Resistance with A Capital “R”

13 Monday May 2013

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The struggle I have always had is whether to write books or read them. Reading has won for most of my sixty-six years. I haven’t yet decided if writing about others books is my thing, but I am committed to do so for the remainder of this year. Hold me to it.

Reading is also about writing. I read to write. It’s just that my writing experiences resistance. Steven Pressfield in his book “The War of Art” says it well. Every day he gives me thoughts to think about and almost all of them on resistance. If you think of yourself as creative in any sense of the word, I recommend his book. I enjoy each and every page. He makes me think and often makes me laugh.

Here is a sample, “Ill health is a form of trouble, as are alcoholism and drug addiction, proneness to accidents, all neurosis including compulsive screwing-up, and such seemingly benign foibles as jealousy, chronic lateness, and the blasting of rap music from your smoked glass ’95 Supra. …..Cruelty is a form of Resistance, as is the willing endurance of cruelty from others….. Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance. Why put in years of work designing a new software interface when you get as much attention by bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record?”

It is Resistance with a capital R and by the time we have read all 165 pages we have thoroughly covered Resistance with a capital R.

Short Takes: Stills, Epics & Ice

31 Sunday Mar 2013

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“Still Life” by Louise Penny, a Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Mystery, is worth reading. For some unknown reason, I had in my head not to read a Louise Penny book. Then I accepted a monthly book offer from River Run Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH. They advertised if I sent them a short list of books that I liked, they would use that list to choose new books for me. They send one a month at a set price. After having received four books, I can say I have really enjoyed two of them, this being one. None of the four would I have bought on my own. “Still Life” is not only a good mystery, it is extremely well written. The description of setting and of characters is first rate. I have already bought my second Louise Penny novel. 

“The Epic of Gilgamesh” was written two thousand years ago. I discovered it by watching a video description about it on learner.org. Their invitation to world literature is a wonderful look at books that are considered classics, some of which are modern day. “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is an amazing read mostly because of the date it was written. It can be purchased free on the web. Be sure to view the video after you finish. 

“Black Ice” by Michael Connelly is one of many Connelly has written about Detective Harry Bosch. Bosch gets into more trouble with his superiors and his dates than he does with the bad guys. All of which makes him real. There is always enough tension in each mystery to qualify them as thrillers. If you have not read a Harry Bosch story, start with the first book and enjoy them all. 

 

Short Reviews: No Dragons, No Justice, But Plenty of Witnesses

24 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Adult Fiction, Adult Non-fiction, Books, Mystery

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February is usually a good month in NH for reading. This year was “not my best” as is often said on American Idol. Yea, I admit, I watch Idol. Susan and I have watched it for years. What you ask does that have to do with books? It keeps me from them. This is okay because most nights by 8 PM I am too tired to read.

I am still going through books I inherited from my friend Peggy after she died. “No One Noticed the Cat” is a simple little mystery written by Anne McCaffrey, the author who has written much about dragons. It was just okay. I don’t recommend unless like me you inherit the book. I vote that Ms. McCaffrey stick to dragons. This is a good thing for next to cats and dogs, I love dragons, and she writes about them very imaginatively. As to cats? So many others have written better stories and even better mysteries.

Another inheritance from Peggy was “Injustice for Us All” by J.A Vance. This is my second book by this author. Each have been quick and easy reads, entertaining me just enough. I would categorize them as airplane or beach reads. This, the second of her books about the detective that has bad luck with women, I started at 30,000 feet.

My third book for February was one I had to read for a class called Politics and the Pulpit. The book is “Reclaiming Prophetic Witness” by Paul Rasor. It speaks to churches and pastors taking a more active role in the issues of the day. It is academic in nature, but if you think churches should play more a role in US decision making or defending the poor, then I suggest you read it. When done, you will be either for or against its message, but in either case better informed.

