joycepa in 2009

This year, I am stealing from Jill the idea of listing all the books I've read in this, the first post.

17. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
16. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
15. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
14. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
13. Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman
12. Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 by O. Edward Cunningham
11. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
10. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
9. Paranoia by Joseph Finder
8. Mothers of Invention by Drew Gilpin Faust
7. Sun Storm by Asa Larsson
6. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
7. Wings of Fire by Charles Todd
6. So Big by Edna Ferber
3. The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais
2. The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
1. A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

Welcome to the group! I look forward to reading your posts.

Yea! Another migrant from the 50-book group. Welcome Joyce! Oh, and nice ticker. How that turkey got into the palm trees, I'll never know.

Just remember that the tropics produces mutations really fast! ;-)

Seems to me all his tail feathers would have mutated right off!

Haven't they? Haven't they? Good grief, I got the wrong mutation!

I think its mutating into a bird of paradise, look at the plumage

Now there's a good thought! I love it--a bird of paradise! fits right in with the theme.

I think a turkey among palm trees is a bird in paradise!

Especially at the moment--we've just started our "summer". although come to think of it, for palms it really doesn't matter, "summer" or "winter". so, our bird in paradise can plan to settle down permanently in the grove!

Good to see you here, Joyce - a fellow migrant from the 50 Book Challenge Group. I've got you starred!

Ditto, Tracy! And I simply don't know how you're going to keep your resolution about your TBR pile, either.

Oh, I'm sure it's a lost cause, but my husband will feel much better if he thinks I'm trying. :-)

Listen, just put on a good show. There are times when the opinions of spouses/significant others count and then there is the rest of the time. books fall in the latter category.

Joycepa

I'm looking forward to seeing "what else" you read--and also expect to get more ideas for Civil War! Glad you joined us! I know you will add interesting insights to this group, also.

Thanks, MusicMom!

Welcome! I hope you will enjoy our friendly, kind, well-read and curious group. I look forward to reading your posts and comments re. books you finish.

#17: Thank you for your friendly welcome. Perhaps you might want to take into account that on this, my thread, I occasionally post comments on other things, such as DVDs. At times, I make comments about books I'm still reading. I have been known to make political comments from time to time. Other times I inquire of people who contribute to this thread about what they're reading or even doing. I certainly did that from time to time on my 50 Challenge thread!

Therefore, you may not want to follow this thread--unless of course, you enjoy, as I do speculation on alternative biology and mutant birds!

ROFL, you've just described the behavior of 99% of the active members in the 2008 75 group. Everything was grist for the mill.

#19: Please clear something up for me--I know LOL and a few others--but what is ROFL? I'm afraid of using it and then discovering I've said something terribly obscene or horrendously offensive to the wrong people! :-)

any opinions on mutant turkeys?

Roll On the Floor Laughing :-)

Oh, lordie, what a relief!! ;-)

20. How do they taste?

I have a suspicion that it depends on what kind of recipe you use--the stuffing, i understand, is critical.

LOL

I get that one--in fact, my acronym vocabulary has doubled today! :-)

I just went over and looked at your profile. We share a couple of favorite authors (King and Lincoln)—perhaps another after this year as I read Guns of August in 2008 and absolutely loved it...I'll try another Tuchman this year and see if she moves into my favorites list. I've decided to work my way through Cornwell's Sharpe books on audio to help my long commute. So far, I'm really enjoying them and I can see him becoming a favorite, also. I've also got Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy going as a multi-year read. I read a bit at a time and am enjoying it.

Interesting that you were a chemist. I started life after college that way working for ARCO (Atlantic Richfield in those days), but didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to and ended up switching careers.

Panama—I spent a 24 hour layover there on my way to a year and half in Bolivia. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see anything really interesting. Once the kids are grown, my wife and I would like to do some traveling through Central and South America. We'll see.

On the subject of turkeys, we need one who self-brines in life so that I don't have to remember to start Thanksgiving turkey an extra day in advance.

>18 Joycepa: Joyce, you are right at home with this crazy bunch! Have you checked out the kitchen thread - 30 posts about tea! OK, I suppose kitchen and tea equate, but 30 posts! :)

- 15 Carolyn, have you read the Starbuck series by Bernard Cornwell starting with Rebel. I recently read Rebel, you can see my review on the 2008 thread. (Or in my reviews).

- TT

#27: I found almost all of Tuchman's books to be truly superior with the exception of the last one, The march of Folly, which she wrote not too long before she died. It's good but it's not her best. If you loved The Guns of August, try The Zimmerman Telegram and The proud tower, which are related. Two other absolutely terrific books are Stillwell and the American experience in china and A Distant Mirror. there are a couple of others worth reading as well.

I wound up my career as a senior research scientist for Boeing and found that I enjoyed industry much more than I did academics, although I loved teaching itself.

As far as I'm concerned, Panamá is not a tourist destination country unless you're one of those international surfing types, which i most emphatically am not nor have i ever been!! There are some very worthwhile things to see around panama city itself, such as the Canal (you can tke tours) and Barro Colorado. the latter is a nature preserve in Gatun Lake (part of the Canal) where the Smithsonian has a research station. there are species there that are not found anywhere else. There are guided tours, for which you have to make reservations, usually. the tours are very, very good.

Outside of some National Parks and kayacking, there is very little "touristy" stuff to do. I love it here--this is far more my home than the US ever was, and in january I will apply for Panamanian citizenship. there has been a huge influx of people, primarily from the US, in the past 3-5 years, most of whom don't have a clue in the world as to why they're here and what they're doing. As a result, about 50% are extremely unhappy, and until the housing market crashed, were trying to get out of here back to the US. They were under the illusion/delusion that Panamá was a low cost-of-living US combined with the Garden of Eden, and believe me, were very rudely awakened. having lived in Bolivia, I'm sure you know what I mean.

If I were strictly on a tourist trip, i most likely would avoid Central America entirely (with the exception of Mexico if you consider Mexico a part of C.A.) and spend my time in Brasil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru. But then I'm sure you know what's available in S.A. as well as I do.

Self-brining turkeys: i would consult with Stasia--if she could come up with a bird of paradise, believe me, self-brining turkeys are child's play for an alternative Biologist such as she! :-)

Lots of fun--many thanks for taking the time to write that post.

#28 TT - I think it was me that started the tea thing and it just spiralled out of control.

Wait! Wait! i can't keep up! WHAT kitchen thread? 30 posts about tea? Good grief, I have stumbled on to paradise here. :-)

#31 are there turkey's there?

#32: Only if you're willing to deal with mutants.

>29 Joycepa:: I'd like to hit some of the eco-tourism in Costa Rica and some diving in Honduras (we dive, though we don't surf) in Central America. I'd like to come to Panama to see the canal; I've always had a bit of a fascination with it.

For South America, my priorities are Ecuador and Argentina. My wife's priorities are really Peru: I did a substantial amount of backpacking around Peru while I was in Bolivia, but she hasn't been and really wants to see Machu Picchu and Cuzco. I'd like to see Brazil but it's probably too much to do in even an extended trip.

Tuchman—I own a copy of A Distant Mirror, so I'll probably go ahead and read that as my second Tuchman.

#34: I'd forgotten about the eco-tourism, since there's certainly none of that here. I almost got to the Galapagos this year, but had to cancel those plans, unfortunately.

Brasil deserves an extended trip in itself. The country is HUGE and there is a lot to experience.

Hello dear friend! I jumped from the 50 book thread too! Your 2009 thread is starred, and I am ready to read your 2009 posts! Happy New Year! =)

Hey, Jill! Happy New Year! Gotta go find your 75 challenge thread and get it starred, ready to go!

I'm REALLY looking forward to reading everyone's threads and driving myself crazy with additions to my TBB(ought) list! I will hold all of you responsible for forcing me into poverty.

Actually, it's already bad. I've been checking out the 2008 summary lists on a few threads, and found all kinds of books to add. already. Yours, of course, has already been plundered.

I'm going to do another copycat from other threads, and post the books I've started but will not finish for a bit.

After over 15 years, I'm rereading one of my all-time favorite books ever, on my lifetime Top 10,A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. It's over 850 pages, and I'm only half-way through, trying to finish up The Long Valley by Steinbeck and working through an ok police procedural, A Test of Wills as well.

Welcome Joyce, good to see you here - as you can see, it's a fun group - looking forward to seeing what books you're reading this year! *waving*

Joycepa, I love your ticker! I think this must be what happens to the turkeys pardoned by the president here in the U.S. at Thanksgiving. :o)

BTW, I also love your profile pic.

39 ktleyd--*waving back**

#40 missylc--ah,so now we know--they're deported to the tropics!

Yes, Stressed Out Fred ready for action.

Hey Joyce found your thread. So now I have tagged it. Hope you had a great New Years.

Mandy! Great to see you!

Had a great New Year's--did absolutely nothing except read.

Awesome we just watched movies and ate junk LOL

1. Test of Wills by Charles Todd. I really didn't want this to be the first book I finished in 2009. Intimidated by the lists I see in other threads, I wanted it to be something like Steinbeck or A soldier of the Great War or some Civil War stuff I'm reading--you know, impressive and literature and all that, so that people would think I'm this great reader.

