Tracy Johnston

Nonfiction 1992 | 356 pages

This is an amazing true adventure book.  The author, Tracy Johnston, is part of a small group of people to raft the Boh in Borneo ... the first trip EVER down the Boh.  It is such an adventure because there are no maps, no guides, no notes from those who have gone before. All they have are stories from native Borneo people who believe the river to be un-navigable and are fearful of the spirits who inhabit the Boh.

A few guides and a few experienced rafters have chosen to take on the Boh.  What they anticipate to be a three-day trip turns into ten days. The rapids are much more difficult than anticipated, the rains can raise the level of the river as much as 20 feet in one hour, and the bugs!  Oh my, the stories of the bugs!  I will never look on a honeybee with quite the same eyes.

Tracy begins this adventure by losing her luggage. So, her well thought out boxes with medicines, salves, and various pills, along with her box that includes her sleeping bag, air mattress, shoes, underwear, flashlight, and all her clothes, end up in the LA airport when she arrives in Borneo.  She has to beg, borrow, and steal all her supplies for this serious adventure.

The tale is a quick read.  Johnston uses very short chapters which keep the pace moving.  At times, the book drags a bit, because the rafting trip drags a bit.  There are days when the three boats travel only yards instead of miles.  The difficulty of staying kind and stable and compassionate in the midst of innumerable delays, and bodies that are constantly sweating and becoming the home base to numerous bugs, is unimaginable.

Tracy is in her 40s, which makes her story even more amazing.  She us not a young super-jock.

Again, if you love real-life wilderness adventure stories as I do, you cannot go wrong with this one.  It reads like no other.  This won't be the fifth book you have read about Everest, or another tale of canoeists in the great north.  Thank you to my friend Joanne for the loan of this not-very-well-known tale.

July 2024

Celeste Ng

Fiction 2022 | 235 pages

The three pillars of PACT:

• Outlaws promotion of un-American values and behaviors.
• Requires all citizens to report potential threats to our society.
• Protects children from environments espousing harmful views.

It is Cambridge, Massachusetts, just about a decade after PACT was passed by the House and Senate and became the law of the land.  PACT was a reaction to the Crisis, an economic, social, familial, cultural, structural collapse of the American Society.  No one actually knows what created this collapse, though within three years after it began, it became easier and easier to blame it on the Chinese, with no documentation or proof, just because a scapegoat was required.

Enter Bird, the 11-year old son of a Chinese-American woman, Margaret, and a Caucasian-American man, Ethan.  As the book begins, we learn that Margaret left her husband and son three years ago, but we don’t know why.  Ethan keeps telling their son to forget about her.

Of course, the consequences of PACT are fairly predictable to us as readers.  People are arrested who participate in a demonstration, or even a conversation that is anti-PACT.   Neighbors report neighbors for the slightest perceived infraction, or no infraction at all … especially if their skin has a yellow tinge.  And perhaps most painful of all for society, children are continually removed from their homes and subjected to “re-placement” if a case can be made that the parents had any anti-PACT influence on them.

Bird begins to search for his mother without telling his father.  This is much harder than today, because most books have been removed from the shelves and some burned, and the internet has been scoured “clean.”  Bird comes to recognize that the absence of his mother, who is not only Chinese-American but verbally opposed to PACT, is actually to protect Bird and keep him united with his father.

Eventually he finds his mother, but I can tell you no more without giving away the plot.

This is a good read; an interesting read; a read that is steeped in world history and even present day.  I do recommend you read it and I thank my friend Michelle for giving it to me!

July 2024

Allison Pataki

Fiction 2022/ 285 pages

I guess it is my fault.  I had heard about The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post and read about it also.  I apparently misunderstood.  I thought it was about a highly successful business tycoon, leader, strategist, dynasty.  It is not.  It is about a woman who plays a peripheral role in the company her father built.

MID-READ REVIEW.  I am exactly half-way through, page 192, and Marjorie Post has not done a bit of business so far.  It has been all about her love life, her children, her entertaining, her parties, her multiple homes, her money, her staffs, and a BIT about non-profit work.  I am sorely disappointed.  That is not what I understood this book to be about.  I thought it was about a business success story.

The story covers a surfeit of money among the Posts, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Roosevelts, and a score of others. I found the ostentatious excesses of the super-rich turned my stomach at times.  (Do I have a bit of communism in my blood?) Yes,  Marjorie Post gives away millions for health care facilities, to support our troops in the Great War, to provide food and shelter during the Great Depression.  She uses her money well and for superbly excellent needs.  However, the overabundance still upsets me. The last of many mansions she built for herself and her family had 125 rooms, with huge numbers of staff. And the art she collects is impressive.  Not to mention all the custom gowns and clothing from Paris and other fashion hotbeds.