Catch Up

17 Sunday Mar 2013

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I haven’t convinced myself if my love of writing includes book reviews. Thus far it feels a bit clinical. Too academic. Tomorrow I am going to attend an online course on English Composition that will push me one way or the other. It is centered on academic research and writing rather than the creative. I thought I should visit the belly of the whale before knocking it any further. Jonah learned a lot so why not me. At the very least, it might make my professors happier.

Meanwhile, I bring you up to date on my other January readings. As Lynn Spreen, author of Dakota Blues, has told me, I could just as easily do this on Good Reads. Maybe this will blog will morph into something else. Stay tuned.

In the remainder of this post I will offer some thumbs up or down with occasional embellishments. Since my reading of Dakota Blues, I listened in the car to Live By Night by Dennis Lehane. First one of his for me. Kind of dark, but I liked it.  Then I read The Financial Lives of Poets. I liked it , but it is surely not for everybody. Strange.

Then I went on a downward spiral with the next few books. Two in a row I could not finish. I am told that many liked The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan Philipp Sendker. I read a third of it and then put it down. This was followed by a nonfiction book called On Constitutional Disobedience by Louis Michael Seidman. It appears to be quite good if you are ready to read about constitutional law which I was not. Once again I put it down a third way in.

I finished my book reading in January with a terrific book Following Atticus by Tom Ryan. If you live in New England, love dogs and have hiked any of the peaks in NH that are over four thousand feet, this book is a must. I can attest to all three so I thought it was terrific.

In my next post I will cover some of my February readings.

Book Review: Dakota Blues by Lynn Spreen

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Adult Fiction

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Dakota Blues is a book I heard about through Twitter. I was drawn to it because the setting is North Dakota. Back in the day, I first flew to North Dakota on North Central Airlines and arrived in Fargo in the middle of winter.

My contact met me outside the airport driving a rugged four wheel drive vehicle. The wind blew constantly and produced what looked to be a permanent swirling mist of snow that came up to my knees.

Lynn’s book gives us a taste of Los Angeles before we get to North Dakota.Two places entirely opposite.  We are immediately introduced  to Karen Grace who works for an LA based company as their human resources director. Her boss, Wes, is a boss few of us would admire. In my mind he is one of the villains of the story, but he is also the catalyst for what Karen does with the rest of her life.

At fifty years old, Karen has been almost blissfully counteracting and softening Wes’s demands of others. Then one day her boss interferes with events which have produced for Karen a timeline not of her making. This brings pressures ill timed and unwarranted that Wes certainly exacerbates. Karen had no plans for changing her life, but life is about to change her.

As Wes accelerates his lack of tact toward Karen’s co-workers and brings on an utter lack of compassion for her, he drives Karen to reconsider what she took to be her life’s work.  A work she has been compulsively performing.

Although Karen has been living and working in California for some time, her formative years were in North Dakota. Her mother and many of childhood friends still live there. She has become used to Wes as well as to California and host of other things.

Then one day she receives a phone call from a cousin that her mother has died. Against Wes’s wishes she returns to “her hometown on the Northern Plains.”

Upon her arrival in North Dakota, we learn that her husband is leaving her. What follows is a dialogue at the airport with her cousin Lorraine.

“Where’s Steve?” 

Karen blinked, lost in her memories. “He’s not here. He couldn’t come.” 

Lorraine reached for a suitcase. “Is everything okay?”

Karen stopped what she was doing and looked Lorraine in the eye. Around them, the terminal cleared as North Dakotans headed for town. “I think we’re getting divorced.”

Having spent a dozen or more years in Minnesota, eight in California, and now over twenty in New England, I love the way author Lynn Spreen paints the picture of North Dakota as compared to the West (or indirectly the East). It is a place that stands on its own, and except for, or because of winter, a good place to live. As the book unfolds, so much of life gets in Karen’s way and yet each obstacle becomes an opportunity.

I found the way life molded me at fifty far different (and maybe more effective) than when I was twenty. Perhaps  it wasn’t life that changed, but me. This is how I saw Karen. Her life experiences accumulated at fifty enabled her to take on events that conceivably at a younger age she might not have considered.