But--here I am with a mediocre police procedural. Ah well, Fluff Is Me, I guess.

Too bad about this book because the premise, a returned officer, Ian Rutledge, from The Great War who is a Scotland Yard Inspector is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress ?Disorder--shell shock, in those days, is a really good one. He carries around with him the voice of his dead corporal, Hamish, and it's interesting the way Todd handles this.

Unfortunately, while the plot is good, Rutledge and Todd stumble around a lot, and the book never quite lives up to its potential. Still, I have the second in the series somewhere (thanks to vanishing bookcase space, my TBRs are scattered all over the house), and I intend to read at least that much further.

Not bad, but not really good, either.

#45: What's wrong with fluff? I am not reading Steinbeck or any other lofty tomes at present, either. I figure that will take care of itself as the year rolls along. I do not want to ponder any heavy stuff at this time of year, personally speaking.

#46: Yes, but you don't have this clear desire to impress!! :-)

Your list alone is enough to make me want to crawl into bed with something like How to Train Your Dog To Stop Ignoring You.

Better yet: How to Live With the Fact That Your Dog Is Never going To Listen To You.

If I could train my dog to stop ignoring me, I will really have accomplished something this year!!

And my list is just a list. I will read lots of fluff in between. I do not want to hurt my brain, it's little enough as it is :)

Listen, I will be hysterically grateful for any tips! Any hope! ANYTHING that works! I adore Fred, but I've never had a dog who was both so affable and so utterly dismissive of death threats the way he is. Someone on my blog who knows him well called him a renegade--suits him to a T.

My dog is named Panda - it is short for Pandemonium. Does that tell you anything, lol?

Sure does! ROFL (I have to practice the vocabulary words that TadAD taught me).

Joycepa
Please do try to get the notion of impressing 75 book challenge folk...
We read a wide ranging band of topics. I've learned so much from this group it is amazing!
I keep coming back to the fact that before finding this group I did not read Young Adult fiction. Now, it is a part of my ongoing reading habit and I'm hooked.

And, while we are talking about Dogs, I'll chime in to say my shetland sheep dog is Simon, named after the character in the movie Simon Birch, who is kind, sensitive, smart AND more than a tad odd.

Maybe we should start a thread about our over-the-top dogs!

And perhaps my sense of humor is a little obscure. I must admit that at my stage of life, I'm not really interested impressing anyone. Been there, done that, boring. A game of youth.

I brought with me to Panama a library of about 450 books, culled from thousands. I now have over 900 as I rebuild, and at least half if not more--in fact, probably three quarters--are titles and authors I picked up from LT. You're absolutely right on, talking about a learning experience In fact, that's my main interest in LT, not being a terribly social person at heart. But ever ready to learn, especially about books! :-)

message 53...I couldn't agree with you more regarding trying to impress as a game of youth.

And believe me, I was into it in my late 20s! Fortunately, got out of it in my early 30s--reality really has a way of knocking the overinflated ego down! And, I discovered, it's more fun to laugh at oneself, since there's an endless supply of opportunities for humor. That started my secret ambition to be a sit-down comic. :-)

I agree as well. I would much rather read things I want to read and that I enjoy than stumbling through something I do not just to impress people have never "really" met. But, then again, that's just me.

Vocabulary I taught you? Did I miss something?

#57: What! You don't remember explaining to me ROFL?? Oh, I am crestfallen.

You know, my eye missed the "ROFL" in the sentence you wrote. I just saw, "It sure does. I have to practice the vocabulary words TadAD taught me." and I was sitting here trying to remember some arcane word I had explained.

Oh well. It's early; I'm getting old. Forgive me.

Yes, well, I have the same problems. I find that 3 cups of coffee in the morning assist me in in the illusion that I have some wits left. Of course, they're decaf.....

Folks, I have a request. Can we keep it light here? If I'm serious, believe me you'll know. I'm just not that subtle. I KNOW that my humor is not for everyone--my daughter, with great pity and compassion, once told me that my jokes were terribly lame, and I have no doubt that she was right. But it's my sense of humor which is never at anyone else's expense but mine and some mutant turkeys. And if that doesn't somehow fit in with your sense of humor, no problem--I can definitely see wanting something, anything more sophisticated. Fine. However, I'm afraid that you'll have to find it elsewhere.

Not only am I not interested in impressing anyone, I'm also even less interested in explaining myself--on my thread. If there's something about my style that you find irritating, if you have an hour or so to read it, I can write a message giving you the names of hundreds of other people who agree with you. Form a club if you want--but somewhere else.

Joyce love ya just the way you are! I must have a similar sense of humor as you cause you only make me laugh.

Anyway I agree with you about LT broadening reading horizons. I have discovered so many new authors on here through recommendations I will soon need a new book case to house my rapidly growing book collection.

PS 900 is an impressive collection!

Joyce, you've read one book, and this is message 63; at that rate, I figgered out that this thread will have 4,725 messages by year end. A chatty bunch you seventy-fivers are.

And I thought I was going to have to wear a tie and bring my portable OED to visit here.

>53 Joycepa: Humor and dogs...can't argue with that! I am amazed at the ways our pets manage to worm their way into our comments. I just made our dog Lucky (a rescue Lab) the star of my Profile Page.

#64 I did the same on my Profile Page, only I used my rescue Pom Irish instead of your rescue Lab Lucky.

#63: I tell you, I hadn't gotten that far in the calculation, but it was beginning to scare me! do you know, there is one thread that has *more*? And no books read yet??

Carrying on with my Continuing Education course here in acronyms, can you please inform me as to what OED is? I now have, in my dictionary LOL, ROFL, and thanks to a kindly private message, ROFLMA.

OED = Oxford English Dictionary
:-)

As always, coming to the rescue, TadAD! I do get by with a little help from my friends. :-)

I'd like to join in the doggy conversations the only problem is I don't have a dog! How about if I get a virtual dog, I could talk about him or her! Can anyone suggest a name for my virtual dog? How about Sky?

Now my dog Sky is amazing! He never whines to be taken for walkies, never chews my slippers - Oh, I just realised I don't have any slippers to chew - maybe that's why my dog Sky never chews them -such a good dog!

- TT

Maybe you can include Sky as a furry character in The Book Traveller. I just read in the WSJ this morning about the popularity of dog -- and with Dewey, now cat -- books.

Btw (by the way), Joyce, WSJ is the Wall Street Journal. And that is a sample of my sly humor. :-)

Donna: There is a new dog book by John Katz, Izzy and Lenore, and neither of them dies!

Izzy and Lenore

#69: Not a bad idea, virtual puppy. Yes, I do remember the 2 am walks at the end of the rainy season during the height of fer-de-lance mating season when they travel ih pairs, no less, all 6 ft of them.

Slippers? don't I wish! Fred took a mad mania for sandals, destroying 4 pairs--but only the one for the right foot.

Then there's his predilection for playing with Brahma bulls, who, believe me, don't want to play with him!

#71: Listen, you jest, but how else am I going to expand my vocabulary? I'm actually quite pleased--in no time I should be able to toss these things around like confetti and pretend I really mean something by it.

#72: About time someone figured out we all like to believe our dogs and cats are immortal!

Actually, for those interested, Jon Katz has a blog which he updates several times a day: http://blog.bedlamfarm.com/index.cfm

Both Izzy and Lenore (and Rose) play integral roles on his blog. He focuses a lot on spirituality, but also talks about his dogs and animals at least once or twice a day.

And Joyce, you sure are popular! Up to post #73 and it's only January 3rd!

Well, it's about time to get serious here.

2. The Long Valley by John Steinbeck

This is a collection of 13 short stories, all set in the Salinas Valley, the most famous story of which is The Red Pony.

Steinbeck did other short story collections--as far as I'm concerned, Tortilla Flat is one of them. Pastures of Heaven is another. They're only loosely connected. But nothing, really except the locale connects these stories except for the Red Pony and Leader of the People, which has the Tiflin family as its cast.

What struck me most of all about these stories is that they are relentlessly grim in one way or another. The more completely I read in Steinbeck, the more I'm convinced that while he loved the Salinas Valley, he did not view life there as either easy or likely to lead to a good outcome. In fact, disappointment, loneliness, madness, murder, and unwitting cruelty were more likely to be the case than any sort of pleasant life. You can get fooled by the Tortilla Flat/Cannery Row books. For the most part, Steinbeck was no upbeat writer.

But as always his prose is quietly beautiful in its description of the land.

>47 Joycepa:: Joycepa
Ever tryed to ignore the dog?
I did and failed, they both wanted to be seen ;-)

Tracy, it's not me--it's the dogs.

Joycepa, you sum up Steinbeck's works in general wonderfully! I would add that he had a love for the land, but not necessarily for people.

That's a real insight for me, missylc--I never would have thought of it that way, but you're right. It isn't that he doesn't like them, but that he's not fooled by them--that he sees right to the core and what he sees isn't pretty.
The exception is Doc, and I think that there are a few he admires, such as the protagonist of To a God Unknown, which is a chilling book. Clearly he thinks highly of the Communist labor organizers of the 30s, but in the earlier works, they just don't seem real, but rather stereotypes, such as In Dubious Battle and in one of the short stories in The Long Valley.

