September, 2020 Readings: "Like steps of passing ghosts/The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees/And fall…"

This month's poetry snippet from the unfortunately named Adelaide Crapsey.

Hope to really pick up my reading pace this month (August was a bit of a write-off because I was finishing a book project).

I have science fiction, suspense and various other literary offerings on tap.

Gotta dent that TBR pile...

Finished Swann's Way a couple of weeks ago. It was interesting to see the details that I missed or didn't get when I first read it back in the day. A bit like reading over my shoulder. Loved the book again.

Also finished The Third Man by Graham Green. Post-war Vienna felt somewhat similar to pandemic Chicago. Drained by something big, life not normal, everybody in intimate spaces. The book was alright. The best thing about it was the awesome 1960's paperback cover. Would love to see the movie again.

Currently reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveler which has been in my tbr pile for ages.

PAUL ROBESON: THE ARTIST AS REVOLUTIONARY by Gerald Horne.

Robeson's life was fascinating and he paid a terrible price for being a Black man and a communist during an era when either got you vilified, your life endangered.

Horne's biography, however, is rather straightforward and facile, relating relevant incidents without really going into depth about the man's psychology, what drove him to be so fearlessly radical. He took on McCarthy and his goons, confronted President Truman in a White House meeting about lynching that ended in a shouting match...nothing seemed to cow or intimidate him.

An admirable figure, tremendously intelligent and talented. There's a better biography about him out there and I hope to find it one day.

My son Liam found me a copy of Terry Gilliam's memoir GILLIAMESQUE in a thrift shop for a pittance.

I'd read the book previously but it's a pleasure having my own copy and I think I enjoyed it more second time around.

Lavishly illustrated, as they say, and filled with bitchy/funny anecdotes.

Brown Girl Dreaming – Jacqueline Woodson
Digital audio performed by the author.
5*****

Jacqueline Woodson is an award-winning author and poet. This memoir of her childhood, growing up in the turbulent 1960s is written entirely in free verse.

In it Woodson explores family dynamics; the differences between “the North” (Brooklyn) and “the South” (South Carolina), between generations, between religious beliefs; and the hopes, ambitions and obstacles to success faced by a young black girl in 1960s America. The language is appropriate and accessible for the target middle-school audience, but eloquent and complex enough to engage and interest adults.

I loved how she related the importance of a teacher who recognized and celebrated her gifts rather than focus on her struggles with learning, and who encouraged her to believe that she WAS a writer. As well as the importance of a family who nurtured and supported her, despite divorce and the upheaval of moving several states away.

The audio version is performed by the author. I cannot imagine anyone else doing a better job of conveying the emotion of her story.

I don't read enough poetry and recently decided to tackle Henri Cole's NOTHING TO DECLARE.

Cole is highly celebrated and praised but I found this collection didn't have enough passion, a sense of urgency. The poems seemed unformed, lacking a thematic through line or central focus.

Have to rate this one as just "Okay".

Finished Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. Very powerful, very provocative. Not sure I'm completely sold on all her arguments, but I think she's on to something important. I wish there had been a more thorough discussion on the notion of caste. Also a little bit more nuance. The book it could have been easily about 100 pages shorter. But yeah, what a book.

Taylor Branch's question quoted in the book is going to be in my mind for a long time:
“If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”

#8 That one is definitely on my radar.

Tonight I polished off Paul Tremblay's THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD.

Suspenseful, with some surprising twists.

Summer reading at the very end of summer.

Olive Again – Elizabeth Strout
4****

Strout returns to the character featured in her Pulitzer-Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. Olive still lives in Cosby, Maine, still has a strained relationship with her son, still is remarkably clueless about how her abrupt manner affects others, and yet…

I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read the first book. Suffice to say that while Olive wasn’t young in book one, this book continues her story into her mid-80s.

The book is character-driven and Strout excels at revealing these characters by their actions and conversations with one another (or with themselves). Like most of us, Olive lives an “ordinary” life – she keeps her house, runs errands, goes to baby showers, converses with people at the grocery store, has her children come visit, finds a new friend in an expected setting, and faces the waning years of her life with as much dignity as she can muster.

I just love Olive, even if I don’t much “like” her. I can’t really say she’s mellowed much as she ages, but there is something so real, so vulnerable, so recognizable in her. I think there’s definitely some of me in her (or some of Olive in me).

MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES, a short story collection by Amber Sparks.

Gave this book to my wife for Christmas, read some of the stories she suggested, just finished the book in its entirety.

Slipstream and surreal, literate and intriguing.

Recommended.

THE PEERLESS PEER by Philip Jose Farmer (among others).

I'm a Sherlock Holmes nut but this offering is minor and unconvincing.

Holmes and Watson join forces with other figures of pulp fiction like Lamont Cranston and Lord Greystoke.

Picked up in a bargain bin and still over-priced.

Avoid.

Had to wash the bad taste out of my mouth (Farmer's take on the Master Detective) and read something from the REAL Holmes canon, A STUDY IN SCARLET.

Haven't tackled it in a number of years but the charm of the main characters shines through.

Not great literature, but damn fine storytelling.

Last book of September, a big, fat biography, HITLER: ASCENT 1889-1939, by Volker Ullrich.

Impressive, Volume I, and I'm already hooked.

>15 CliffBurns: I picked up both of the Kershaw biographies of Hitler in a single volume on Kindle for 99p...

Kershaw's is pretty definitive. I like the Joachim Fest bio the most but this latest one by Ullrich is pretty damn fine so far.