BOOKS I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS

BOOKS I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS

The pile of books on my night table has grown since Christmas, my
reading future right there within reach. These perfect presents provide
added security against idle moments and it is such a nice feeling to have choices made for me: how perfect -- nothing to decide.

As you may know from previous postings and from the newspaper column I wrote for years, I like lists. I like to know what other people are reading, especially people I know. There was a time when reading tips from friends came via postcard but now they come electronically. There are lists of bestsellers and recommendations via newspapers and publishers and that squid, Amazon. Book groups (I am not in one) abound, and it seems as if everybody is reading, reading.

My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force (Little, Brown, 2012)
is like an assignment: select a small shelf and put on it a selection of books that you love, that changed your life, that inspired you, etc. etc.
The editor solicited more than 100 creative people, not just writers, and the results make such an interesting collection. Some of the people you've heard of -- some are probably good friends of the editor. I like it that
there are contributors I've never heard of. I like it that many of the shelves include books I would have put there myself.

I'll give you an example: Maira Kalman, a genius illustrator and writer, a person I admire above many! Her shelf includes two by Nabokov, two by Cecil Beaton, an Arbus, an Atget, I Married Adventure  by Osa Johnson and a book on ceremonial uniforms. Kalman says, "I won't buy any books this week, then the next thing I know, I'm running to twelve bookstores and buying books as if I'm deprived." If you want a real treat, get Kalman's own book: The Principles of Uncertainty (Penguin, 2007) and think about putting it on your own shelf.

Here is another: Mary Karr. I've always liked the way she blats it out.
The Liar's Club (Viking, 1995) was my first Karr experience and I always used it as an example of made-up dialogue in a "true" memoir. Karr's list includes a Nabokov and poems by Pound and Eliot and Larkin. She includes To Kill a Mockingbird, Salinger's Nine Stories, and The House at Pooh Corner as books about the dispossessed and estranged, about people as weird as she felt herself to be. She also shelves Blood Meridian  by Cormac McCarthy, a book I'm reading now in slow doses, a nastier and more violent story than you can possibly imagine, told via razzle-dazzle writing so gorgeous it makes you suck your teeth.

Another good thing about this collection is the illustrations by Jane Mount. As you go through, you see books repeated and think of books
you'd put on your own shelf. It is a sweet, clever offering and I am so happy somebody got it for me!

Now the rest of the pile:

Elsewhere by Richard Russo (Knopf, 2012). A memoir about life in Gloversville, NY, of the 1950s, and mostly a tribute to his single mother, Jean, and the close-knit Italian family he grew up in. I've always liked
Russo and have read most of his novels, beginning with The Risk Pool,
(Random, 1988), most of them autobiographical, so I read Elsewhere as if it were about an old friend. You have to wonder why no photos or illustrations. What is going on, Knopf? This is one of your best writers!

Beautiful Ruins (Harper, 2012) by Jess Walter, a best-selling author I never heard of.  It is a novel that jumps back and forth in time about a bunch of Hollywood people off the set of Cleopatra. You may remember the famous Burton-Taylor escapades generated by that movie and some of the cast spills over into this novel. The setting, a tiny hotel on an unknown Italian island, is home to several appealing characters who inhabit the story through the years. This bestselling novel seems to get ecstatic reviews and, though I finished, I grew impatient and skipped.

Full Body Burden: Growing Up In The Nuclear Shadow Of Rocky Flats
by Kristen Iversen (Crown, 2012). This is one of those sleeper books, a word-of-mouth success. Set in the small Colorado town that has been called one of the most contaminated plutonium sites in the U.S. where accidents were always called "incidents," Iverson tells a chilling tale of nuclear nightmare. I'll read it when I get up the power.

The Encyclopedia of Container Plants by Ray Rogers (Timber Press, 2010). First page I turn to: a big picture of a bird's nest fern, a favorite I have growing in a window here in Burlington. The snow is coming down hard outside and the fern looks at it, defying the season. Because my only garden space these days is a long, fairly wide terrace, I grow everything in pots. Each year seems to have a color theme, not exactly planned, but often coherent. Last summer, it was purple and orange: lots of marigolds and tradescantia. Now that I have this fine illustrated book, I might even
make a plan before I wander dazedly through the nursery aisles. Look! Here is a big pot of sedum, agave, kalanchoe, agave and echeveria -- all
colorful succulents that may withstand the hot, dry, windy conditions
three stories above the ground.

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Holt, 2012). I read Wolf Hall
and look forward to this one which follows on. Ah, more Tudor history

with Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer and a large cast of Boleyns, Howards, Seymours  etc. etc. Hard to keep it all straight and I keep going back and forth. Glad to have a real book here. The electronic version makes it impossible to refer to the lists, charts and family trees. I always read a book like this with maps, also. Sounds like work but is really study. Wish I could remember what I learn.

Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro (Knopf, 2012). Who am I to say
Munro is depressing? I will give her another try. Surely, I've missed something.

In The Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown Country by Kim Barnes (Doubleday, 1996). An author I never heard of with a memoir set in the big timber country of Idaho during the 1960s. Life in a shack built by loggers on company land? Sounds a little familiar. My mother was born in such a camp in Marlinton, West Virginia, where her father ran
a saw mill.  This will be my next book. Thanks, Laura.

The Buddha in the Attic, a novel by Julie Otsuka (Anchor, 2011). Got all kinds of nominations and awards and I never heard of it. Getting deeper
down the well, is all I can say. Happy to have this little novel about a group of Japanese "picture brides" brought to San Francisco a hundred years ago.

With or Without You, a memoir by Dominica Ruta (Spiegel, 2013) was sent to me as an advanced reading copy. "My mother grabbed the iron poker from the fireplace and said, 'Get in the car.' I pulled on my sneakers
and followed her outside. She had that look on her face, distracted and mean, as though she'd just been dragged out of a deep sleep full of dreams. She was mad, I could tell right away, but not at me, not this time." So it begins -- another crazy mother and a smart kid who invents herself. I am drawn to these stories of the unprotected child and am glad to know Ruta has got herself a publisher with a national marketing campaign and big plans for promotion. Keep an eye out come March.

So many books. So little time. Thanks, everyone.





 

CHRISTMAS 2012

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CHRISTMAS 2012

Dark out and wind rattles the windows. Power out on the western slopes and snow is expected. We could use a little white to cover all the gray and brown. No color anywhere except, looking downtown, the street lights.

There is light in here, once I plug it in. Got a small tree that looked ok but has dropped needles since I brought it in and the branches are oddly limp. Put up colored lights around the dining room archway and they look ok but, like the tree, could be better. Too much haste and slap dash, not taking this holiday seriously.

This morning, I’ll bring up wrapping paper for the few presents I got – all on line, no shopping in stores. I did go to the supermarket yesterday and was surprised at how busy it was. Of course it was busy. Christmas is only a couple of days away and other people are out there, planning, going down lists.

At the supermarket, I follow my own list, churning through the narrow aisles, semi-dazed. “Jingle Bell Rock” is in my head after I picked Maya up from chorus last Thursday. Even  though the classroom door was closed, I could hear them rocking away, and now I’m stuck with the tune until Easter. Went to an organ concert downtown, on a gloomy afternoon, in a dark old church where I sat with my eyes closed, redesigning the front altar in my mind. A renovation has ruined the Victorian woodwork, placing an elongated white cross over everything. What were they thinking?

Right now, I’m wondering about the menu for Christmas dinner. I pulled out a can of cranberry sauce and a two packets of Jello (orange and lemon) to make a molded jelly thing, but that’s it. Maybe brisket from Amy’s cow. Squash. Cole slaw? Thought about making real cookies, not the ones from a packet. I remember ice box cookies my mother made, round, flat, with walnuts sliced through. Also, the ones from the press, squiggled on the baking sheet, decorated with sprinkles.

Fruit cake! I just read a poem by Marge Piercy about fruit cake, calling it some kind of poison, eaten by Rasputin. I am the only person who likes it and just threw one away after only a couple of bites. Ditch it or eat it. Help. I remember when my mother amassed the ingredients (all that citron!) and made little ones to give away to holiday callers.

Back then, people dropped in and sat around, sipping sherry and eating fruitcake (see above) while you showed them your presents. Those were opened and displayed for several days beneath the tree. This seems embarrassing now, but then it was what everyone did. From house to house people went, calling out greetings.

At Christmas breakfast, after presents were opened, we always had tomato juice my mother had canned late in the summer. My father would bring a bushel of tomatoes from somewhere in his travels and my mother was left to deal with them. The canned juice had a green pepper in it. I remember that. 

GOOD ONES YOU NEVER HEARD OF

 Mentioned below: "Bankok 8," and "Bankok Tattoo," by John Burdett; "Chasing the Dragon," and "The Big Boom," by Dominic Stansberry;




                   GOOD ONES YOU NEVER HEARD OF




    Modern Bangkok is polluted and traffic-clogged. This prosperous capitol seaport (in Thai called Krung Thep – heaven knows where Bangkok came from), is the setting for “Bangkok 8” by JOHN BURDETT (Knopf, 2003). Formerly Siam, Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia that was never colonized by a European power. Since the 13th Century, the Thai monarchy has been a unifying force in national affairs and the picture of the king is displayed on the walls of homes and offices, the way JFK’s picture used to be here.