Dakota Blue’s characters are delightful and real. Karen gets reacquainted with old friends and meets some new ones, among them a splendid woman of about ninety years old who has lots of adventure.

In the second half  of the book the tensions increase and (maybe metaphorically) the pace grows ever more rapid. As Karen’s escapades expand and contract, the reader is taken on an exciting journey. I highly recommend Dakota Blues.

What a Memorable Book? How The Dead Dream: A Novel

15 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Adult Fiction, Books

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One of my biggest obstacles to writing is reading, and as I have only just discovered, this includes the writing of book reviews. I have fallen three books behind in my reviewing and I can hardly remember this book.

I know it has something to do with saving the earth, but only in a subtle fiction kind of way. I know too that you could blame my memory on my age and you might be right. I must confess if this is so, I hardly remembered this book a day after I finished it. I remember asking myself if I liked it, and I said I thought I did.

Lydia Millet is the author and has just written a sequel called Magnificence. It is one of those books that then follows the title with “a novel.” In fact both books do. One day such wording might become a flag for me, but not yet. My understanding is that this book and the older one have quite a following. I feel at this point, given my current state of remembrance, I must bring in some outsider information.

Amazon offers the following as a book description;

“As a wealthy, young real-estate developer in Los Angeles, T. lives an isolated life. He has always kept his distance from people — from his doting mother to his crass fraternity brothers — but remains unaware of his loneliness until one night, while driving to Las Vegas, he hits a coyote on the highway.

The experience unnerves him and inspires a transformation that leads T. to question his business pursuits for the first time in his life, to take a chance at falling in love, and finally to begin breaking into zoos across the country, where he finds solace in the presence of animals on the brink of extinction.

A beautiful, heart-wrenching tale, How the Dead Dream is also a riveting commentary on inidividualism and community in the modern social landscape and how the lives of people and animals are deeply entwined. Judged by many — including the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post Book World — to be Millet’s best work to date, it is, as Time Out New York perfectly states: “This beautiful writer’s most ambitious novel yet, a captivating balancing act between full-bodied satire and bighearted insight.”

Also from Amazon I give you the author’s bio:

Lydia Millet (born 5 December 1968) is an American novelist. Her third novel, My Happy Life, won the 2003 PEN-USA Award for Fiction. Her fifth novel, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart was short-listed for the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Her 2009 collection of short stories entitled Love in Infant Monkeys was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her 2011 novel Ghost Lights, a New York Times Notable Book, was the second in a cycle of novels that began with How the Dead Dream in 2008. Her new novel, Magnificence (2012) completes the cycle. Salon wrote of Millet’s work, ‘The writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself.’”

You might say I failed at my review, but I did get more caught up. As I said, I liked the book, I just couldn’t remember it. The good news is my physical is this Thursday. The bad news is I probably will not tell my doctor about this blog.

I have no plans to buy the sequel. I am moving on. I hope you read it so you can tell me how wrong I am.

Next up: Dakota Blues by Lynne Spreen

Comments about J.P.Beaumont mystery by J.A.Jance, Until Proven Guilty

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Books, Mystery

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A friend of mine died last year. A friend who left lots of books behind. Knowing that I am a reader, those who were responsible for dispersing her belongings asked if I would be interested in taking some of her books. No never crossed my mind.

She was a minister. I am a pastor. A fine line that may have nothing to do with what I chose. The thing is I passed up on all her religious books and went straight to her mysteries, sy-fy, and thriller books, most of which I had not heard of before or heard of only remotely. This last is the case with J.A. Jance.

From her website I learned that J.A. stands for Judith Ann. “Jance was born October 27, 1944 in South Dakota and raised in Bisbee, Arizona. She was the first in her family to attend a four-year college. She graduated with a degree in English and Secondary Education. She also went on to receive her M.Ed. in Library Science. She briefly taught high school before becoming a K-12 librarian. Throughout college she wanted to be a writer, but was thwarted by a provincial professor who frowned upon female writers.