Thanks for the comment--it really helped me organize my thoughts about Steinbeck. I was straining for some way to describe what I felt about his works--I couldn't quite put a finger on the unrelenting grimness.

I actually didn't come to that conclusion myself until reading your review and remembering the stories of his that I have read. Kudos to you!

Hey, hey--don't we make a fine team!

:o)

#45, 47 Hey Joyce, I'd have been happy to make fun at your expense for starting the year off with a fluff read, but my first book this year is a children's story - and it's taken me 3 days to finish it! So, I'm going to just sit here quietly and hope everyone's attention is so riveted on you that they won't notice that I'm reading like a 4th grader this week!

Actually, I'm always on the lookout for a new series. Have you read any of the other Inspector Rutledge books? I've added this one to my wish list.

I have his terrible feeling, SJ, that you and I are going to hold up the fluff end of things!

FINALLY found the second one, Wings of Fire. I've started yet another profound read, an Elvis Cole mystery by Robert Crais--have to finish that before getting to Wings.

It's not me, SJ--it's the turkeys. Ever since Stasia noticed that they had mutated into birds of paradise, nothing has been quite the same.

Speaking of fluff, I began the year with two Dilbert books! They weren't comic books, but they did have comics in them, and Scott Adams is definitely more humor than seriousness in his writing.
I figure we need the lighter stuff to appreciate the weightier reads, right?

Hi Joycepa,

Whew! I thought you were a readin' fool to have so many messages on your thread, so I had to check in! On a bookish note, I had the same reaction to A Test of Wills. I bought it along with Wings of Fire for a buck at my local library sale so I'll probably give the second one a try, too. I'll check back to see what you think about it.

#85: I LOVE Dilbert! I finished up my career at Boeing and always felt that someone there--probably the guy just down form me--was feeding Adams inside info.

At one point, I considered Dilbert my heavy intellectual reading for the day.

#86: I'll probably get to it in a day or two. Be fun to compare notes. Let SJ know what she's in for.

I'll be watching - the series is only on the wish list - if it's not worthy all I have to do is erase it. No harm, no foul.

I never cared much for Dilbert. I spent a few years at Boeing, too, and it was just too close to home to be funny.

Pardoned or not, I'd be happy to roast one of your mutated birds of paradise for dinner. Would that help things to settle down a bit? I'll bet they grow bigger than life down there, just like our trees do when transplanted to the tropics. Yum - save the drumstick for me and pass the gravy.

#84 joycepa: As much as I would like to take credit for calling your turkey a bird of paradise, I must pass that honor over to TheBookImp (message 7, I think). I actually said your turkey, beautiful as he is, looks like a bird in paradise.

#89: Good grief, you're right!! My apologies, BookImp--sloppy reading on my part. But here's to both of you--there should be an award for Alternative Biology.

#88: I've never worked anyplace where the professionals hated the company as much as at Boeing. But there was a trip I took to McDonnell-Douglas, just before they bought out Boeing, and what I saw there made me glad to get back to Boeing. At least at Boeing we could laugh if rather sourly at Dilbert, along with a good percentage of the peons who were supervisors. At Douglas, they were too afraid to laugh.

I've been thinking a lot more about Steinbeck's characters. I think it's safe to say he loved Doc, modeled after his best friend, Ed Ricketts. Have you ever noticed that Doc is perfect? He's very human yet he has no flaws, no character defects. It's an amazing piece of writing to pull that off.

I also think he had great affection for Mac and the boys in Cannery Row and Danny and his boys and t he other residents of Tortilla Flat. Which leads me to wonder if the only people he truly cared for were the down-and-outers, the outcasts. In Cannery Row, there's a young couple that's living in a huge abandoned steam pipe, I think it is, and they are gently drawn. As opposed to Jody's father, say, in The Red Pony and any number of other characters in all those early works.

Anyone want to weigh in on this?

I'm resting from Steinbeck for a bit, about to start The Grapes of Wrath.

If you hand out an award for Alternative Biology, you could make it look like your turkey - perhaps with no tail feathers.

As much as I would love to weigh in on Steinbeck, the only book of his I have ever read was Travels with Charley, and I do not think that is going to help much in this case. One of these centuries . . .

Totally out of character for me, I am drawing out reading A Soldier of the Great War because I really don't want it to end. Normally I race through a great book just devouring it. Helps I suppose that I've read it before and know what's to come.

Here's a sample of the writing, which is what I want to share today:

"One morning, s they looked out from a forest on the crest of a mountain, they saw Rome silently straddling the Tiber, fresh, pale, and without mass. In the eastern light ten thousand roofs flashed like the reflective scales of a fish as its stripes cloud into a dying rainbow when it is pulled from the sea."

There are authors who wouldn't be able to get away with this kind of imagery but Helprin can. It is absolutely perfect for his protagonist, Alessandro, who is utterly enthralled by beauty,no matter where he finds it, and who is caught up in the ultimate ugliness of war.

I have put A Soldier of the Great War on Continent TBR. It looks wonderful!

>78 missylc:,79: Hmmm, I didn't come away with the same impression: I felt that Steinbeck did love many of his main characters, but he loved them in spite of a very flawed humanity. In essence, he refused to judge them.

On the other hand, the secondary characters were the ones he didn't love. He set them into the stories almost as symbols of the problems upon which he wanted to comment—Curley in Of Mice and Men, the farming corporations in The Grapes of Wrath. These kinds of characters seem much more uni-dimensional to me than his main cast. When reading The Grapes of Wrath, I almost felt like "there are these evil capitalists and they are oppressing these humans"...much like Ayn Rand, only on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum.

Just some thoughts. I haven't read Cannery Row or Tortilla Flat, so I don't know how much perspective I have on his major works.

Edit for typos. *sigh*

Joycepa: I woke up to find 54 unread messages on your thread! Aaack! At this rate, I'll never get any actual book reading done. Anyway, just thought I'd calm down from my unread-threads panic long enough to say Hello and that I'm looking forward to following your (v. active) thread this year.

*smiles and waves*
*Tuppence, the border collie, waves too*

I agree that he doesn't judge, but he doesn't seem to me to have the affection he has for his Monterey works. I've been reading through the Library of America volumes of his works, starting off with the earliest ones they published. The short stories in particular paint far from an affectionate view of the people living in the Salinas Valley. Some are just weird but others?

I don't think at all that his characters are one dimensional--but they aren't people I'd like to have living next to me, either. The women run the spectrum but many of them are eaten by despair or loneliness. You can have compassion for them but there's not one of them I'd like to sit on the porch with and get to know further. While I'd adore going to one of Danny's parties and some of the scams that his buddies run remind me of life here, and I have to admire them in a wry fashion. I'd probably have sold my soul to have gone to Doc's party, so it's just as well I never had the chance!

I'm about to reread Grapes of Wrath and will get to East of Eden in working my chronological way through his works. But I still think that his early works on the whole social justice issue of labor organizing are wooden.

Of Mice and Men breaks your heart--it always reminds me of Aristotle's definition of tragedy--arousing pity and fear--and again, Steinbeck appears to me to see through to the heart in many ways--but compassion is not synonymous with love.

#95: Great to hear from you!! I know exactly what you mean about unread thread panic. And here I thought I'd left that behind with dropping out of What Are You Reading Now threads!!

Lucy, Tuppence's very distant relative, waves back (she thinks, maybe, not really sure). Fred, of course, the original amigo de todos, wants to set up a play date. Ethel, Our Jaded Lab, is busy sleeping.

>96 Joycepa:: I'm feeling somewhat crippled in the conversation because I don't know several of those works, so bear with me. My opinions are based pretty much solely on The Grapes of Wrath and I'm wondering if it's very different from the other books you're citing.

You say that "compassion is not love"...I'm having trouble articulating my reaction; the words just don't come. The thing is, I don't think Steinbeck cared whether he engendered affection or liking for his characters; he leaves that as the reader's problem. I think he wants to express an essential sympathy (in the purer sense) for the people as individuals, regardless of whether they are appealing. Hmmm, perhaps what I'm trying to say is that I do have a moderate equation of love and compassion, where you seem to be tying love more to affection. Maybe that is the essential disagreement—I would agree with the statement that "he has compassion for them but little affection" and it's only when the word "love" is introduced that things get murky.

Of course, it's equally likely that I simply don't have a clue. :-)

The Grapes of Wrath is an interesting book for me: I didn't enjoy reading it but it's a book I'm exceedingly glad I read. The language was tedious and I didn't warm to the Joads, but the book really made me think. Perhaps it was just that I read it at one of those ages when one is rethinking values and perceptions of the world. The result is a book I rate very highly but have no desire to re-read.

My concepts of compassion and love are definitely derived from Eastern--Chinese/Buddhist--thought, not Western, Judeo-Christian. It does make a difference, truly, and you're right in bringing that up. I wasn't clear.