That all being said, the writing is delicious. Pataki writes a biography in first person; not always an easy feat to accomplish. The main theme of the books is about Marjorie and her four husbands.  I thought these relationships were presented with depth, insight, sorrow, and aplomb.  You may enjoy reading The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.  Many readers have.  I cannot advise you to put it at the top of your reading list.

July 2024

William Kent Krueger

Fiction 2013 | 307 pages

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after the fateful summer of 1961, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. That summer, there are numerous deaths in the small town that Frank and his younger brother Jake live in.

Though their father is a pastor, and the boys are steeped in the ways of church and god, and god is a central theme through the book as well as how community members do and do not process their grief, I did not find it to be overly "god-centric."  It is definitely about grace and forgiveness and being in nature and talking things through and examining one's beliefs and finding inner peace, gentleness, and acceptance.  But you need not believe in god to gain this book's wisdom.

The title is finally stated deep in the story, when a bereaved mother snarls at her husband over the dinner table: “Can’t you, just this once, offer an ordinary grace?”  But grace has already come into play many times.

There are many definitions of "grace" and most of them are religious, but this one really resonated with me, from Dictionary.com, "elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action."  In grace, we forgive, accept, do not judge, are open, we love.  It is truly elegant.

But let's talk about the writing.  That's what really puts Ordinary Grace in the "yes, please read" column for me.  There are numerous deaths over this summer, and I so appreciate the coming-of-age story as told by a man 40 years beyond this summer.  The characters are each unique, with their own quirks, foibles, gifts, ability to love deeply, and, yes, graces.  Kent does a superb job of developing each of these characters and giving us insight into their feelings and actions.  More than anything, this is an enjoyable novel/historic fiction to pleasure your summer afternoons.  Please read and delight in this Oregon Author!

July 2024

Isle McElroy

Fiction 2023 | 245 pages

The plot sounded interesting.  Eli and Elizabeth trade bodies, unintentionally, and he becomes emotionally Elizabeth in her body while Elizabeth becomes Eli in his body.

I thought it had promise. But the promise is unfulfilled.  No science fiction ... no scientists trying to find the answer to this phenomenon and predicting whether it will benefit or hurt humans.  No mystery.  He/she doesn't even think to look for him/her for five days. No context.  Neither the loss of their bodies nor finding each other again in a changed state had any story around it.  It just happened.  Left me scratching my head.  No magic or fantasy.  There seems to be no genre.

No ending to speak of.  Avoid this book.  I am impressed I made it through the whole thing.

July 2024

Kazuo Isighuro

Fiction 1989/ 245 pages

The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel-Prize winning British author Ishiguro. (See my blog post on another Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun.) The protagonist in Remains of the Day, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a fictitious stately home near Oxford, England.  In 1956, he takes a road trip to visit a former colleague and reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the 1920s and 1930s.

Told in first person, the novel tells the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington, who is recently deceased. Two important contexts present themselves: Lord Darlington was a Nazi sympathizer; and Stevens perhaps is in love with Miss Kenton, the housekeeper at Darlington Hall.

I love the way our Mr. Stevens attempts to teach himself "bantering" and "witticisms" and usually falls flat on his face.  And his mind is occupied with the ongoing questions, "What is a truly GREAT butler?" And "What is dignity?"   I appreciate the way he keeps exploring and learning and discovering.  "Dignity" might be an apt title! He expresses, however, no emotional depth.  I am not saying he has none .... it is simply outside the scope of his "professionalism" to express either emotion or opinion.  Whether the death of his father, Miss Kenton's announcement to leave Darlington, or being mocked for not having politic opinions, he remains stolid and sober.

There is no plot.  Stevens just travels and reminisces.  And there is no actual ending either.  An old man remembers back and sometimes become confused and regretful, and sometimes joyful and appreciative.

Do I recommend it?  Yes, it is such a turn from what I usually read; it is entertaining in its own right

July 2024

Joyce Maynard

Fiction 2023 | 404 pages

The Bird Hotel is a visual extravaganza.  Reading it, I can see the flowers, the birds, the lake, the volcano, and the 100 steps down to the hotel, La Llorona, that Maynard writes about so masterfully.  I am very moved by an author who can create such a visually compelling and clear narrative.

Joan is an American whose mother dies in a Weather Underground bomb explosion when she is six-years old.  Raised by her grandmother, she changes her name to Irene and receives a new birth certificate and passport, because her grandmother (correctly!) believed the FBI would be searching for the whereabouts of their terrorist daughter and mother.

