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that would allow them to at least forestall a German attack.
In the book's opening sections, there is much talk of an American loan to Russia that hadn't been paid back, and had become a diplomatic sticking point. As I understood the issue, the U.S. Government didn't officially recognized the Soviet Government as the legitimate government of Russia until 1933. At that point, the Russians began to be attacked by Japan. Wishing to be able to purchase arms from the U.S., the Soviets had concluded a deal with the U.S. that included the proviso that, in exchange for official recognition, they would agree to pay back a loan that the U.S. had given to the Kerensky government. By 1936, the Russians had followed through with actual payment, and it was getting to be a problem between the two countries. During Davies time this matter was finally settled, with Stalin's direct intervention. The whole thing was evidently a big deal at the time but has been pretty much forgotten now, I mention it here only because it takes up so much of Davies' descriptions. I was surprised to learn that it wasn't until 1933 that the U.S. recognized the Soviet government, but in retrospect I shouldn't have been.
Davies prediction that a post-war Soviet Union would have little interest in trying to expand Communism further into Europe turned out to be short-sighted.
Well, that turned into a long review! But then again, the book is 513 pages plus another hundred or so pages of appendices. It is always of interest to me to read books about this era written before the war has played itself out. In 1936 and 1937, Davies was writing about trying to figure out ways to keep the peace in Europe. By 1938, he was writing about the importance of being prepared for war. The book can be very dry at times, but I did learn a lot about what the perspective of an ambassador in the Soviet Union would have been like during these years.
Book notes: My copy of Mission to Moscow is a sixth printing of the 1941 first edition. It's been on my shelf since before my 2008 LT "Big Bang."
35rocketjk
Book 14: Out of the Red by Red Smith
Published in 1950, Out of the Red is a collection of columns written from 1946 through 1949 by one of America's pre-eminent sportswriters of that, or any, era.
Rather than being arranged in chronological order, the columns are grouped here by subject matter: predominantly baseball, boxing, college football, horse racing, fly fishing and basketball (which Smith famously abhorred). These columns, being published immediately post-WW2, very much reflect mainstream American attitudes of the era, which do not always wear well. For one thing, what we see reflected is very much a scotch and soda, back-slapping, mutuel window, locker room "man's world." Women are barely there, unless they're hosting cocktail parties for charitable organizations. And although Smith is scornful of Major League Baseball's pre-Jackie Robinson Jim Crow paradigm, in later columns Smith's own racism comes to the surface several times.
Smith, though, could indeed turn a phrase. For example:
"In the eighth Hermanski smashed a drive to the scoreboard. Henrich backed against the board and leaped either four or fourteen feet into the air. He stayed aloft so long he looked like an empty uniform hanging it its locker. When he came down he had the ball."
Smith's 1946 pre-Kentucky Derby column began like this:
"A consignment of apprentice horse lovers who have been touring the bourbon quarries and oats disposal plants of the bluegrass country pulled in here a trifle lame today and the bellhop rooming one of them clutched the newcomer's lapels before he grabbed his luggage.
'Look,' this one-man reception committee whispered huskily, 'Get down on Golden Man in the fifth today. And I'll see you afterward. Don't forget my number.'
You knew then you were in Louisville, which may be the only town in America where the tips go from bellhop to tourist instead of vice versa"
The writing is not uniformly excellent, however. Smith is much better at describing events and scenes and people he enjoys and/or approves of, even when poking fun at them (and at himself) than events he doesn't care for. In those cases, he can quickly go from entertainingly humorous to unentertainingly snide.
So this is a time capsule, really, into a certain segment of American life in the immediate post-WW2 era, in sports and in overall attitudes. It's a look back to the time when the Harvard-Yale football game was still a major sporting event, and when boxing matches proliferated, boxers, trainers and managers had colorful tales to tell, and gamblers' activities often brought suspicion to individual fight results. But it was also still the time when men would naturally assume that they were speaking to, and about, other men--other white men--essentially exclusively. A slap on the back and pass the flask. Who ya got in the sixth?
So this collection ends up being a look at that era, faults and all, with a lot of very good, often humorous, writing baked in. In that way, this collection provides a history lesson of sorts. The ability to be entertained despite the sometimes unappealing paradigms of the day will of course vary by reader.
Published in 1950, Out of the Red is a collection of columns written from 1946 through 1949 by one of America's pre-eminent sportswriters of that, or any, era.
Rather than being arranged in chronological order, the columns are grouped here by subject matter: predominantly baseball, boxing, college football, horse racing, fly fishing and basketball (which Smith famously abhorred). These columns, being published immediately post-WW2, very much reflect mainstream American attitudes of the era, which do not always wear well. For one thing, what we see reflected is very much a scotch and soda, back-slapping, mutuel window, locker room "man's world." Women are barely there, unless they're hosting cocktail parties for charitable organizations. And although Smith is scornful of Major League Baseball's pre-Jackie Robinson Jim Crow paradigm, in later columns Smith's own racism comes to the surface several times.
Smith, though, could indeed turn a phrase. For example:
"In the eighth Hermanski smashed a drive to the scoreboard. Henrich backed against the board and leaped either four or fourteen feet into the air. He stayed aloft so long he looked like an empty uniform hanging it its locker. When he came down he had the ball."
Smith's 1946 pre-Kentucky Derby column began like this:
"A consignment of apprentice horse lovers who have been touring the bourbon quarries and oats disposal plants of the bluegrass country pulled in here a trifle lame today and the bellhop rooming one of them clutched the newcomer's lapels before he grabbed his luggage.
'Look,' this one-man reception committee whispered huskily, 'Get down on Golden Man in the fifth today. And I'll see you afterward. Don't forget my number.'
You knew then you were in Louisville, which may be the only town in America where the tips go from bellhop to tourist instead of vice versa"
The writing is not uniformly excellent, however. Smith is much better at describing events and scenes and people he enjoys and/or approves of, even when poking fun at them (and at himself) than events he doesn't care for. In those cases, he can quickly go from entertainingly humorous to unentertainingly snide.
So this is a time capsule, really, into a certain segment of American life in the immediate post-WW2 era, in sports and in overall attitudes. It's a look back to the time when the Harvard-Yale football game was still a major sporting event, and when boxing matches proliferated, boxers, trainers and managers had colorful tales to tell, and gamblers' activities often brought suspicion to individual fight results. But it was also still the time when men would naturally assume that they were speaking to, and about, other men--other white men--essentially exclusively. A slap on the back and pass the flask. Who ya got in the sixth?