Frankly, i wholeheartedly agree with you on the lack of enjoyment in reading Steinbeck. Lots of these early works have been real work, but they've provided me with a better grasp of his viewpoint as a whole. I've been careful to make clear that I'm basing my remarks at the moment on his earlier California works, because I'm afraid that my view at this moment of both Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden is clouded by nostalgia and/or the movies, both of which I loved.

I'll also be reading some
time this year his non-fictional Log From the Sea of Cortez, which is an account of a trip he took with Ricketts. But I'm not sure. I read a great many of his earlier works last year, and the cumulative effect was exhausting--it took me 8 months to finish The Long Valley because I became so bogged down in The Red Pony, which as far as I'm concerned is practically gothic horror. Steinbeck may have liked children, but again, he was an incredible realist, and his accounts of Jody's non-thinking and even, at times, encouraged cruelty towards animals is not pleasant reading in today's world.

The point you make about the Joads is the one I'm making (I think!). the only characters I warm to are the paisanos and ne'er do wells of Monterey. Quite probably because at heart I'm one of them. :-)

Joycepa, I'll be interested to hear what you think of The Grapes of Wrath. It's my favorite of the Steinbeck works I've read so far. After reading some of the comments since our exchange last night, I realized that so many of his books have the plight of the lower classes as such a central theme that I may need to rethink my sweeping statement. I still hold that his love of the land is without question and may still trump that of humanity.

Joyce, thanks for stopping by my blog. To answer your question, I get most of my book recommendations from fellow LTers. This month, I am ready books that were nominated for or won the Orange Prize, so I went off the raving reviews of other Orange book lovers. So far, I haven't missed! =)

Took me awhile to get to the end of this thread.......talkative doesn't quite describe us accurately, it's a bit of an understatement.

Have to weigh in on Steinbeck. I think Steinbeck was always very fond of the characters in his works based in the Salinas Valley, regardles of his frank and complete description of them. To describe the characters who populate any one region or locality completely, you need to describe them warts and all. In his description of the salty crews of Cannery Row and the destitute working class of Tortilla Flats, he describes them as whole people, some with good characteristics and some completely lacking. But if you use your own sense of morality to evaluate who these people are and what they meant to Steinbeck, you may not see his own love for these characters. This is also true in his larger works like Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, though Grapes is not so much focused on the Salinas Valley.

Another difficulty you may be having is that Steinbeck's works are deeply infused with Western, Judeo-Christian themes. In fact, one could argue that the majority of his works are morality tales; East of Eden the primary example. The book is bounded by references to a scripture in Genesis about man's ability to withstand evil and temptation. Another wonderful example of this tendency in his work is The Winter of Our Discontent, where the main character spends the entire length of the book facing one temptation after another. So, again, if you are looking at the works without any reference to these kinds of themes, you may be missing some things.

Finally, if you read any of his letters and other odd writings, you will find that Steinbech had a difficult time with women in his own personal life. Some think this is why many, if not most, of his female characters are troubled, tortured souls or are somewhat manipulative and cold. This is certainly not true of all his female characters, but it describes a good many of them.

TadAD, IMHO, East of Eden is a much better work than Grapes of Wrath and, if you were going to give another Steinbeck a go, try that one.

JoycePA, IMHO=in my humble opinion

#104: I can definitely see what you're driving at and why, but I'm not imposing my own sense of morality on any of these characters--I'm trying to find an organizing principle to describe his body of works as I've experienced them so far. I'm truly reluctant to say much about any of the works from Grapes of Wrath on (although I did reread Cannery Row out of chronological order) because I either haven't read them yet or am afraid that my memory is not quite good enough to be able to contribute to this discussion.

I do believe that all of the truly great Western literature is, in the end, composed of morality tales. That's the reason why they last and last. Those tales never die. I think that's one reason why Tolkien is so popular, and why the Harry Potter series will endure--Rowling wrote one incredible morality tale, and did it well.

I'm aware of Steinbeck's difficulty with women--3 marriages for one thing--but if anything, overall his treatment of women is more sympathetic than that of men. Yes, many of the women were tortured souls, but the men don't come across as models of healthy attitudes, either. if I were Jody, I'd much prefer the mother to the father, for example. The fundamentalist brother in To A God Unknown is a not your typical socially acceptable character. I'm writing about those characters as I find them. That does not mean I'm passing a moral judgement on them.

Personally, I want to get away from Judeo-Christian judgmental types of evaluation because of exactly the problems you describe, which is why I mentioned my definition of compassion. I rather think that Steinbeck was morally neutral (but had great understanding and compassion for) towards his characters, and after having read so many of the early works in a row, my impression still is that I can see affection in his treatment of the paisanos and of, say, the prostitutes in Cannery Row, whereas I absolutely can not find that affection in ANY of the characters in The Pastures of Heaven, although to me it seems clear that he admired the protagonist.

While I have never read The Winter of Discontent and don't have it in my 3-volume collection of his works, I have enough of the body of his works to continue to see if this particular organizing principle holds up. If it does, great--if not, onwards with the search! :-) I am a patterner by nature and am most comfortable when I can identify one such and say, "Aha!".

Thank you for the IMHO--let's see, I think I now have 6 "words" in my little dictionary! :-) Growing by leaps and bounds, it is.

3. The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais

Elvis Cole is kind of a soft-boiled private eye as compare to hard-boiled detectives like Harry Bosch. The first Crais book I read was The Watchman which stars his psychopath partner, Joe Pike. I liked it, which was the reason I decided to go on to the main event, with Cole. Looks like it could be a good series. Not the best of the genre, but good enough to keep reading.

Joyce.
It looks like your posts stir some lively discussions...this is great!

I was forced to read Steinbeck while in college and because the prof. wasn't a great teacher, I wasn't drawn to continue with any other Steinbeck works. But now, these conversations entice me to read more of his works. So, thanks to you and others!

On a slightly different tangent and a question for anyone(but something that I wondered as I read your discussion of Steinbeck).....

Are there any authors (male or female) that can accurately and completely descibe what it is like to be a member of the opposite sex (ie a male author totally getting into the head of a woman)? I mean, so much so that as you read, you were able to go YES! They understand! That is how it is!

The summer between my 1st. year of college & the 2nd (& last, I dropped out, but returned to another college 30 years & 6 kids later) anyways, I went on a Steinbeck binge. The summer before, it had been thomas Wolfe, But now I was into the Prolitariet. The factory my best friends' mother worked at was on strike. So Flo & I would go down after our jobs & march (actually everyone mostly played horseshoes) for Union & Brotherhood & women's right to equal pay & all that good late 40's early 50's stuff. I had already read Grapes of Wrath, & East of Eden didn't fit in my beach bag. So I read all his smaller stuff, one right after another. OK, so the Pearl was found in the Sea Of Cortes where th Red Pony drowned & the mice& & men guys stayed at Tortilla Flat --
Later I read Winter of our discontent & was really disappointed - only finished it because it was by Steinbeck.
30 years later, I entered a local (36 mile drive 1 way) Univ. & Grapes of Wrath was on the reading list. In between readings, I had seen the movie, & read Travels with Charlie, but somehow, TGOW seemed to have shrunk, the people were not larger than life, in fact they were kind of pitiful & I only cried at the end where Rose O'Sharon is nursing the starving man. I still have about 10 of S's books with me, I liked East of Eden, especially the chinese guy who seemed a kind of guru. After my Steinbeck binge I eased into Saroyan I bawled all the way thru the Human Comedy. Actually I read as many CA authors as I could find. Jessamyn West was the best, but she only wrote part about CA. My desire was to live in CA, the promised land. I got to visit when my 2 older daughters moved to Riverside, Palm Desert & when they took me sight seeing, I think I saw it at least part way thru Steinbeck's eyes.

Sooo......we agreed more than we disagreed. And I didn't mean to say that you were bringing your own judgements to the characters, but that you might look to the themes I was suggesting as that organizing priniciple you were searching for. The one thing I might still disagree with you about, though, is Steinbeck's affection for more of his characters than you listed.

I've been gone, trying frantically to get something done and to ignore the seductive call of this thread. So, i return to enter some books, and what do I find?

An accumulation of old and new posts that in my opinion are absolutely spectacular. you can not imagine how grateful i am to all of you, in whatever way you participated, for this discussion.

Thank you, missylc, for starting it all off. Thank you Tad, for your very thoughtful posts. Thank you, Whisper1 for such encouragement! Thank you, blackdog books for your long, thoughtful perspective. Thank you MarianV for your experience. Thanks to those I've no doubt missed in this post but whose posts I read with delight--please don't feel ignored.

BTW, MarianV, you sound as if you're of my generation. What say at some point we leave the "kids" (anyone 55 and under, and 55-60 is a grey area) at home with a baby sitter and we go out for a cup of coffee and talk about all this? :-)

What an incredible experience! Believe me, I am a tough old bird, but I am near tears as I write this. Lord--maudlin sentimentality at my age! not to be borne. I'll be back to normal soon.