    I read “Bangkok 8” on the recommendation of someone who rarely reads fiction and at first, had a few threshold problems because I was warned the story opens with a grotesque murder by drug-crazed snakes. Once I got beyond the cobras, I entered an exotic world of sex for sale, jade, meth of a particularly weird variety, and a monkish Buddhist detective.

    Although placed on the library shelf as a mystery, “Bangkok 8” could well have been catalogued under “Eastern Religion” or “Thai Cuisine” or “Transmutation of Souls” or “Economics” (with a sub-head: “Prostitution as a Factor in a Global Economy”). Other possibilities include “Perceptions of Reality,” “Drug Trafficking in The Golden Triangle” “The CIA in Southeast Asia,” and so on… You get the idea: the novel explores areas beyond our own sweet Bedford experience.

    “Bangkok 8” and Burdett’s latest, “Bangkok Tattoo” (Knopf, 2005) challenge Western, particularly American, hypocrisy about sex and gender. They remind us that no matter what high degree of affinity the farang, the foreigner, has for Asia, it is impossible to become One with the Eastern mind and morality.

    Atmosphere is a big part of both Bankok books but it is the characters, some continuing from the first novel to the second, that you’ll remember. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police Force, erudite and devoutly Buddhist, half-Caucasian bastard son of a Bangkok whore and the only honest cop in the entire Far East, is a drag on the police force profit-sharing and an occasional pain in the ass to his pistol-waving, supremely corrupt boss, Colonel Vikorn, Chief of Bankok District 8. A selectively cruel soft touch, the Colonel is a great character – so good that Burdett gives him in a major role in “Bangkok Tattoo”.

    As wonderful as these characters are, the best one is Nong, former prostitute turned madam and teen mother of Sonchai. Still gorgeous at the age of 50, Nong hones new management skills with Wall Street Journal courses on the Internet. Manipulative, seductive, ambitious and witty in several languages, she runs circles around anyone who comes near her, including Sonchai and the Colonel.

    Even the great John LeCarre can’t better this description in “Bangkok Tattoo” of a CIA boss come to Bangkok to follow a (non-existent) lead to Al Queda: “She is close to six feet, slim with a military bearing, a fit and handsome fortysomething, although her face and neck suffer from that drawn quality characteristic of those beset by the vice of jogging. Her hair is very short, gray and spiky… She does not waste time or money on cosmetics; her hygienic odor includes carbolic references. The suit is gray with baggy pants… She keeps her hands in her trouser pockets, thoughtfully pacing up and down as she talks. There is about her the restrained superiority of a senior librarian with access to secret catalogues.”

                                 * * *

    Ex-San Francisco cop, Dante Mancuso, has an enormous Luccan schnoz that he sticks into investigations involving smuggling of drugs and human beings or elaborate real estate scams. Police and City politics where lines of good and evil often blur figure into the mix and Mancuso, obsessive and intense as he is, gets caught in webs of power and money even he cannot avoid.

    The dwindling Italian neighborhood of North Beach where Mancuso grew up, has seen property values soar and the old timers either die off or sell and move out. Places that were once owned by generations of Italians are now up for grabs by yuppies or Chinese. There is major dot com and offshore money around and the church and the funeral parlor are about the only institutions that remain as they used to be. “Chasing the Dragon” (St. Martin’s, 2004) is the first in a new semi-noir series by the American, DOMINIC STANSBERRY a better writer and story teller than whom you’ll be hard-pressed to find.  I picked this novel off the shelf at the West Tisbury Library at Martha’s Vineyard. Usually I’ve at least heard of an author before I take the book, but this time, no: hog luck.
To get the next book, “The Big Boom” (St. Martin’s, 2006) in this recent series, I had to go to the Chilmark library, also on Martha’s Vineyard. Both of these libraries have great mystery sections, not surprising in seasonal communities where it rains a lot.

                                              * * *

DEON MEYER I read Meyer's South African novels with a map close by. I follow the routes and look up places I never heard of. Along with interesting characters and thoughtful excursions into the realities of apartheid, Meyer educates and expands the reader's understanding of South Africa past and present following in the footsteps of James McClure and preceeding Malla Nunn.

                                               * * *

ANDREA CAMILLERI  I had never heard of him and again, the Chilmark Library comes through with a good one.  Penguin has published several in Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series. These are police novels á la Dibdin and many are set in Sicily. Like Dibdin’s Inspector Aurelio Zen, Montalbano is an honest cop and you can imagine how this unusual trait complicates his life. The writing is plain and the translation runs smoothly. Inspector Montalbano, disillusioned with police work though he is, understands and enjoys good Sicilian cooking and the novels take you along with him as he relishes squid in ink and other Sicilian specialties. Camilleri has written many books and according to various blurbs, is popular and successful at home in Italy and abroad.