So this collection ends up being a look at that era, faults and all, with a lot of very good, often humorous, writing baked in. In that way, this collection provides a history lesson of sorts. The ability to be entertained despite the sometimes unappealing paradigms of the day will of course vary by reader.
37rocketjk
>36 connie53: Thanks, Connie. Yes, all's well here. As you may know, my wife and I moved to New York City from California to begin a year-long stay in Manhattan. For one reason and another, my off-the-shelf completion rate has slowed. One factor, of course, is that I'm now 3,000 miles away from my shelves! But I plan to do some reading of books already in my LT library and count those as "off the shelfers." Anyway, NYC is fun and we're doing lots of exploring. I'm especially fascinated with exploring the many historic and cultural wonders of Harlem, which is where we are staying. Hope all's well with you. Thanks for stopping in. Cheers!
38connie53
Hi Jerry, that sounds really exciting. Moving to New York City for a year. I hope you and your wife have a great time there.
All is well with me. Just enjoying the nice weather and my books.
All is well with me. Just enjoying the nice weather and my books.
39rocketjk
Book 15: Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
This slim volume is from Pocket Poets. The poems were written over the period of 1953 through 1964.
I first started reading these poems about a month ago but didn't like the first few. I couldn't engage with the imagery, somehow, which sometimes seemed more or less random. Then last week I decided to try the poems again. Starting where I'd left off, I found the first few I read to be, in fact, wonderful. So I went back to the beginning and reread the poems I hadn't liked the first time, and, lo and behold! I got those, too! The poems are often very personal, direct observations of life and relationships. There were still some few images that didn't work for me, but I could see better what O'Hara seemed to be getting at: flash portrayals of individual gems of experience, not always necessarily profound in the greater scheme of things but so often worth paying close attention to in the moment. Quite a few of the poems are about the elusive nature of love, or at least that's how I took them. A significant number are veined with eroticism, the joys and pains of desire and physical contact.
Then, when I was about two-thirds through, I got curious and took a look at the Wikipedia page on O'Hara to learn more (my knowledge of poetry and poets being mostly woefully lacking). I found this:
In 1959, he wrote a mock manifesto (originally published in the magazine Yūgen in 1961) called Personism: A Manifesto, in which he explains his position on formal structure: "I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'" He says, in response to academic overemphasis on form, "As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it."
Well, so then I had to go back and read the whole collection from the beginning again (we are only talking about 82 very small pages). And, obviously now, this is me finally learning about an extremely important poet that most people with an iota of interest in American poetry already knew of. C'est la vie. Wonderful and, as I now know, extremely influential poems.
This slim volume is from Pocket Poets. The poems were written over the period of 1953 through 1964.
I first started reading these poems about a month ago but didn't like the first few. I couldn't engage with the imagery, somehow, which sometimes seemed more or less random. Then last week I decided to try the poems again. Starting where I'd left off, I found the first few I read to be, in fact, wonderful. So I went back to the beginning and reread the poems I hadn't liked the first time, and, lo and behold! I got those, too! The poems are often very personal, direct observations of life and relationships. There were still some few images that didn't work for me, but I could see better what O'Hara seemed to be getting at: flash portrayals of individual gems of experience, not always necessarily profound in the greater scheme of things but so often worth paying close attention to in the moment. Quite a few of the poems are about the elusive nature of love, or at least that's how I took them. A significant number are veined with eroticism, the joys and pains of desire and physical contact.
Then, when I was about two-thirds through, I got curious and took a look at the Wikipedia page on O'Hara to learn more (my knowledge of poetry and poets being mostly woefully lacking). I found this:
In 1959, he wrote a mock manifesto (originally published in the magazine Yūgen in 1961) called Personism: A Manifesto, in which he explains his position on formal structure: "I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'" He says, in response to academic overemphasis on form, "As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it."
Well, so then I had to go back and read the whole collection from the beginning again (we are only talking about 82 very small pages). And, obviously now, this is me finally learning about an extremely important poet that most people with an iota of interest in American poetry already knew of. C'est la vie. Wonderful and, as I now know, extremely influential poems.
40rocketjk
Book 16: Life Magazine - October 24, 1969 edited by Ralph Graves
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Another old magazine off the stack on the floor of my home office. The edition of Life was particularly intriguing for me due to my memories of so many of the events written about here, as I turned 14 in July 1969. Of most interest was the relatively long article, with photos, about the Vietnam War Moratorium that had just taken place in Washington, DC, hundreds of thousands strong, as well as side pieces about the Nixon Administration's response. Also interesting was the piece on the community that had developed among heart-transplant recipients, very much still a new technology at that time, and on a more humorous note, the dynamic between the Washington Redskins' fun-loving quarterback, Sonny Jurgensen, and disciplinarian Vince Lombardi at the start of the latter's short, post-Packers tenure as head coach in Washington. Finally, there was a nostalgia-inducing piece about the early days of rock "supergroup" Blind Faith. I can still recall what a big deal it was for my high school friends and I when Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Windwood from Traffic got together to form that band.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). Another old magazine off the stack on the floor of my home office. The edition of Life was particularly intriguing for me due to my memories of so many of the events written about here, as I turned 14 in July 1969. Of most interest was the relatively long article, with photos, about the Vietnam War Moratorium that had just taken place in Washington, DC, hundreds of thousands strong, as well as side pieces about the Nixon Administration's response. Also interesting was the piece on the community that had developed among heart-transplant recipients, very much still a new technology at that time, and on a more humorous note, the dynamic between the Washington Redskins' fun-loving quarterback, Sonny Jurgensen, and disciplinarian Vince Lombardi at the start of the latter's short, post-Packers tenure as head coach in Washington. Finally, there was a nostalgia-inducing piece about the early days of rock "supergroup" Blind Faith. I can still recall what a big deal it was for my high school friends and I when Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Windwood from Traffic got together to form that band.
41rocketjk
Book 17: Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
I think it was considered rather daring, or at least unusual, of Defoe to create a first person female protagonist at the time he was writing (the novel was first published in 1722). Defoe's intention, evidently, was to create character that he could send down into serious moral degradation and then bring up again to show that even the most incorrigible individual could be redeemed in the end. (This is giving nothing away. The book's subtitle ends with the phrase, "died a penitent.") During the telling, Defoe provides the reader with details about the lowest levels of London society. If you ever wanted details about the habits and procedures of the pickpockets and shop thieves of late 17th, early 18th century London, this is your book. Whether Defoe meant to titillate his readers with these accounts or he took their foreknowledge of these thing for granted I'm unsure.