IMHO (gotta use that vocabulary--lose it or lose it!). agreement is a lot less important to me than the airing of ideas. i'm someone who looks to see where the commonality lies in things because again, I'm a patterner. What's important, though, is the ideas, NOT a forced agreement--so what's wrong with disagreeing? I loathe the social conventions that insist we all must get along regardless of whether that's appropriate or not. I am a fanatic in my belief that the mo9re opinions, the better and the closer one comes to the "truth".

The only real crime in my book is the suppresion of ideas.

Yes, right, you've all caught me out--underneath this cynical misanthropic exterior lies a passionate idealist.

>111 Joycepa:: Joycepa
the more opinions, the better and the closer one comes to the "truth".

I sooo agree with this!
And I love the conversation about Steinbeck, I have read Of mice and man in highschool, maybe it is time for a re-read.

...we leave the "kids" (anyone 55 and under...

I haven't been in the kids for quite a while! I don't make it by much, but I'll take it!

#111 (You know who you are.)

"What's important, though, is the ideas, NOT a forced agreement . . ."

To me, this is the real worth of LT: to discuss books we have read with fellow bibliophiles from all over the world. I think the opinions, thoughts, and ideas on Steinbeck's work have been stunning. There will always be (and should be) disagreements on any book, and those are what make the discussions exciting and thought-provoking. If we all agreed to agree, this would be a very dull place (like some college lit classrooms).

BTW, I am 61, so where does that put me in your grey area? I mean, you and MarianV are just a couple of kids . . .

Drats! Stasia, the kid (46), goes pouting off to her room . . .

#114, #115: Marian and I are having cozy cups of coffee via profile pages--we could make the comments public!

61 makes it. At 71.551 years of age (yes, that's to the day--Numbers R Us), I may have to defer to Marian as the senior Wise Woman. I do think she's older than I am by a couple of years. I was totally struck by her statement that she remembers helping her mother cut out Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day columns during the Depression and pasting them into a scrapbook. I was born in 1937, so my memories don't go back that far, just of WWII. The rest of the history that she's written so far is equally as fascinating.

Marian is too good to keep to myself. Not sure how we could do it, but I personally would love a nice virtual get-together somehow to exchange experiences. Believe me, I'd recommend Panama at the moment, and there is a terrific coffee shop with the best coffee in Panama (which has some of he best in the world), but it might get a little difficult getting here!

Now comes the "kids" chance to shine! How do we do this? IF anyone (including Marian) would be interested?

Oh, yes--this will come as no surprise to those of you who have already expressed the same alarm--I am now following a good many threads, more than double from last year--and am finding it increasingly difficult to keep up!! I get up early here in order to take advantage of the cool hours to get some work done. 2-3 cups of coffee while mainly cruising LT and the news and then it's off on my tasks. this morning is the first time I haven't been able to get to all my threads!

>116 Joycepa::

How do we do this?

If you're asking how do you have a virtual chat, get everyone on IM (Instant Messenger). The easiest is probably to use the Google Talk client since it's free. Then you just pick a time and everyone logs into the IM session and away you go.

My memories pre-date Kennedy assassination but don't include Korea, thereby dating myself.

Thanks, Tad--advice gratefully noted. Let's see what happens, and then perhaps we can send out invitations--those interested can join in!

4. So Big by Edna Ferber. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1925, Ferber had an amazing eye for all of the rich diversity of American society--from flapper, the obscenely wealthy of hte North Shore, Duttch farmers, shop girls, artists--you name it. Her writing style was not that complex, but it was richly descriptive.

This really is the story of Selina Peake, who came out to the Illinois farmland south of Chicago a young girl full of high ideals and a lasting sense of what was real, who married a poor Dutch farmer, and who lived a rich, fulfilled life. The title is the playful nickname she gave her son, Dirk, whose life serves as the perfect contrast to his mother's--and thus points up how rich hers was and how poverty-stricken his was, despite his wealth.

What I especially liked about the novel was Ferber's right-on discernment of the emptiness of the race for wealth and status. What intrigues me no end is how so many of those who won Pulitzers were critical of those unproductive pursuers, whether in New York, Chicago or unnamed Midwestern cities. Not that anything artists have ever had to say has stopped that pursuit, but it's interesting that writers have always seen it for the sham it was--even when they themselves have achieved the self-same success.

Your last 2 books both look good - I've added them to the "list". Have you read many of the Elvis Cole series? I've heard of this author but never read him before. Will check him out.

#120: Only 2 so far, Sandy--The Monkey's Raincoat and The Watchman. I really liked them both, as they're a cut different from the usual private detective types of stuff. The real test for me? Am I willing to buy more--and the answer in this case is yes, at least one more. Have no idea where in the series these two fall.

Here is the Elvis Cole series in order. All are in mass market paper except the eleventh one, which is still a hardcover.

Elvis Cole series

Thanks for the list, Charlie. I'm pleased that, by sheer accident, I read the first one in the Cole series. I think that Crais may be giving Pike his own series.

regarding message 119

I think of Truman Capote, who was so nastily acerbic re. all others and their wealth, yet while he seemed to disdain the "sham", he certainly did anything in his power to be perceived a part of the rich elite.

#124 Whisper1

Isn't that the truth! And he did win a Pulitzer in the non-fiction category, right? I'm truly straining to remember, but that was In Cold Blood, am I correct?

I've been reading the Pulitzer winners chronologically, and it's a theme that shows up often but in different ways. The Magnificent Ambersons, His Family, Alice Adams. Of course, two of those were by the same author, Tarkington, and I haven't any idea about his life.

I'm not sure if he won a Pulitzer for In Cold Blood. His friend Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for To Kill a Mockingbird whereupon the little weasel took credit for helping to write her book and in turn did NOT give Harper the credit she deserved for helping him to research In Cold Blood. Truly, we was a nasty little creep...a good writer, but a not so nice person.

Fortunately for my blood pressure, I have never seen before this the news about To Kill A Mockingbird. It's a stereotype, what they say about short men, but there's enough truth in it. Quite a piece of work.

If I remember correctly one of the reason's his In Cold Blood was considered so important was because it was a first of combining True Crime with Fiction to create a new understanding (?) of the crime or of the criminals. I read it when I was very young and was very impressed by it.

I think his writing stands the tests of time although certainly his personality was off putting in the extreme.

#128: I have never read his work, mainly because I was so put off, as you put it, by what I'd read about him (see #124). Plus at that time, I wasn't much into that particular genre--still am not but not so dismissive as I was.

Well, I think the credit given him was for both inventing a "new" genre and for how seamlessly he wove the "reality" with the "fiction". I don't know if the book has stood the test of time because the whole True Crime genre has become so commonplace, and in my mind, so unattractive.

If I were to advise someone exploring Capote I would suggest looking at his early work.

Despite his nasty personality, Capote was a fascinating man who was highly intelligent, very talented and creative, and incredibly self destructive. In the end, he spun out of control and in a viper-like manner bit all in his environs, including those who were innocent and simply happened to walk in his territory.

I recommend reading In Cold Blood. IMHO, it is one of the best written books of all time.

One of the things I discovered much later in life than when i was so "high-minded" (read prejudiced) about people like Capote is that many times true artistic talent comes with this type of personality. There was a period of about a year or so when I went on an intense quest for a definition, if you will, of creativity. that's not quite an accurate description, but it will do. I attended all sorts of lectures--about art, about music--oddly enough, not about writing--and read up on the lives of many artists, in particular, who were considered geniuses--and who were definitely not the social norm.

While it isn't true that all such highly creative people, to use a much better phrase than "genius', are nasty individuals, enough are to sort of set the stereotype. With artists, I came to the conclusion that the insight and talent that allowed them to portray their vision came at a terrible price, because they could see what we merely normal people could not. Same, I think, with musicians--they hear a different music. I never really thought about writers, but perhaps that's true as well--that the compulsion to put down what they "see' or imagine--the need takes it price or is the price or is somehow connected with all that talent.

Me being me, I most certainly don't condone such behavior--Debussy, through emotional cruelty driving his mistress to suicide was condemned by all his friends who were certainly not moralistic purists and the man was in my mind a murderer--but I can at least understand it.

In those years, when Capote became famous, I was still too self-righteous not to be influenced prejudiciously, so knowing that (at least I had some self-awareness) I didn't read Capote. Now, it just doesn't interest me enough to spend money on it! :-)

so much of what you say rings true!

5. Wings of Fire by Charles Todd 2nd in the Inspector Rutledge series.

This book--and the series--have really good points. Todd does an outstanding job of weaving the horrors of WWI, what it was like in the trenches, into the story in a really effortless way. The post war time frame is done at least adequately. This is not a police procedural--this is the type of mystery story where teh policeman--Rutledge--goes after the murderer by finding out the motive, the psychological approach. If you like that approach, then the book is for you.

I didn't mind it, although I prefer more straightforward police procedurals. But what bothered me about the books should be its great strength--that Rutledge's form of "shell shock" is expressed by hearing the voice of his dead corporal, the Scottish Hamish mcCloud, in his head.

In the first book, I thought it was close to if not actually over the top. In this book, todd can't seem to make up his mind what hamish is--is he the personification of Rutledge's conscience, is he survivor's guilt, or is he some supernatural being who makes remarks about things that Rutledge can't possibly know, such as a picture in Hamish's house?