Her first husband, an alcoholic writer, also dismissed her desire to write. After his death, she began writing again in the wee hours of the morning before the demands of single motherhood began for the day. In 1985, her first Detective Beaumont book was published. Since then she has remarried a wonderful and supportive man and become a successful author.”

Jance has written over a dozen J.P.Beaumont mysteries. Beaumont is a man and this first mystery with him as the main character was entertaining. It was the last book I read in 2012. It is a good mystery.

As with Dexter, the serial killer portrayed on TV, the bad guy is actually likable. Problem is likable or not, they still kill people. Who would think we would struggle over this, but in Until Proven Guilty I did.

This is not a deep book. It is a fast read. It is what I call a filler. After having read The Absolutionist, it was the perfect read.

Next up: How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet

More Information about and a Selection from The Absolutist

05 Saturday Jan 2013

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Absolutist–is one who believes in absolute principles in political, philosophical, ethical, or theological matters.

The book takes place in the trenches of WWI

The two main characters are arguing over where to take a stand; Will is willing to die for his principal of no longer engaging in combat; too many wrongs he has seen. Here is the scene.

“Don’t die Will.”

He frowns a little and looks up at me. “Don’t you have any principles, Tristan? Principles for which you would lay down your life, I mean.”

“No,” I say, “People, perhaps. But not principles. What good are they?”

“You don’t really believe in anything at all, do you Tristan? I don’t say this to hurt you, really I don’t. I just mean that you run away from things, that’s all. From your family, for example. From your friendships. From right and wrong. But I don’t. You see, I can’t. I’d like to be more like you of course. If I was, there’d have been more a chance I would get out of this bloody mess with my life.”

Book Review: The Absolutist by John Boyne

30 Sunday Dec 2012

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The plot of The Absolutist is centered on two men who become soldiers. Not only soldiers, but friends. The most intimate of friends. It is the intimacy that gets in the way of both characters and readers. It provides tension. A tension built out of choices.

All the while, never absent, are the horrors legislated by war. Every war I suspect is nightmarish, but the trenches of World War I are difficult to exceed in pure misery. If some wars offer adventure, this one does not. It seems monotonous and boring as it waits for moments to provide what every war provides, a chance for death or disfiguration.

Whole lives are ended or transformed. Whatever intimacies exist do not exist apart, but rather as a part of the war. All are in some way sucked into the mud of the trenches, whether they be the soldiers or their families and friends at home.

John Boyne describes it all in a compelling and realistic way. We get sucked into the agony of war and its opportunities of choice.  The tensions of the story reach out with intimate authority. It is a fast read and one that absorbs us in the courses of action.

I highly recommend it.

What this blog is about

29 Saturday Dec 2012

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I bought my first Kindle about five years ago. Since then I have averaged reading just over one hundred books a year. In my pre-Kindle days my average was about fifty. Something about tapping to call for Kindle’s next page increased my reading speed.

Then too it doesn’t hurt to have control over the font size that only an e-reader can provide. Now, even when reading a paper book my speed has achieved a level never before reached.  At 65 years of age, this is important to me.

Until about sixty, I never thought finitely. Now I do. It is no longer so far removed that today might be my last day to read.

The same year that I bought my first Kindle, I began working as a chaplain.  I have met many people whose reading days are behind them. This brings new urgency to my reading along with a hope that in what ever world I find myself next it will include libraries, bookstores and The Boston Globe.

Just before Christmas, I went to lunch with two friends who asked me (not for the first time) about my favorite books. They claimed to not only respect my opinions on books, but to like the brevity and eloquence of my oral reviews. Both of them encouraged me to start a blog on which I wrote assessments of my latest reads.

So here it is, bobsbooksblog. It is a book reviewing blog. If I like a book, it will be here. If I don’t like one, it will still be here. My goal is to tell you about what I have read in a simple and eloquent fashion. I hope that through this blog you discover many quality hours of what could be the greatest activity on earth, reading.

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