When Moll (not her real name, we're told) first comes to early adulthood, she is an honest, naive servant girl who wants nothing more than the opportunity to eventually make a living for herself through her sewing. But, through sexual harassment, she is soon put in an impossible situation by first one of the grown brothers in the family she's working for, and then the other. And although the second brother actually marries her out of love, Moll takes the lesson that men will press their advantages over women in all sorts of ways, and that, to survive, a women must look to her own interests and do what she can to survive. Luckily for Moll, she is physically beautiful. So through a series of marriages and dalliances, she is never short of suitors. However, those suitors are often after nothing other than the money she has set by. Through a series of often rather improbable happenstances, Moll is in and out of such relationships. Sometimes they are strictly mercenary, and sometimes they are happier, but ill-fated. At last, Moll finds herself in London, past the age when men will search her out for her beauty or for marriage. At this point she turns to a life of crime: a pickpocket and a thief.
Whatever it was that Defore meant to portray, he does give us a novel with a forceful female protagonist who lives by her wits and on her own terms. She is sometimes victimized by men, and is set on her path by one man's injustice in particular, but more becomes the agent of her own actions, and has disdain for those men she encounters who are psychologically undone by setbacks. Defoe's frankness about sex (nothing graphic, but then nothing coy, either) is reminiscent of The Decameron, which I am also currently reading. I guess I found Moll Flanders to be more an interesting time piece than an enjoyable reading experience per se, but all in all I'm glad to have read it, and the character will certainly remain memorable to me.
I think it was considered rather daring, or at least unusual, of Defoe to create a first person female protagonist at the time he was writing (the novel was first published in 1722). Defoe's intention, evidently, was to create character that he could send down into serious moral degradation and then bring up again to show that even the most incorrigible individual could be redeemed in the end. (This is giving nothing away. The book's subtitle ends with the phrase, "died a penitent.") During the telling, Defoe provides the reader with details about the lowest levels of London society. If you ever wanted details about the habits and procedures of the pickpockets and shop thieves of late 17th, early 18th century London, this is your book. Whether Defoe meant to titillate his readers with these accounts or he took their foreknowledge of these thing for granted I'm unsure.
When Moll (not her real name, we're told) first comes to early adulthood, she is an honest, naive servant girl who wants nothing more than the opportunity to eventually make a living for herself through her sewing. But, through sexual harassment, she is soon put in an impossible situation by first one of the grown brothers in the family she's working for, and then the other. And although the second brother actually marries her out of love, Moll takes the lesson that men will press their advantages over women in all sorts of ways, and that, to survive, a women must look to her own interests and do what she can to survive. Luckily for Moll, she is physically beautiful. So through a series of marriages and dalliances, she is never short of suitors. However, those suitors are often after nothing other than the money she has set by. Through a series of often rather improbable happenstances, Moll is in and out of such relationships. Sometimes they are strictly mercenary, and sometimes they are happier, but ill-fated. At last, Moll finds herself in London, past the age when men will search her out for her beauty or for marriage. At this point she turns to a life of crime: a pickpocket and a thief.
Whatever it was that Defore meant to portray, he does give us a novel with a forceful female protagonist who lives by her wits and on her own terms. She is sometimes victimized by men, and is set on her path by one man's injustice in particular, but more becomes the agent of her own actions, and has disdain for those men she encounters who are psychologically undone by setbacks. Defoe's frankness about sex (nothing graphic, but then nothing coy, either) is reminiscent of The Decameron, which I am also currently reading. I guess I found Moll Flanders to be more an interesting time piece than an enjoyable reading experience per se, but all in all I'm glad to have read it, and the character will certainly remain memorable to me.
42curioussquared
>41 rocketjk: I haven't read Moll Flanders, but I took an 18th century lit class in college where we studied Roxana, another female protagonist from Defoe. I think your comment about " an interesting time piece vs an enjoyable reading experience" hits home for that novel, too; it was fascinating to study, but not exactly an enjoyable reading experience.
43detailmuse
>39 rocketjk: What a great experience. And your NYC year, too!
44rocketjk
Book 18: Call for the Dead by John le Carré
I decided to read Call for the Dead, John le Carré's first published novel and the first book of his famous George Smiley series, because, you know, I needed another series to be in the middle of. :). It's a short book, fewer than 200 pages, and although the story is about spies and espionage, it's essentially a murder mystery. It's a good first novel, I think, though nowhere near the quality of le Carré's (and Smiley's) subsequent novels, though already the writing style, I thought, was quite enjoyable. Foreign Office employee Samuel Fennan, whom Smiley has recently interviewed about a letter the office has received questioning Fennan's loyalty. And although Smiley assures Fennan at the end of the interview that he hasn't anything to worry about, Fennan commits suicide the next day. And when Smiley goes to Fennan's house the next day to talk to his widow, he feels that things are not adding up. Well, they wouldn't, would they? I thought it was good fun and a nice brisk read. I'm now interested in continuing on in the series.
I decided to read Call for the Dead, John le Carré's first published novel and the first book of his famous George Smiley series, because, you know, I needed another series to be in the middle of. :). It's a short book, fewer than 200 pages, and although the story is about spies and espionage, it's essentially a murder mystery. It's a good first novel, I think, though nowhere near the quality of le Carré's (and Smiley's) subsequent novels, though already the writing style, I thought, was quite enjoyable. Foreign Office employee Samuel Fennan, whom Smiley has recently interviewed about a letter the office has received questioning Fennan's loyalty. And although Smiley assures Fennan at the end of the interview that he hasn't anything to worry about, Fennan commits suicide the next day. And when Smiley goes to Fennan's house the next day to talk to his widow, he feels that things are not adding up. Well, they wouldn't, would they? I thought it was good fun and a nice brisk read. I'm now interested in continuing on in the series.
45rosalita
>44 rocketjk: You're inspiring me to move this one up my TBR pile, Jerry. I have a handful of the Smiley books but not all of them, so I've been holding off on starting to read the series. I don't know how I missed reading these sooner but they got on my radar when le Carré passed away recently.