    So now, gifts from me to you on a silver platter, you’ve got four new authors I’ll bet you never heard of before: Andrea Camilleri, Deon Meyer, Dominic Stansberry, and John Burdett.

LONG, DARK DAYS

LONG, DARK DAYS


What am I reading now that the nights close in early and all the color has
left the scene? Too warm to snow. It is Advent season and we
are told to wait, to stay alert, to keep awake. Good time to be indoors and read. For this serious season, I abandon junk for the time being.

I've been updating my long, annotated list of suggested memoir reading and realize, once again, how the examined life, the story of before and after, the escape from the bad childhood, is what I really want to know about. All families have secrets, some more than others. All families are happy and unhappy, some more than others. People leave, people are left. Things change. They always do.

"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeanette Winterson
(Grove, 2011), "Mrs. Winterson," as the author usually refers to her
adoptive mother, was one of those monsters you read about in fiction:
smart, Pentecostal, depressed, cruel, cold, psychotic, suffering. She kept a gun in a drawer with the dust rags and the bullets in a furniture polish can. In Manchester, in the late 1950s, without money and prospects, working class life was lived on the margins and the future, for most, was grim.

The author was adopted by a woman who then proclaimed the devil had
led her to the wrong crib. The absence of anything close to love in her life made Winterson pretty crazy, too. Like so many abandoned children, she invented a life of her own through reading although books, except religious tracts, were forbidden in the house. The local library (Prose: A-Z) was her haven and a with couple of miraculous breaks and plenty of personal velocity, she left home at 16 and wound up at Oxford. 

"Why Be Happy?" is a look back by a person who has tried desperately to learn how to love and be loved. She examines adoption and describes
a tortuous road to discovering, then meeting, her own birth mother. As a teenager, she declared love for another female, not exactly the easiest
way to get on in the world during the dark era before the 1970s liberated
women.

About writing, Winterson says,"I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.

A lot about love, adoption, the unprotected child, reading, libraries, writing, escape, forgiveness. You probably won't like the author. She is too prickly, too involved with herself, and a little too unstable for comfort. At the end, Winterson says maybe without her abusive childhood she might never have amounted to anything. If she hadn't struggled to invent herself and to pull off a great escape, maybe she would have been there on the streets of Manchester, pushing a baby coach at the age of 17 and wondering where her life had gone.

                                               * * *

Next up: "Family Romance: A Love Story" by John Lanchester
(Penguin, 2007).

Lanchester is a good writer whose work I've recently come to know. He
grew up in Hong Kong, the grandchild of two people who had been held in Stanley prison after the Japanese invasion during WWII. In a last-ditch move, his father had been shipped off to Australia where he went through secondary school and eventually college living with people who supported him during the long war years. His mother, ah here it gets interesting, had been a nun, although the details of this part of her life did not emerge until after her death.

Lanchester pieces together time lines and realities of these lives from scraps of writing, pictures, and documents left behind after most of the family had died. His mother was the eldest in a large Mayo County family, wracked in poverty and disease. Pre-Vatican II, the Catholic grip on young people in families like this propelled many into the convent or priesthood as a means of escaping home.  The details of this religious life and leaving it (twice!) remained another one of the family's secrets -- so many of them and so difficult to grasp. 

Lanchester goes about it calmly and the more he delves, the more he reflects on family issues such as money, freedom and truth. In a calm voice, he examines three generations and what it means to live through the romance of family life. In the end, he says, "I realized my mother was much more of a stranger than I knew."

It could be we can all say this. How well can we reconstruct just who our parents had been?

                                             * * *

POEM BY MARY OLIVER

"MINDFUL" by Mary Oliver from "Why I Wake Early" (Beacon, 2004)

Every day/ I see or I hear/ sometimg/ that more or less
kills me/ with delight,/ that leaves me like a needle
in the haystack/ of light./ It is what I was born for --/ to look, to listen,
to lose myself/ inside this soft world --/ to instruct myself/ over and over
in joy,/ in acclamation./ Nor am I talking/ about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,/ the very extravagant -- / but of the ordinary,/ the  common, the drab,
the daily presentations,/ Oh, good scholar,/ I say to myself,. how can you help
but grow wise. with such teachings/ as these -- / the untrimmable light
of the world, the ocean's shine,/ the prayers that are made
out of grass?

VERMONT BARN