Also, Todd, for all the kudos given to him by such outlets as the NY Times, does some really callow writing. He overuses certain verbs to describe Hamish's reactions--Hamish, "grumbles" a lot, "growls" too much, and "stirred" overly much for my liking. those verbs appeared again and again.

For me, the writing never really came together as far as the story was concerned. There was something ultimately unsatisfying about it. The plot itself was good, but there were some deliberate loose ends, right on the last page that really annoyed me.

While in many ways this book is better than its predecessor Test of Wills, it's not good enough to make me want to continue with the series.

re: Wings of Fire. "...it's not good enough to make me want to continue with the series." That's what I was afraid of. Todd came up with such a great idea, (and the post WWI setting is one that interests me), but from the first book I just didn't think he had the writing chops to pull it off. I won't get rid of the book just yet (there are just too many snowy winter days ahead), but I think I'll move it way down the tbr pile.

Chiming in on In Cold Blood: the one glaring problem that I have with the book is that Capote's sympathies seem to lie more with the perpetrators of the crime than with the victims. The writing is excellent, but I have a hard time getting over that. Maybe it is just me, but that is how I see it.

Joycepa - You are increasing the size of Continent TBR by leaps and bounds. Stop it now, would you?

#135: The pity of it is that he almost pulls it off. I can't put my finger on what bothers me about the writing--maybe too fussy? Too, too analytical from Rutledge's point of view? And the last few pages were really bothersome as far as pulling the plot together and finishing it off.

#136: I'd probably have a hard time, too. In the end, I'm glad I didn't read it. I think my general aversion to the genre saved me there.

I absolutely can no t believe this--YOU, Stasia, complaining about the pathetic few additions to your TBR from MY lists? I kid you not--at last count, I've taken either 6 or 8 from your lists! And that's because I'm restraining myself!! :-)

#137 joycepa: I have no problem with true crime books per se, I actually enjoy reading them, but I do have a problem with the 'pity me, I had a terrible childhood' approach to the killers. Maybe the victims were not very nice people or something, but they certainly do not deserve to be shoved to the side by the author because they want the sympathy spent on the culprits. Just my take on it.

And yea, I am complaining and loving it at the same time. Just do not read my thread any more, lol. Then you won't have the problem (I think). You have better restraint than I do, I am sure, because everything ends up on Continent TBR.

#138: One of the more interesting developments in teh police procedural/crime genre written within, say, the past 10 years, just to give it a time frame, is the now nearly universal idea that there is something like true evil and it can't be put to childhood upbringing, social problems, etc. i think that possibly the writers are making the connection with the relatively new idea of sociopaths. There does seem to a some connection between the more amoral, violent sociopathic behavior and brain function, one which isn't well understood, not to bring it to the cause-and-effect stage, but a possible correlation.

I don't know about pure evil--i do know that trying to make one shoe fit all sizes i a mistake. It's one of the reasons why i don't call myself a liberal--no one idealogy seems to fit all life situations.

Capote wrote in an era where psychology/psychiatry had all the answers. I am always extremely sceptical of anyone or anything that has all the answers. Part of a society, i suppose, that veers between extremes on any issue--american culture doesn't seem to deal well with the idea that there are no solutions to some problems.

As for continent TBR--come to think of it, you're probably right, given you lucky people who have the luxury of libraries! I have to be at least somewhat realistic, not having made millions yet to support my book-buying habit. :-)

But there's no cost to dreams of woning every book you've ever wanted, right? :-)

#139: I do not own every book on Continent TBR (which is at about 3000 books right now). I do own a lot of them that have not been read yet, but I keep a running list of books I want to read, and that is what I call Continent TBR. It is growing faster than I can read them, lol.

I agree - there is no cost to dreams of owning every book you have ever wanted. I just use my library first to vet them and make sure I really want them, then buy them afterwards (eventually).

Stasia and Joyce..
I'm very much enjoying the back and forth intelligent comments re. Truman Capote and In Cold Blood. My library contains the following books, some of which might interest you:

Capote: A biography by Gerald Clarke
Truman Capote, In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall his turbulent Career by George Plimpton

Truman Capote, Dear Heart, Old Buddy by John Malcolm Brinnink...I cannot recommend this one as it was on my "worst book I read in 2008 list."

Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story by Kim Powers

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by charles Shields -- I highly recommend this one

And, of course
In Cold Blood Truman Capote
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird Since reading this in high
school as an English class assignment (1968), the books still remains my #1 favorite book of all time.

Linda,
Many thanks for this bibliography. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee grabs me instantly. How do you rate the biography by Clarke?

I can't remember the first time I read To Kill A mockingbird--too man years ago. But within the past 6 months, I picked up another copy, since I "lost" one of my other(s) during some move or another. and of cousre I can still see Gregory Peck as Atticus.

What's the Powers book like?

Joyce
I highly recommend the book Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.

Both the Clarke and Powers books are good as well.

I am going to look for it, too. Then once I finish it, I will ship it to Joyce, since I am not sure she can get it where she lives.

No need to do that, St. Stasia (yes, I've been reading your thread and can't wait to get into the action there on this item!)--if it can be obtained from amazon, I can get it. but I'm a cold-blooded, selfish person and will keep that in mind, believe me! :-)

St. Stasia--what's her icon to be, Linda--a book with a halo around it?

We have definitely got to nip all this saintly stuff in the bud . . .

BTW - I already ordered the book, so keep me posted if you cannot get it.

I've now come to the conclusion that you never go to bed.

I did go to bed - I slept for 2 hours or so.

Joyce
Stasia, like most saints, is very humble!

OK, now this is getting to be a little more than ridiculous - ask Catey, she will tell you I am not putting in candidacy for sainthood any time soon.

Just chipping in on Capote, I read the Clarke biog about 10 years ago and would recommend it - for me it got the balance right between sympathy with its subject without becoming so sycophantic it overlooked his very obvious shortcomings. Also a few great anecdotes.

I am going to give the Clarke biography of Capote a try. Thanks to all who have mentioned and commented on it!

6. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. A medieval mystery.

For fans of the genre, this is a not-to-be-missed book! If you're in to mysteries but have not tried the specific medieval/historical aspect, this sis a great introduction.

Set in 1170-71 in England, just after the murder of Thomas Beckett, it introduces Adelia, who is a trained Mistress of the Art of Death--or what we would call a pathologist today. The plot is startling-- a child killer--and part of it is based on a true story. Part of the plot is the fear and hatred of Jews that led to the mindless, bloody religiously motivated killings all over Europe. What is really good about this book is that not only to we get a protagonist who is unusual for any gender, female, tough but human but we also get other well-drawn characters and a good look at Henry II, who was one of the country's most enlightened rulers. Excellent era background.

For those of us who loved the gentle if admittedly featherwweight Brother Caedfel series set just before this time during theCivil War between Maude and Stephen, it's really nice to segue into the next era, of Henry. anyone who has read Penman's When Christ and His Saints Slept, will also appreciate the continuation of the era. There is a brief historical note at the end, as well as an exerpt from the next installment in the series.

This book is so good that I really wonder whether she can continue at this high standard in the next ones, given the combination of characters and circumstances that will not happen again. I am going to get it --The Serpent's Tale--so I'll find out.

Very, very well written--Franklin manages to throw in appropriate comic touches and handles the romance angle nicely. I think she has done an especially good job of showing the spectrum of Catholic Church officials and religious as well; usually what you get is one pole or the other--either they were all wonderful or they were all demons. Naturally, real life is always different. this portrayal is excellent.

Linda, #151: The Clarke biography it is, then.

I'm having infuriating computer troubles--about to order a new one (you DON'T want to know how much it's going to cost me to get it into the country and here), so I'm going to be limiting my time online for a while. Plus, yesterday afternoon I realized just how much time I was spending having these wonderful conversations with everyone,k and checking into threads! i don't remember who (probably more than one person) talked about really needing to limit time on LT but yesterday I sure saw the truth of it!

So I spent a few hours in the afternoon happily studying the 2nd day's fighting at Gettysburg!

But the computer problems are driving me up the wall. I'll be ordering my new one some time this morning (on another computer) but it will be two weeks at a flat minimum before it gets here. Meantime, I'm on an old laptop that is showing its age (but then again, aren't we all!).

>153 Joycepa:: Since I did love the Brother Cadfael books, I guess I'll have to try this one at some point. Though, heaven knows, I need another series to follow like I need a hole in the head.

Hey, Joyce, if it is cheaper for me to hand deliver your computer than have it shipped, I volunteer!

I'll let you know! Usually, the pilots who fly in to the international airport, if it's possible, make sure the passengers get a really good view of the Canal, and it's almost worth the price of the flight. They get down fairly low on the approach, and it really is an awesome sight from the air.

Fuel prices have dropped like a stone here, but I'm waiting for my courier service to follow suit.

>153 Joycepa:. Okay, Joyce, now I have to spend some $$$ to get Mistress of the Art of Death—it sounds right up my alley.

I thought pathology was unheard of in the early and medieval periods because the Church considered it the desecration of the body—hence no tattoos, piercings, cremation, etc.