46rocketjk
Book 19: Coronet - June 1, 1938 edited by Arnold Gingrich
Read as a "between book" (see first post). Coronet Magazine was a digest-sized monthly publication founded in 1936 and lasting into the early 1970s. By 1938, Arnold Gingrich had taken over as editor. This edition of Coronet is fascinating, indeed. It includes four short stories, including the strongly anti-Jim Crow "Runaway" by Erskine Caldwell. A chilling column on atrocities by journalist Edward Hunter, enumerating those perpetrated by both sides in the Spanish Civil War, in the Japanese invasion of China and by the Italians then invading Ethiopia, all places Hunter had been. There is a fascinating report by Meyer Levin entitled "Epic of Palestine," about life (and violent death) in early Jewish farming settlements during the 1920s and 30s, complete an incredible series of photographs. And speaking of photographs, there is a long photo essay (accompanied by a short bio) of Hungarian photographer Ernö Vadas, followed by an equally long collection of photos by several more contemporary Europeans photographers. There is an essay on the young stage/production wunderkind Orson Wells and his Mercury Theater, a series of silhouettes by artist Paul Swartz. A biography of Verdi. Well, that's just a short selection of the wonderful, fascinating and illumination entries in this terrific, 85-year old magazine. Super cool. I love old publications.
Read as a "between book" (see first post). Coronet Magazine was a digest-sized monthly publication founded in 1936 and lasting into the early 1970s. By 1938, Arnold Gingrich had taken over as editor. This edition of Coronet is fascinating, indeed. It includes four short stories, including the strongly anti-Jim Crow "Runaway" by Erskine Caldwell. A chilling column on atrocities by journalist Edward Hunter, enumerating those perpetrated by both sides in the Spanish Civil War, in the Japanese invasion of China and by the Italians then invading Ethiopia, all places Hunter had been. There is a fascinating report by Meyer Levin entitled "Epic of Palestine," about life (and violent death) in early Jewish farming settlements during the 1920s and 30s, complete an incredible series of photographs. And speaking of photographs, there is a long photo essay (accompanied by a short bio) of Hungarian photographer Ernö Vadas, followed by an equally long collection of photos by several more contemporary Europeans photographers. There is an essay on the young stage/production wunderkind Orson Wells and his Mercury Theater, a series of silhouettes by artist Paul Swartz. A biography of Verdi. Well, that's just a short selection of the wonderful, fascinating and illumination entries in this terrific, 85-year old magazine. Super cool. I love old publications.
47rocketjk
Book 20: Intrigue in Paris by Sterling Noel
Sometimes I just need to hit the pulp fiction shelf, and this enjoyable thriller filled the bill just fine. A couple of years after World War 2, American merchant marine Wright Hughey is sitting in an outdoor cafe in Marseilles, waiting out a tugboat strike, when he is mistaken for a local criminal by some other criminals. intrigue ensues! Although the plot of this romp becomes steadily less plausible as it goes along, nevertheless it is a good time for readers who go in for this sort of thing. Noel was a pretty writer, the action scenes themselves are believable and never get out of hand, and overall the action is understated rather than lurid. I looked up Noel, and it turns out he wrote several of these thrillers and a couple of science fiction works as well.
Book notes: My Avon mass market paperback edition was published in 1955, meaning that it was printed the year I was born. I entered it into my LT library way back in April 2008, my Librarything "big bang." The book was originally published with the title "Storm over Paris." There is even a 1956 English movie based on the book, called "House of Secrets:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Secrets_(1956_film) (Warning: if you look at this web page, don't read the plot synopsis, as it contains spoilers for the book. That's if you think you will ever read the book, of course.)
Well I still have 10 books to go to reach my goal of 30 books of my own shelf this year. I'm probably not going to hit that in the next 5 weeks. C'est la vie. Maybe next year!
Sometimes I just need to hit the pulp fiction shelf, and this enjoyable thriller filled the bill just fine. A couple of years after World War 2, American merchant marine Wright Hughey is sitting in an outdoor cafe in Marseilles, waiting out a tugboat strike, when he is mistaken for a local criminal by some other criminals. intrigue ensues! Although the plot of this romp becomes steadily less plausible as it goes along, nevertheless it is a good time for readers who go in for this sort of thing. Noel was a pretty writer, the action scenes themselves are believable and never get out of hand, and overall the action is understated rather than lurid. I looked up Noel, and it turns out he wrote several of these thrillers and a couple of science fiction works as well.
Book notes: My Avon mass market paperback edition was published in 1955, meaning that it was printed the year I was born. I entered it into my LT library way back in April 2008, my Librarything "big bang." The book was originally published with the title "Storm over Paris." There is even a 1956 English movie based on the book, called "House of Secrets:" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Secrets_(1956_film) (Warning: if you look at this web page, don't read the plot synopsis, as it contains spoilers for the book. That's if you think you will ever read the book, of course.)
Well I still have 10 books to go to reach my goal of 30 books of my own shelf this year. I'm probably not going to hit that in the next 5 weeks. C'est la vie. Maybe next year!
48rocketjk
Book 21: Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
This is the 4th book in E.F. Benson's famous series about a couple of upper-middle class, small town, English busybodies that takes place in the period between the World Wars. The series is also called Mapp and Lucia, and this entry has also been published as Make Way for Lucia. Got it? Anyway, the series brings us the adventures of Elizabeth Mapp and Emmiline Lucas (a.k.a. Lucia). In these comedies of manners, both women strive to rule their own social sets, run all events in their respective towns and serve as the arbiters of all disputes. The previous books have brought us the characters each in her own small circle, Lucia in the village of Riseholme and Miss Mapp in the town of Tilling. In this fourth book, the two come together for a summer in Tilling, and the sparks of competition and animosity fly almost immediately. These books, I would think, would be completely silly and uninteresting to me, but in fact, due to Benson's great skill they are drily hilarious and immensely entertaining. The series, was were reportedly much in demand by the literary cognoscenti in the post-WW2 period when the books were all out of print, is well written, harmless and eminently diverting fun, and a thorough tweaking of the evidently useless English monied class of the period. This 4th novel was first published in 1931.
This is the 4th book in E.F. Benson's famous series about a couple of upper-middle class, small town, English busybodies that takes place in the period between the World Wars. The series is also called Mapp and Lucia, and this entry has also been published as Make Way for Lucia. Got it? Anyway, the series brings us the adventures of Elizabeth Mapp and Emmiline Lucas (a.k.a. Lucia). In these comedies of manners, both women strive to rule their own social sets, run all events in their respective towns and serve as the arbiters of all disputes. The previous books have brought us the characters each in her own small circle, Lucia in the village of Riseholme and Miss Mapp in the town of Tilling. In this fourth book, the two come together for a summer in Tilling, and the sparks of competition and animosity fly almost immediately. These books, I would think, would be completely silly and uninteresting to me, but in fact, due to Benson's great skill they are drily hilarious and immensely entertaining. The series, was were reportedly much in demand by the literary cognoscenti in the post-WW2 period when the books were all out of print, is well written, harmless and eminently diverting fun, and a thorough tweaking of the evidently useless English monied class of the period. This 4th novel was first published in 1931.