Irene's life takes some very difficult turns, and she is followed by tragedy, until one morning, leaving her tiny apartment in San Francisco, she walks to the Golden Gate bridge to jump off, but does not do so.  Instead, she climbs aboard a green van with a pile of hippies, not caring where they are going.  Eventually, a number of days later, she finds herself in a small town in Columbia staying in a very quaint and small hotel where she gradually, somwehat unintentionally, begins to heal her life.

Irene is an exquisite character, as are the indigenous and gringo people we meet who live in La Esperanza.  Irene inherits the hotel eventually and lives out her days there, again through turmoil, but surrounded by the daily healing qualities of the land on which she lives, and the watercolor painting she does every afternoon.

I exuberantly recommend this book.  It is gorgeous and will capture your heart and your soul.

June 2024

Natalie Babbitt

Fiction 1975 | 140 pages

Natalie Babbitt conceived of the idea for her now-classic 1975 novel, Tuck Everlasting, from her four-year-old daughter. The girl was afraid of dying, so Babbitt wrote a story for young readers that faced death head-on. In it, young Winnie Foster comes to know a family, the Tucks, who have been granted the seemingly enviable but actually burdensome miracle of immortality after unknowingly drinking from a magical spring in the further reaches of their family’s property.

What a completely enjoyable book! It is a Young Adult book; a very easy read.  Winnie, at ten, is faced with the consequences of drinking from the spring and never aging a moment or letting her natural life progress.  The wise Tuck family advises her to wait until she is 17 or older to make this decision and admonishes her never to tell anyone about the spring.  Knowledge of the spring could certainly wreak havoc among the people.  It is actually an important and valuable concept to consider for all of us adults (and children) who are reading this in our armchairs.

I missed this book completely years ago.  It is listed on the “100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time,” A New York Time’s publication that has informed a reasonable portion of what I have read these last few years.

If you have an afternoon to sit with a cup of tea, your feet curled under you, read this.  It won’t take you long.  It will make you think.  And it will delight you with excellent writing along the way.

June 2024

Robert Parker

Fiction 2011 | 336 pages

I thought I would read the last book Robert Parker wrote, Sixkill, which is in the Spenser series, as a tribute to Parker ... well, and to Spenser, too.  There is no premonition, no veiled hint of his impending death.  He died of a heart attack in 2010, sitting at his desk, writing his customary five pages per day.  He was otherwise in good health at 77 when he died.

Zebulon Sixkill is a very large Native American, the bodyguard to bad-boy actor Jumbo Nelson, who has been accused of rape and murder.  Spenser's job is to discover what really happened.  Spenser takes Z under his wing because, while big, he does not know anything about how to fight.  Some reviewers thought Z might be a new character in the Spenser series, but if so, he has been silenced by Robert Parker's death.

There are some really nice moments between Spenser and his main and only squeeze Susan.  I  recommend Sixkill to Parker fans.  And now, I am complete with rereading Parker's Spenser series, and am bypassing my beloved Boston ... until another excellent Boston-based novel appears.

June 2024

Niall Williams

Fiction 2019/ 380 pages

Sometimes a simple, dated story can be completely delightful!  This is the story of Faha, Ireland, a small rural town, in which the winter rains finally stop after months of grey, dampness and wet.  The first telephone arrives and then, god forbid, "the electricity" arrives.  The town is divided on whether or not they want to modernize to "the electricity" but once it is in, the Fahaens stridently object to 100-watt lightbulbs.  These bright and sudden disturbances reveal cobwebs have been hidden in the corners, help us learn that a woman with a gorgeous ruddy in fact uses red-colored makeup, and reveals to all that the resident with a handsome head of hair despite his advancing years, does in fact, wear a wig.

We follow Noe, who is seventeen as the book opens and coming of age, living with his revered grandpa Ganga and grandmother Doady, after leaving one year in the seminary. Christy is hired as the "electric man" to bring the town and the county up to speed and becomes a lodger in Ganga and Doady's home.  Christy and Noe, though about 50 years apart, become fast friends and drinking buddies.

Soon we learn that Christy didn't really come to Faha primarily to ensure that the electricity was installed, but he came to seek out Annie, whom he left standing at the altar 50 years ago.  He wants to seek her forgiveness, and Noe becomes engaged in facilitating their meeting and talking.  Noe himself falls in love with all three of Dr. Troy's daughters and has his first kisses.

I really enjoyed this book when it was about electricity and the cessation of rain, but once it shifted to Christy's love interest (and Noe's first love, Sophie Troy), somehow it became boring.  I struggled through the long second half.  Williams' writing and use of palpable mature delicious words, saved this book from being two hearts and three hearts won out. Nevertheless, I don't recommend it.

June 2024