Thanks for the review.

#153 It does sound very good. I'm also going to seek it out.

#158, Charlie: Right on about the Church--BUT at that time, the struggle between Church and State was still on. Salerno was at that time THE most advanced center of medical knowledge, and not only did they do dissections, but they also certified women as doctors! . It was under the Kingdom of Sicily, and it was given, far, far more leeway than other places. Franklin describes the very sophisticated multi-cultured society in Salerno--no religious problems, no race problems per se.

In England, where Henry lost his first battle anyway with the Church, no dissections were allowed, but Adelia is able to at least view the bodies and come up with some information. An advanced Brother Caedfel, so to speak.

The book is a wealth of historical info.

You can't imagine what I'm going through at the moment trying to get online messasge posted before whatever computer I'm using at the moment freezes! I jsut finished putting in my order for a new iMac, but I'm going to have a nasty time for the next month.

>153 Joycepa: Excellent review Joyce - I will look out for Mistress of the Art of Death.

- TT

#160: I'm going to have a nasty time for the next month.

Uh, oh, you may have to go through LT withdrawal!

I have Mistress of the Art of Death here at my house somewhere (locating it may be fun!), so based on your review I will obviously have to find it.

7. Sun Storm by Asa Larson. I didn't care for this mystery, set in Sweden, even though ti won at least one award and is highly regarded here on LT. But for me, it had several problems: 1) the writing style, which was mostly flat, declarative sentences. I don't think it was a translation problem, but actual stylistic. However, this was the least. 2) an unsatisfactory resolution, with too many loose ends and a just barely believable denouement. It wasn't he loose ends per se but how they weren't handled that bothered me. In real life,as opposed to fiction, I'm sure loose ends are the rule, but these were just left out there. 3) a totally gratuitous animal killing that did nothing at all to advance the plot. Yes, it adds to the horror, if that's what an audience is after, but I really dislike it in fiction where I'm looking for entertainment. Torturing and killing people? No problem--but stay away from animals. I have had a feeling for a long time that this sys something basic about my character, but there you have it.

I didn't find her characters that interesting, either.

In terms of ambience, Larsson does a good job--she evokes Sweden quit well.

#162: Satsia, I'm beginning to depend on waking up in the morning and finding either a message from you written in the madrugada, as the deep hours of the night are called here, or else you yourself! Such a nice thing--I sit down with a cup of coffee, fire up (now someone else's computer) and there you are.

I'm going to do an LT withdrawal, computer or no computer, because I found myself spending so much time on LT that I really wasn't taking care of business. Started yesterday. don't believe in cold turkey withdrawals so am gradually cutting down.

Thanks for review on the Larson book. One less for Continent TBR!

Sorry you will not be on here as often. I look forward to 'seeing' you, too.

It's all exacerbated by the computer problems. Of the 3 computers in the house, 1 (my desktop) is dead, another (Mary's laptop, a little older) is not stable on Internet, and only Mary's desktop, which I'm using at the moment, maintains a reliable connection. Our current schedule is that I use it until about 6 am, since she usually does non-computer related things until that time, when I start my work day. So, it's going to be difficult for me to be online--and stay online--reliably during the day, since her laptop is inexplicably dropping the connection at random times, no matter what we do--and we've done plenty, trying to see what the problem is. Probably just age and humidity, which is a real problem here.

Certainly going to curb (one hopes!) my regrettable tendency towards lame jokes! :-)

Well, the obvious solution to the problem (at least to me) is that you just need to stop sleeping entirely! Plenty of time for doing LT things and getting books read that way . . .

Stasia, I humbly submit that you are the only one who can get away with that ploy!! I had an epiphany about the number of books you read--of course! If one never sleeps, one can read without artificial and trivial limitations like 6-8 hours of unconsciousness.

Later!

Joyce - Mistress of the Art of Death has just been added to my wishlist!

I hope your iMac gets there soon!

Amen, Sister!

#169: Do you need me to deliver it? I could put a rush on your iMac for you . . .

and listen here, an opinion from a voice you may not have seen much, but I want no more talk of dropping the jokes. I like the lame jokes. I second the opinion that you should just stop sleeping. You'll need jokes more than sleep for good health and vital internet life.

#171: Woo Hoo! Somebody on my side for a change! Thanks, maggie1944.

Encouragement? Encouragement? Oh, you will be sorry!

However, maggie1944, before I an take up your advice, stasia has to teach me how to get along on 2 hour's sleep every other week. I don't think I can manage her standard of 1 hour every other month right off the bat.

#173: My secret is my famous 15 minute nap (that's what they are called at my house). I will sit down for approximately 15 minutes, fall asleep and when I get up, I am good to go.

There you go, you have the secret to non-sleeping success now at your fingertips.

#174 And I could get by with only about 30 of those per day!

My problem is that my famous 20 minute naps have turned into 1 hour long coma-like sleeps. Ah, and this is even after I normally sleep about 9 hours a night. I must be reading too hard.

#176 maggie: I must be reading too hard. I am sure that must be the entire problem - I read soft, lol.

Stasia, and all.
Even in my sleep, I dream of the books I've read, especially those that haunt me.

#176: ROFLMA (from my new vocabulary)!! That's me--except I never get anywhere near 9 hours sleep--if I do 8, I feel lucky.

#178: If that happens to me--and it does--I tend to make up new plots! How about you?

9 hours a night?! Yikes! I would never get any reading done.

yes, I know. This sleeping problem...

I think it is the result of my having spent my entire working life not getting enough sleep. I am catching up now in retirement. Or, alternatively, I am just lazy.

I am anxious to see if my stepping up the activity level by going to the YMCA and exercising will change this pattern.

#181: I guess I have always been lucky in that respect. If I sleep 5 hours that is a good night for me.

>181 maggie1944: and >182 alcottacre:: I keep reading that if you're fit you need less sleep, but I always find that the times I need least sleep are when I am at my slobbiest... usually then I can manage on around 4 hours a night. Right now, any less than about 7 and I get very cranky.

#183: Well, I am certainly contrary to the 'if you're fit you need less sleep' theory. I am not fit by any stretch of the imagination, and I guess if I get fit, I will not need to sleep at all. Hmmm, something to think about :)

#184: Good grief, I can't imagine you getting any less than now!

#181: I was always sleep deprived when I was working, and I don't seem to be too much better now. Still getting up at ridiculous hours, too late to bed thanks to the nasty habit of reading. And then there are all the little night emergencies with cats, dogs, mosquitos and other critters large and small.

I can NOT sleep beyond 4:45 at best. If I'm still asleep, one of the cats makes this leap from the headrest to my chest or whatever he thinks is available; 14 lbs of cat landing on vulnerable places does tend to wake me up.

oh, I can't think what I might do to that cat. And I do love cats, but really....that is a little outside the bounds of polite house sharing. My dogs don't let me sleep much past about 6 am but usually I set the heat to go on about then. If I set the heat for later, perhaps we would all sleep later. Dogs do love their sleeping, especially as they become a little older.

Dogs do love their sleeping, especially as they become a little older. My 6-yr-old lab could sleep forever, but my 1-yr-old yellow lab is my morning wake-up call and definitely does not understand weekends. But why is it he can sleep for hours on the sofa in the middle of the day?!

Joyce, I think I'd fling the cat if it jumped on me. And I like cats ... we have 3 ... but that's just a bit much.

Regarding message 179.
Yes, I do like to think about how to change some plots in the books.

I want to say that I'm enjoying your posts and this thread. It is one of the busiest and liveliest..
and the discussions are challening.

I read a couple of very good books on the Civil War last year if you are interested, Joyce. I read Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering as well as probably my favorite nonfiction book from last year April 1865 by Jay Winik.

Look, folks, I most certainly would do Great Bodily Harm to Rickie--if I could catch the little monster! But he's clever--the first bounce is off me, and if it's off my chest or tummy (usually chest) then I'm too winded to do much, and by that time, the second bounce lands him at the foot of the bed. That's the signal for the dogs--at least two of whom sleep next o me. I used to believe that the single most dreaded sound in my life was that of three dogs waking up in the morning--and shaking! Next step was one or more lovingly washing my face, which meant, of course, that I had to get up out of self-preservation if I wanted to breathe. Now the dogs, lazy bums that they all are, leave it up o the cat and don't even stir a whisker when curses and dire threats fill the air after I get my wind back. they know that nothing will happen for a good 45 seconds, so why stir before that?

Rickie does vary the body slams with howls at 4 am when he's decided it's breakfast time and lazy slugs of humans can get up and feed him so that as a gentleman cat-about-the-neighborhood he can get on with his affairs.

#188: Where have you been lately, Linda? Busy? Haven't sen too much of you around.

At the risk of turning this post into a novella (but I want to take advantage of a fast computer while I still have access):

My reading rate has slowed down because I'm doing some heavy-duty books, one of which, A Soldier of the Great War is over 800 pages and the other two are books on the Civil War that require study. I've mentioned on a couple of threads of what a terrific boo I think Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering is, and I'm about 3/4 of the way through her earlier work Mothers of Invention. Both are very unusual looks at the Civil War. But the latter is really good if you're interested in women's roles. It's focused on the white female elite of the south--the slave-holding women--and what they did and what happened to them during the conflict.

it's utterly fascinating. Faust is a highly respected historian who is now the first female head of Harvard, and she is a top-notch writer. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Some of what I've been reading has been relevant to discussions on other threads, but i'm not finished with the book yet and I haven't totally digested what's in it.