49rosalita
>48 rocketjk: I never thought I would enjoy the Mapp and Lucia series as much as I do, Jerry, and I agree that it's all down to Benson's writing. He's able to gently skewer the characters on their defects in a way that made me feel he and I were in cahoots as we observed their quite ridiculous shenanigans.
And now I am nostalgic, thinking of how I discovered the series in the first place. It was many years ago — pre-LibraryThing, even — through a paper(!) catalog from a bookseller called Bas Bleu. The black-and-white catalog had longish descriptions of books that made me want to read almost every one. As it happens, the book in this series that I bought from the catalog was the one you just read, and it prompted me to go find the others at the library (and later as cheap ebooks) and read the series in order once I had collected them all. Reading in order isn't at all necessary but was enjoyable nonetheless.
I miss shopping for books from paper catalogs, even though theoretically searching on website is easier and more efficient. I think it's the joy of browsing and the serendipity of discovering something unexpected, which never seems to happen on e-commerce sites for me.
And now I am nostalgic, thinking of how I discovered the series in the first place. It was many years ago — pre-LibraryThing, even — through a paper(!) catalog from a bookseller called Bas Bleu. The black-and-white catalog had longish descriptions of books that made me want to read almost every one. As it happens, the book in this series that I bought from the catalog was the one you just read, and it prompted me to go find the others at the library (and later as cheap ebooks) and read the series in order once I had collected them all. Reading in order isn't at all necessary but was enjoyable nonetheless.
I miss shopping for books from paper catalogs, even though theoretically searching on website is easier and more efficient. I think it's the joy of browsing and the serendipity of discovering something unexpected, which never seems to happen on e-commerce sites for me.
50rocketjk
>49 rosalita: Thanks for that! I never did much browsing via paper catalogs, I don't think, or at least I'm not remembering such, but I still do love browsing bookstores so much more than shopping online. I came upon the series on the shelves of the used bookstore I used to own. Someone brought in the omnibus edition of all the novels together in one volume. A bit unwieldy in the reading, as you'd imagine. For some reason I got curious and started scanning through the introduction, written by I forget whom. When I got to the part about how the literary crowd used to scour bookstores looking for then rare copies of the books (they were for some reason out of print for a long time), I got intrigued and read the first book in the volume I had. After that I've gradually been reading through them, but finding or ordering the individual volumes. The LT Legacy Libraries that include Mapp & Lucia are Graham Greene and Barbara Pam.
52rocketjk
Book 22: Those Other People by Mary King O'Donnell
First published in 1946, Those Other People is a wonderful and unjustly forgotten novel about people living in close proximity on a block of St. Philips Street, at the back end of New Orleans' French Quarter. The story takes place during the days between the beginning of World War 2 and the U.S. entry into the war. Occasionally we get references to headlines featuring Hitler and Mussolini, and we're also told of Nazi troops shooting down students in the streets of Prague. Those references provide chronological and cultural cues, but they're not what the story is about. Instead, O'Donnell gives us a day in the life of an ethnically mixed but eternally interacting cast of characters. Although she was writing about the French Quarter she knew, for us it's a trip back in time to the days when the French Quarter, and especially towards its back end (closer to Esplanade and further from Canal Street and the Quarter's tourist center) was still an ethnically mixed working class neighborhood. One character builds skiffs in his workshop; another has a small auto body shop. Rubbing elbows with each other daily are an immigrant Italian couple, a Filipino family, a black couple, and a white Protestant family, including realtor Merlin Webster (who owns most the this property) and his wife, as well as Merlin's unmarried sister Leah and their younger sister, Maudie. Maudie is married to Victor Peralta, employed as a writer by the WPA. His elderly mother lives with them, as well. Other strangers are brought into the narrative along the way, as O'Donnell's lens moves gracefully if somewhat fitfully around the city.
If the story has a moral center, it is Leah. Leah wakes up as on the day of our story deciding to go in search of Joe, a merchant marine she met in a bar two nights prior and with whom she spent all that night talking. Upon the sunrise, Joe had simply said goodbye and walked off down the street. Leah knows that finding him, somewhere in the city within the two days before he's due to ship out, is highly improbable, but she decides that the search alone will somehow revitalize her, and so she begins her odyssey, though this is just one of the many strands of O'Donnell's story.
Overall this is a very good-hearted book, and The positive energy of life thrums through O'Donnell's writing, and her ability to envoke the sights, sounds, smell and overall feel of New Orleans is excellent. The familiarity between the myriad people jammed up against each other on our block of St. Philips Street breeds friendship and forbearance rather than contempt. The book's flaw, such as it is, is an over-romanticized view. So I wouldn't call this a gritty novel by any stretch, but I did very much enjoy it.
First published in 1946, Those Other People is a wonderful and unjustly forgotten novel about people living in close proximity on a block of St. Philips Street, at the back end of New Orleans' French Quarter. The story takes place during the days between the beginning of World War 2 and the U.S. entry into the war. Occasionally we get references to headlines featuring Hitler and Mussolini, and we're also told of Nazi troops shooting down students in the streets of Prague. Those references provide chronological and cultural cues, but they're not what the story is about. Instead, O'Donnell gives us a day in the life of an ethnically mixed but eternally interacting cast of characters. Although she was writing about the French Quarter she knew, for us it's a trip back in time to the days when the French Quarter, and especially towards its back end (closer to Esplanade and further from Canal Street and the Quarter's tourist center) was still an ethnically mixed working class neighborhood. One character builds skiffs in his workshop; another has a small auto body shop. Rubbing elbows with each other daily are an immigrant Italian couple, a Filipino family, a black couple, and a white Protestant family, including realtor Merlin Webster (who owns most the this property) and his wife, as well as Merlin's unmarried sister Leah and their younger sister, Maudie. Maudie is married to Victor Peralta, employed as a writer by the WPA. His elderly mother lives with them, as well. Other strangers are brought into the narrative along the way, as O'Donnell's lens moves gracefully if somewhat fitfully around the city.
