June 2022: California, the Golden State

California is a state on the west coast of the United States. With over 39.3 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles, it is the most populous and the third-largest American state by area.

California has a rich history. It has gone through many periods and has been home to Native Americans, Spanish colonials, Mexicans, and Americans. It is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in North America.

My challenge this month is to read a book that gives you an insight into the history of California. It could be about the 1860s Gold Rush, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the early days of Hollywood (as pictured above), or other events such as the migrants who arrived in California, whether they came in the 1930s looking to escape the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, or whether they surged into California from the south.

To give you some ideas, I’ve added a short list of books set in California:

Fiction

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott
The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

Non-Fiction

The California Gold Rush by May McNeer
California: A History by Kevin Starr
The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron & Clint Howard
A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester
Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party by George R. Stewart
Where I Was From by Joan Didion

Whatever you decide to read, please let us know here and don’t forget to add your books to the Wiki which can be found here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Challenge

I am going to be reading a couple of books set in and around the California Gold Rush with Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende and Crown of Dust by Mary Volmer.

The only book I seem to have about California is The Library Book by Susan Orlean, so unless I find something else, that will be my selection.

>1 DeltaQueen50: So funny that you chose an image of Mary Pickford! I don't have many California relatives, but I have an ancestor, Sister Cecilia, who ran the Los Angeles Orphan Asylum in the early 20th century. Mary Pickford was a huge supporter of this orphanage. I have a picture taken at a benefit--Mary Pickford sitting in the center, Sister Cecilia sitting on the left (with a child obscuring her face).

>3 kac522: I loved the library book, Orlean has such a way with words as well as a respect for the people she writes about

I think that I'll read another book by James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia.

My very first book about California was Jubilee Trail, I wonder how that holds up? There were some nasty descriptions of the Plains tribes, as I vaguely recall. Maybe I'll just take The Mark of Zorro down from the shelf.

>3 kac522: Mary Pickford was originally from Canada so I was happy to use her likeness at the top of the thread. She was also quite influential and co-founded the studio that was eventually to be called United Artists. She was also one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science. I have a book on the shelf called Girls in the Picture in which she is a major character, I am hoping that I will be able to slot it into June as well.

>7 DeltaQueen50: Yes, she sounds so interesting. The "Mary Pickford" tale was an often told family story that I was skeptical about as a kid. When I was an adult and doing family history, my aunt pulled out the photo, and I was able to confirm Sister Cecilia was at the LA orphanage. Sometimes wacky family stories have some truth!

I know I had a book to add to my TBR about California...maybe Jazz age? Not sure. I can't for the life of me find it on any lists I keep. I will see what else I can find. :-(

I will be reading a book my husband bought some time ago entitled Happy Days in Southern California (1898) by Frederick Hastings Rindge. It is a book from Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy Reprints.

I don't really have anything historical or historical fiction wise about California. Trying to stick with my own self-imposed restraint of reading only from my TBR, I think I will have to go with Be Frank With Me, a contemporary work of fiction set in the San Francisco Bay area.

I think I'm going to reread Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series, or at least the first six volumes (if I can find them around the house). The final three titles were published more recently, during this century, and I read them when they came out, though I might give them a reread too.

I've got a few other books around the house I might check out, including Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home (one of her few titles I've yet to read) and Emma Donoghue's Frog Music, the latter of which would also satisfy the current quarterly read.

>8 kac522: I have loved silent movies a long time and Pickford was of my happened upon a photo at an estate sale with her sitting holding a kitten in a basket, signed! Ha e it next to her memior sunshine and shadows which is very good

Gosh I've read so much about California, I really need to find something new....
,

The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War and The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream had been on my library wishlists for a long time so I will probably pick one of these up...

I have How Much of These Hills is Gold on my virtual TBR. It takes place in Northern CA in mid 19th c. I hope to get to it this month.

I'm going to listen to Murder on Nob Hill (Sarah Woolson Mysteries Book #1; by Shirley Tallman; narrated by Anna Fields) - Mystery set in San Francisco, 1880.

NYT book review talks about mecca, a recently released novel about California, focusing on the hidden places and people there. Looks like it may be good.

>9 beebeereads: I remembered the book I wanted to read! The Bohemians. This is a novel about the famous depression era photographer, Dorothea Lange. It takes place in the 1920's San Francisco.

I'm planning on The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow.

Ok Im rereading Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s The author was the aunt of a friend of mind, and often told stories about her life. Then this book popped up and it is really a fun and fascinating look at a young girl becoming a secretay for Samuel Goldwyn. Lots of gossip about stars and movies, but also lots of details about life in the 20s. Im enjoying the return to it

Sorry, double post.

I am listening to Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. About half way in and not overwhelmingly impressed.

>7 DeltaQueen50: I didn't know she was Canadian. Learn something new...