If the story has a moral center, it is Leah. Leah wakes up as on the day of our story deciding to go in search of Joe, a merchant marine she met in a bar two nights prior and with whom she spent all that night talking. Upon the sunrise, Joe had simply said goodbye and walked off down the street. Leah knows that finding him, somewhere in the city within the two days before he's due to ship out, is highly improbable, but she decides that the search alone will somehow revitalize her, and so she begins her odyssey, though this is just one of the many strands of O'Donnell's story.
Overall this is a very good-hearted book, and The positive energy of life thrums through O'Donnell's writing, and her ability to envoke the sights, sounds, smell and overall feel of New Orleans is excellent. The familiarity between the myriad people jammed up against each other on our block of St. Philips Street breeds friendship and forbearance rather than contempt. The book's flaw, such as it is, is an over-romanticized view. So I wouldn't call this a gritty novel by any stretch, but I did very much enjoy it.
53rocketjk
Book 23: Life Magazine - July 2, 1965 edited by George P. Hunt
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). This is one more off the stack of old magazines that have been residing on a closet floor of my home office for years, and which I've been gradually reading through for some time. As you can see from the cover, this issue's main focus was the growing American involvement in the Vietnam War. The cover photo is part of a searing photo-essay (titled "New Fury in Vietnam War") by photographer Horst Faas, who that year won a Pulitzer Prize for his combat photography. In addition, Japanese journalist Akihito Okamura, writes of his weeks spent as a prisoner of the Viet Cong, and another photo essay by unnamed "French journalists" provides a picture of the life of anti-government forces on duty in the jungle. There is also an essay by influential policymaker Eugene Rostow: "The Realities of Power Demand that We Fight On." (I clearly remember my 9th grade history teacher in 1969 or 70 speaking of Rostow with scorn.) Tragically, we read this all today fascinated and horrified at the knowledge that in 1965 the U.S. might still have reversed course, but did not.
In addition to the Vietnam War coverage, we get a piece about Degas' time with his family in New Orleans, accompanied by large color prints of the work Degas did there; a column by Shana Alexander about a Louisiana group called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed black organization organized to protect black communities from the Klan; and a very interesting excerpt from Theodore H. White's book, The Making of the President - 1964, describing Lyndon Johnson's decision-making process in choosing a running mate, first deciding against Robert Kennedy and eventually selecting Hubert Humphrey.
All in all, this edition of Life is a fascinating time piece. I love these old magazines! They provide so much information about the issues of their day, often including forgotten or unknown (by me, anyway) gems. On a personal note, the magazine was published two days before my 10th birthday. The next magazine on the stack is the May 10, 1941 edition of Collier's Magazine.
Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). This is one more off the stack of old magazines that have been residing on a closet floor of my home office for years, and which I've been gradually reading through for some time. As you can see from the cover, this issue's main focus was the growing American involvement in the Vietnam War. The cover photo is part of a searing photo-essay (titled "New Fury in Vietnam War") by photographer Horst Faas, who that year won a Pulitzer Prize for his combat photography. In addition, Japanese journalist Akihito Okamura, writes of his weeks spent as a prisoner of the Viet Cong, and another photo essay by unnamed "French journalists" provides a picture of the life of anti-government forces on duty in the jungle. There is also an essay by influential policymaker Eugene Rostow: "The Realities of Power Demand that We Fight On." (I clearly remember my 9th grade history teacher in 1969 or 70 speaking of Rostow with scorn.) Tragically, we read this all today fascinated and horrified at the knowledge that in 1965 the U.S. might still have reversed course, but did not.
In addition to the Vietnam War coverage, we get a piece about Degas' time with his family in New Orleans, accompanied by large color prints of the work Degas did there; a column by Shana Alexander about a Louisiana group called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed black organization organized to protect black communities from the Klan; and a very interesting excerpt from Theodore H. White's book, The Making of the President - 1964, describing Lyndon Johnson's decision-making process in choosing a running mate, first deciding against Robert Kennedy and eventually selecting Hubert Humphrey.
All in all, this edition of Life is a fascinating time piece. I love these old magazines! They provide so much information about the issues of their day, often including forgotten or unknown (by me, anyway) gems. On a personal note, the magazine was published two days before my 10th birthday. The next magazine on the stack is the May 10, 1941 edition of Collier's Magazine.
54rocketjk
Book 24: Great Sports Stories by Herman L. Masin
Read as a "between book" (see first post). This is a collection of short stories on sports themes published in 1957. The publisher is Scholastic Magazines, and the anthology is aimed at what we'd now call the YA market. I guess I'd agree that most of the stories are most appropriate for adolescent readers, but I also found that the tales were universally well written and, even at my own advanced age (68) I enjoyed every story here. Maybe part of that enjoyment had to do with all the reading I did of these types of stories back in childhood days. Many of the stories deliver morals, of course. There's the young shortstop who learns a lesson in humility and forgiveness from an older player on a barnstorming team that comes through town, a basketball player with a secret past that he hopes won't be discovered in each new town he moves to, and an immigrant father learns new things about being an American from his son, the high school football star. The most interesting, and most sophisticated story, has to do with an American fencing star who is so good he has been accepted on a fencing team in pre-WW2 Italy. But in the lead-up to the big match against their longtime rivals, our hero gets a first-hand look at Mussolini's Black Shirt thugs and life under fascism. Of the thirteen stories here, the only authors who were familiar to me were Frank O'Rourke and William Saroyan. Since so many of the stories pertain to baseball and American football, I think this book would be best enjoyed by U.S. readers.
Read as a "between book" (see first post). This is a collection of short stories on sports themes published in 1957. The publisher is Scholastic Magazines, and the anthology is aimed at what we'd now call the YA market. I guess I'd agree that most of the stories are most appropriate for adolescent readers, but I also found that the tales were universally well written and, even at my own advanced age (68) I enjoyed every story here. Maybe part of that enjoyment had to do with all the reading I did of these types of stories back in childhood days. Many of the stories deliver morals, of course. There's the young shortstop who learns a lesson in humility and forgiveness from an older player on a barnstorming team that comes through town, a basketball player with a secret past that he hopes won't be discovered in each new town he moves to, and an immigrant father learns new things about being an American from his son, the high school football star. The most interesting, and most sophisticated story, has to do with an American fencing star who is so good he has been accepted on a fencing team in pre-WW2 Italy. But in the lead-up to the big match against their longtime rivals, our hero gets a first-hand look at Mussolini's Black Shirt thugs and life under fascism. Of the thirteen stories here, the only authors who were familiar to me were Frank O'Rourke and William Saroyan. Since so many of the stories pertain to baseball and American football, I think this book would be best enjoyed by U.S. readers.
55rocketjk
Book 25: The Missouri Review - Volume 21 Number 2: Men edited by Morgan Speer
Another "between book" completed (see first post). I don't know why or where I bought this 1998 edition of The Missouri Review, but I've had it on my shelves at least since my LT "Big Bang" in 2008. The stories, essays and poems featured here all seem to be by authors who were just starting out on writing careers. Some of these folks published one or more books later, and some barely register in online search engines. And, as noted in the issue's title, all of the stories had to do with men and their experiences. At any rate, I found the entries of very high quality all in all. William Gay's story, "Those Deep Elm Brown's Ferry Blues," about a young man dealing with his father's advancing dementia; Peter Walpole's "Distant Lights in the Foothills Beyond Owari-Eki," about a Japanese train engineer contemplating life after retirement; Ron Nyron's "Ordinary Apples," a subtle fictional coming-of-age reminiscence; and Otis Haschemeyer's "The Storekeeper," about a war correspondent's final assignment were particularly good. There was an interesting series of letters between Katherine Anne Porter and Robert Penn Warren, and a very interesting interview with poet Harvey Shapiro, whose work I will now have to investigate.
Another "between book" completed (see first post). I don't know why or where I bought this 1998 edition of The Missouri Review, but I've had it on my shelves at least since my LT "Big Bang" in 2008. The stories, essays and poems featured here all seem to be by authors who were just starting out on writing careers. Some of these folks published one or more books later, and some barely register in online search engines. And, as noted in the issue's title, all of the stories had to do with men and their experiences. At any rate, I found the entries of very high quality all in all. William Gay's story, "Those Deep Elm Brown's Ferry Blues," about a young man dealing with his father's advancing dementia; Peter Walpole's "Distant Lights in the Foothills Beyond Owari-Eki," about a Japanese train engineer contemplating life after retirement; Ron Nyron's "Ordinary Apples," a subtle fictional coming-of-age reminiscence; and Otis Haschemeyer's "The Storekeeper," about a war correspondent's final assignment were particularly good. There was an interesting series of letters between Katherine Anne Porter and Robert Penn Warren, and a very interesting interview with poet Harvey Shapiro, whose work I will now have to investigate.
56rosalita
>54 rocketjk: That sounds interesting, Jerry. I've added it to my used-bookstore wishlist.
57rocketjk
>56 rosalita: I think you'd like it! Note for your search: it's a very small volume, a digest-sized YA paperback.
58rosalita
>57 rocketjk: Ah, that's a good tip. Books can be hard enough to find in used bookstores but if you expect a particular book to be normal-sized and it's not, it would be so easy to overlook.
59rocketjk
Book 26: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater made Thomas De Quincey's reputation when it was first published in two parts in an English magazine in 1821. He was a very well-educated son of a middle-class merchant who had already been publishing essays for some time when Confessions appeared.
Having already become acquainted with De Quincey's writing style via the couple of dozen entries in the Selected Writings of Thomas De Quincey that I've been reading as a "between book," I knew I would enjoy Confessions. De Quincey gives some biographical information about his "down and out" days in London in his late teens when he was frequently very hungry. His theory was that this long period of hunger did damage to his stomach that brought on the discomfort years later that led him to seek relief in opium. He goes on to describe the pleasures of regular opium use, and then the dangers and disadvantages, which mainly took the form for him of vivid, hallucinatory dreams which then haunted his waking hours as well, plus a torpor that made even the slightest activities and accomplishments seem beyond his power to undertake. These latter symptoms seem very much like what we now (I say as a complete medical layperson) describe as the symptoms of depression.
De Quincey had a chatty, rambling style, and his writing frequently took side-trips into digressions that were often, but not always, entertaining on their own merits. Although he had published scores of essays in a variety of English periodicals beforehand, Confessions made him suddenly quite popular and was for a long time held to be an extremely influential work. For a time, even medical professionals referred to the work as authoritative. And they are considered to be influential as literature, as well, with William Burroughs in particular thought to have been strongly affected by De Quincey's example. I found Confessions to be, as I said, enjoyable, but not really in a major way. The work is much more subtle, much less explicit than I was expecting. I guess for some modern readers, Confessions of an English Opum-Eater will serve as an enjoyable and interesting historical artifact and for others as a short and unique piece of memoir writing that stands on its own merits. Others will be bored, and I can understand that, too. All in all, I'm glad to have read this, and I'll be continuing on through the 14 entries in the Selected Writings that I still have to go.
I've now started an entertaining memoir, An Old Guy Who Feels Good, by Worden McDonald. It's possible I'll finish it before the New Year, and if I do it will count as an "off the shelf" book and I'll be adding it here. Otherwise, I'll be finished for 2023 at 26 books, a bit short of my 30-book goal.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater made Thomas De Quincey's reputation when it was first published in two parts in an English magazine in 1821. He was a very well-educated son of a middle-class merchant who had already been publishing essays for some time when Confessions appeared.
Having already become acquainted with De Quincey's writing style via the couple of dozen entries in the Selected Writings of Thomas De Quincey that I've been reading as a "between book," I knew I would enjoy Confessions. De Quincey gives some biographical information about his "down and out" days in London in his late teens when he was frequently very hungry. His theory was that this long period of hunger did damage to his stomach that brought on the discomfort years later that led him to seek relief in opium. He goes on to describe the pleasures of regular opium use, and then the dangers and disadvantages, which mainly took the form for him of vivid, hallucinatory dreams which then haunted his waking hours as well, plus a torpor that made even the slightest activities and accomplishments seem beyond his power to undertake. These latter symptoms seem very much like what we now (I say as a complete medical layperson) describe as the symptoms of depression.
De Quincey had a chatty, rambling style, and his writing frequently took side-trips into digressions that were often, but not always, entertaining on their own merits. Although he had published scores of essays in a variety of English periodicals beforehand, Confessions made him suddenly quite popular and was for a long time held to be an extremely influential work. For a time, even medical professionals referred to the work as authoritative. And they are considered to be influential as literature, as well, with William Burroughs in particular thought to have been strongly affected by De Quincey's example. I found Confessions to be, as I said, enjoyable, but not really in a major way. The work is much more subtle, much less explicit than I was expecting. I guess for some modern readers, Confessions of an English Opum-Eater will serve as an enjoyable and interesting historical artifact and for others as a short and unique piece of memoir writing that stands on its own merits. Others will be bored, and I can understand that, too. All in all, I'm glad to have read this, and I'll be continuing on through the 14 entries in the Selected Writings that I still have to go.