I will likely go with either:
- They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
or
- The Wild Trees / Richard Preston

>23 LibraryCin: She was born in Toronto, and did some acting on Toronto stages at a very young age. She was the breadwinner for her family after her father died and joined a touring theatrical group and eventually secured a role on New York's Broadway. Films were to follow.

>25 DeltaQueen50: Oh, that is interesting. Thanks!

Jumping ahead a bit...I finished a book set in California: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (2011). Told in first person plural, this is a moving historical fiction account of Japanese "mail-order" (for lack of a better term) brides brought to California from Japan around the 1920s and their experiences in the U.S. up until 1942, when Japanese families were sent to internment camps. The first few sentences of the book sets the tone for the entire book:

On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes but many more of us came from the country and on the boat we wore the same old kimonos we'd been wearing for years--faded hand-me-downs from our sisters that had been patched and redyed many times. Some of us came from the mountains, and had never before seen the sea, except for in pictures, and some of us were the daughters of fishermen who had been around the sea all our lives. Perhaps we had lost a brother or father to the sea, or a fiancé, or perhaps someone we loved had jumped into the water one unhappy morning and simply swum away, and now it was time for us, too, to move on.

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 caught my eye in the library. Although depends on how the month is going, I may also add something on the fiction side as well.

I will be reading golden gate: a novel in verse I think the premise is good, just not sure about the verse thing. But so many are acclaiming it so Ill try it. It will work for this group and the Asian Challenge - india

I'm going to read
Al Capone Does My Shirts
and/or
Carlota by Scott O'Dell

I have completed my read of Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende which I really enjoyed. She brought the turbulent days of the California Gold Rush to life and filled her story with well developed characters.

Just checking in to say I feel doubtful I will finish my book, In This Land of Plenty by Mary Smathers, before month end. If I don't, I'll be sure to post it in July.

They Called Us Enemy / George Takei
4 stars

“Star Trek” actor George Takei was only a little boy when Pearl Harbour was bombed. His family, living in Los Angeles, was soon rounded up to taken to a camp for Japanese “enemy aliens”, even if they were born in the U.S. (as his mother was). This graphic novel looks back at his time in the camps, and leads up to current day, with a primary focus on how the Japanese were treated at this time.

This was really good. The illustrations were simple, but I thought done very nicely. As such a young boy, along with his parents doing their best to protect him and his younger siblings, he often thought they were on an adventure. Sad how things start to repeat themselves; people just don’t learn.

I love police procedurals and chose to read a new author, hoping for many new titles to put on my list. I chose The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy which I learned is the first of a quartet. Just finished the book last night in a record two days. This was an intense, vivid, almost suffocating reading experience for me. I think Ellroy is a fine writer in his chosen genre, but not sure I’ll be setting out to read his whole oevre.

I finished listening to Murder on Nob Hill (Sarah Woolson #1; by Shirley Tallman; narrated by Anna Fields) last week - A cozy mystery set in 1880, San Francisco, Sarah Woolson is a strong-willed and determined attorney who decides to find out who really killed her client’s husband. The author’s research was kluged in rather artlessly; the main character’s personality is so unrelentingly self-righteous as to be off-putting and; the late Anna Fields couldn’t pull off the Scottish and Chinese characters with credibility. Overall, a disappointment and I will not be continuing with the series.

Ursula Le Guin, Always Coming Home 3*** (but 3*** only out of respect for Le Guin). Not to be read unless you've read the entire Earthsea fantasy and especially the "Hainish" scifi. Otherwise, it's like reading Silmarillion without ever having read The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. Not that it's in any way specifically tied to any of her other books, but you need a sense of her Daoism (and she did translate Tao Te Ching).

It's not really a novel. It's more a world-building exercise, a future society in northern California millennia after some kind of environmental (and possibly also wartime) catastrophe. Includes a hundred-or-so pages of appendix, including glossary.

Also accompanied by a forty-some minute audio of music and poems of the Kesh (the inhabitants of Le Guin's "Valley"). I have an older edition that I found years ago in a used book store; the audio is on cassette; and I don't have an easily available cassette player but found a full recording on YouTube. You should also be able to find it on vinyl and CD by hunting around online if you're so inclined.

ETA (and slightly off topic): And it also brought me to the half-way point in the Hundred Books Challenge.

I have taken all month to read Happy Days in Southern California (1898) by Frederick Hastings Rindge is a tribute to the climate, flora and fauna of So. Cal., especially the area around Malibu. The author speaks to the reader in a personal way. He was very religious, and sprinkles biblical principles and little morality lessons throughout, which I frankly found quite charming. Having lived the first 63 years of my life in So. Cal., this book was quite special to me.

>34 dianelouise100: If you can persuade yourself to read one more Elroy, make it LA Confidential. Also an outstanding movie.

I read Be Frank With Me, which is set in California. It really wasn't what I wanted to get a "flavor" of California, but it will do for now. It is the story of a reclusive author holed up in LA trying to write her last novel to save her and her son from homelessness.