I've now started an entertaining memoir, An Old Guy Who Feels Good, by Worden McDonald. It's possible I'll finish it before the New Year, and if I do it will count as an "off the shelf" book and I'll be adding it here. Otherwise, I'll be finished for 2023 at 26 books, a bit short of my 30-book goal.
60rocketjk
Book 27: An Old Guy Who Feels Good by Worden McDonald
One more book under the wire for 2024. An Old Guy Who Feels Good, originally published in 1978, is the memoir of Worden McDonald, who had led a very interesting and event-packed life. McDonald was born in 1907 in a small Oklahoma town, the fifth of five siblings (and his father's 10th child, counting McDonald's five older step-siblings from his father's first marriage). His father was a Presbyterian minister. When McDonald was 6, the family moved from town onto a farm his father had purchased. And although McDonald loved farm life when he was a boy (and describes it here glowingly), he left home while still in his teens, riding freight trains and otherwise making his way around the country, working at a wide variety of jobs for greater or lesser periods of time, including, among other pursuits, ranching, mining and factory work. It wasn't until later in life that McDonald married, settled down to raise a family, and went to work, for over a decade, for the phone company in California, and began to develop a left-week political sensibility.
McDonald wrote with an off-the-cuff humorous voice. He seems to have been more or less setting down events and anecdotes as they came to him, and those stories are very entertaining in the telling. We normally think of people "riding the rails" during the Depression, and I found it interesting to read that McDonald was doing so in the mid-20s, years before the Depression began. He has a fun sense of humor, as in these examples:
"We lived in town, if you want to call Sallisaw a town, tunnel I was six. Tom and Dick {a pair of horses} pulled the fire truck. When the bell rang they charged in place and waited for their suspended harness to fall on their backs. They took off in a big gallop--once so fast that they overturned the fire truck and broke the driver's leg. But usually they arrived in time to watch the house burn down."
and
"Sometime later I worked on a railroad in the Feather River Canyon, in Northern California. It wasn't the love of railroad life that made me take the job--I was hungry. They gave us a pick and shovel, and for ten hours we didn't straighten up. When quitting time came, we couldn't. We even slept that way. When we got up in the morning, we were in perfect position for putting on our socks."
and finally, when describing how he lost his job (and his pension) after 17 years with the phone company for not cooperating with the California state version of the McCarthy hearings:
"Some of my buddies, when they were interviewed, answered 'all the questions with refreshing candor and frankness' and were congratulated by the senators, but my testimony was considered so poor that they felt obliged to write a letter to the company suggesting that I be fired. The company was prepared for this since they had given my name to the committee in the first place, but still it was unusual. Telephone men had been fired in the past for refusing to work, stealing equipment and once for making an operator pregnant on company time. But I was the first man in the Bell system to be fired for being unfriendly on his day off."
Folks of a "certain age" who grew up in America in the 60s may be amused to learn that Worden McDonald was the father of Country Joe McDonald of "Country Joe and the Fish" fame. This is a fun, obscure bit of Americana.
This book has been on my shelves since before I first posted my books on LT back in 2008. And this will my final off-the-shelfer for 2023. 27 out of a hoped-for 30. I didn't quite reach my goal but I did come closer than last year. On to 2024!
One more book under the wire for 2024. An Old Guy Who Feels Good, originally published in 1978, is the memoir of Worden McDonald, who had led a very interesting and event-packed life. McDonald was born in 1907 in a small Oklahoma town, the fifth of five siblings (and his father's 10th child, counting McDonald's five older step-siblings from his father's first marriage). His father was a Presbyterian minister. When McDonald was 6, the family moved from town onto a farm his father had purchased. And although McDonald loved farm life when he was a boy (and describes it here glowingly), he left home while still in his teens, riding freight trains and otherwise making his way around the country, working at a wide variety of jobs for greater or lesser periods of time, including, among other pursuits, ranching, mining and factory work. It wasn't until later in life that McDonald married, settled down to raise a family, and went to work, for over a decade, for the phone company in California, and began to develop a left-week political sensibility.
McDonald wrote with an off-the-cuff humorous voice. He seems to have been more or less setting down events and anecdotes as they came to him, and those stories are very entertaining in the telling. We normally think of people "riding the rails" during the Depression, and I found it interesting to read that McDonald was doing so in the mid-20s, years before the Depression began. He has a fun sense of humor, as in these examples:
"We lived in town, if you want to call Sallisaw a town, tunnel I was six. Tom and Dick {a pair of horses} pulled the fire truck. When the bell rang they charged in place and waited for their suspended harness to fall on their backs. They took off in a big gallop--once so fast that they overturned the fire truck and broke the driver's leg. But usually they arrived in time to watch the house burn down."
and
"Sometime later I worked on a railroad in the Feather River Canyon, in Northern California. It wasn't the love of railroad life that made me take the job--I was hungry. They gave us a pick and shovel, and for ten hours we didn't straighten up. When quitting time came, we couldn't. We even slept that way. When we got up in the morning, we were in perfect position for putting on our socks."
and finally, when describing how he lost his job (and his pension) after 17 years with the phone company for not cooperating with the California state version of the McCarthy hearings:
"Some of my buddies, when they were interviewed, answered 'all the questions with refreshing candor and frankness' and were congratulated by the senators, but my testimony was considered so poor that they felt obliged to write a letter to the company suggesting that I be fired. The company was prepared for this since they had given my name to the committee in the first place, but still it was unusual. Telephone men had been fired in the past for refusing to work, stealing equipment and once for making an operator pregnant on company time. But I was the first man in the Bell system to be fired for being unfriendly on his day off."
Folks of a "certain age" who grew up in America in the 60s may be amused to learn that Worden McDonald was the father of Country Joe McDonald of "Country Joe and the Fish" fame. This is a fun, obscure bit of Americana.
This book has been on my shelves since before I first posted my books on LT back in 2008. And this will my final off-the-shelfer for 2023. 27 out of a hoped-for 30. I didn't quite reach my goal but I did come closer than last year. On to 2024!