While there is another excellent book that partially covers the same material, Tara Revisited, it has a different focus and is not the in-depth look at the role of the elite southern women in the war that Faust's book is.

I'll take a look for Mothers of Invention since I liked her other book so much. Thanks for the recommendation.

#191: I should have figured that you would have read this Republic of Suffering, Stasia! :-)

8. Mothers of Invention by Drew Gilpin Faust A superb book that focuses on the elite, slave-holding women of the South during the American Civil War and, briefly, just beyond. Gilpin concludes that these women held the term "lady" to be practically dearer than life itself, but that this classification was seen not just in terms of class but in very rigid definitions of gender and race as well. She examines what happened to women's sense of themselves and their place in society as the war went on. Her conclusions are somewhat surprising, but are almost spoilers, so I don't want to go into them.

This is not quite as powerful a book as her later one, This Republic of Suffering, but that's as it should be, since Gilpin was a far more mature historian and author some 10 years later. It's flawed by occasional dips into psychological analysis biased by feminist beliefs, and it doesn't quite work when compared to her conclusions based on solid evidence from hundreds of letters, diaries, and other women's writings. But this is such a minor flaw, occurring so infrequently, that it really doesn't take away from the book as a whole.

Ahhh, Mothers of Invention - I hope to read that one day!

Jill, it's really good--and startling. There's plenty in it that you can imagine--the effects of war-weariness, etc, but there is a lot that's not so obvious. Her conclusions about women's roles in the Southern suffrage movement, for example are really eyebrow-raising.

This took me a while to read because I kept jotting down in my book journal references to pages and thoughts--I must have somewhere around 70-75 of those notes. don't know why--not going to write a paper on it for heaven's sake--but I may incorporate some of them not my review.

Which will take a little bit of time, since just like her other book, it's really not easy to review this one.

#174 onwards

Thats why I don't manage to read so much, I sleep too much!! In all seriousness, I think I have a problem with sleep. Doesn't matter how much or how little I sleep, I will still wake up as tired after I've slept for...........6........8........10.....12.......14 hrs. Nothing I do makes me feel better!! I fall asleep watching tv, reading, listening to music, even if I've only been up for an hr. I'm very active but the amount of activity I do has no relation to my sleep requirements. I can sleep wonderfully during the day but struggle to GET to sleep at night, but it doesn't matter if I haven't slept for 2 days, I will still struggle to sleep at night and doesn't matter how long I have managed to sleep at night, I will still be able to sleep during the day.

Oh.......and I'm 22. Any ideas anyone???????????

Yes. I'd see a sleep specialist. If you're near a university or medical center, many times there are clinics available.

Tell you what I did with insomnia problems--my chiropractor was also an acupuncturist. Don't remember how many sessions, maybe 5 at most, but it did the trick. She put me back to a "normal" sleeping schedule.

If you're in to alternative medicine, that's another route--acupuncture can really do some very good things.

Sounds like a serious possibility of sleep apnea--definitely check out a sleep clinic, there are very effective treatments and they have revolutionized the lives of several of my friends! Life is too short to sleep away more than you have to (says this "need 8 hours a night to function" girl). Check out sleep apnea on Google and see if this sounds like you, and follow up!

>193 Joycepa:: Mothers of Invention sounds really interesting Joyce. I might get more out of this than Property, which I just read this past week.

>196 lunacat: - Also, get your thyroid levels checked, along with your glucose levels. Hypothyroidism can lead to excessive fatigue, as can either diabetes or blood sugar problems.

ETA - Also, if you're very active outdoors and live in an area with ticks, you could have Lyme disease. That's another one that often manifests itself with fatigue.

In other words, head to the doctor, get some blood tests done, and get a referral to a sleep clinic. All good ideas!

#199, Laura: Haven't read Property so can't comment. However, I read the discussion on your thread and re the part about the way you liked character-driven novels: what's really interesting, then, abut this non-fiction work is the immense amount of material you get from hundreds f women. They are all quite distinct. So, you do get character, believe me.

Faust does her usual--approaches the topic from every possible angle and exhaustively. She looks at clothing, for heavens sake (and I'm not talking in the usual sense but in its meaning and what happened to women's sense of themselves when it changed due to the war), religion, women's passionate attachment to one another--quite acceptable in the 19th century with no stigma--but I'm not talking sexual but emotional, what slavery was for them, how they viewed it, and what happened as the slaves left--it's totally fascinating.

I am a fan of her writing. it's thoughtful--the best adjective I come up with, always, especially of This Republic of Suffering is quiet.

#200, Tray: excellent suggestions, especially about Lyme disease.

#192: I do not know how you could possibly have figured that out. Are you psychic perhaps?

#202: It doesn't take a psychic, Statsia--just, say, a look at the sheer number and kind of books you read--to make an educated guess that you would have read that book! :-)

#203: Dadgummit! I am being stereotyped again. I hate that. I will have to read something completely off the wall this year to make up for it. Now, if only I could come up with something . . .

Your major problem, Stasia, is that you've already read EVERYTHING!! :-)

I've posted a review for Mothers of Invention on the book page.

#205: Sigh. I really wish that were true. I am doing my darnedest to make it so.

message 196
sorry to be delayed in reading the posts on this thread. I'm currently in Florida visiting family and don't spend as much time on the computer as when I'm home.
I agree with others, it sounds like you need to get to a doctor and a sleep clinic...
I was tested for sleep apnea for the same reasons you list.

Take care and keep us "posted."

Joycepa..
You are such a welcome addition to the group. While I haven't been able to keep up with the threads, I do try to read yours as often as possible.

I'm going to add Mothers of Invention to the huge tbr pile.

Hello to all!

#208: Well, the weather certainly has to be different from PA! Enjoying the sun, I hope? Beaches, maybe?

I have been strangely silent lately, which is very strange indeed for me. But I must object, Joyce, to some of the language used here on your thread.

I am referring to #204 and Stasia's blunt blurtation (new word) of the profane "dadgummit!" Just three messages later (#207), I was absolutely shocked when she wantonly employed the invective "darnedest."

I believe that this type of language should be confined to the boudoir and not used in mixed company.

So, by gum, what in tarnation are you going to do about it?

#210: I humbly apologize for offending your sensibilities BrainFlakes.

You know, when you have lived as dissipated and degenerate a life as I have you tend to forget the delicate sensibilities of the more refined among us. to me, of course, Stasia's language is perfectly acceptable within the sleazy ranks in which I have been accustomed to run.

Apologies, of course, to those who have led sheltered lives. I'll do my best, but you know people like Sasia...impossible to control....

#211 Apology gracefully accepted, Stasia. I apologize for taking the liberty of calling you by your given name. You may, if in fact you ever choose to talk to me, call me Charlie, Brain, or some of the names my wife calls me that cannot be written here.

#212 Dissipated . . . degenerate . . . sleazy—perhaps you should lay down for awhile and rest.

Oh--so *that's* why I've been so tired recently.

#213: Everybody calls me by my given name (although I wager 99% of them have no idea how to pronounce it), so it is no big deal to me, CharlieBrain. Trust me, I will not be using any of those unutterable wifely word here - my 17 year old reads all the threads.

9. Paranoia by Joseph Finder. Cute little industrial/corporate espionage thriller that just had, for me, one too many security break-ins--a little too over-the-top. But it's a nice mindless thriller that keeps up a good pace. Writing's not bad. A few loose ends but not enough to really bother. For me, good for a mind-cleaner after heavier stuff just before bedtime.

Joyce, I will never get to anything weighty as long as you keep coming up with interesting-looking books like this one. Onto the list it goes.

It's really not bad at all. Not up there with, say, Daniel Silva or Dennis Lehane, but 2nd tier thriller stuff.

#216: I may give it a try. I like both Silva and Lehane.

>215 alcottacre: Wonderful Woman of Words, is it "Stay See Here"!

- TT

Wait, WAIT! I regard Lehane and Silva as being first-rank. This book can't compare with them--it's definitely of lesser quality. But its still a good read if you don't mind some plot improbabilities.

It's also a stand-alone. finder has written other thrillers; if they were easily accessible, I'd read them, but the quality of the book is not quite up to where I'll pay to bring them in here.

But if you can get it at the library, I think it's a fun read in the genre.

#220: Not even close. From the Wicked Witch of the West, lol

>222 alcottacre: WWW. There are only three syllables. How many ways are there to express them? Stay, Star Sta. See, ace, arse, ear. Its got to be Star's ear!

- TT

#223: TT, it is pronounced Stosha - although I do give you credit for imagination :)

>224 alcottacre: Stosha! Stosha! I am baffled and stunned! How do you get an exlamation like Stosha from the beautifully formed Stasia!

What is it Nordic, Russian, Tibetan!

I will call you alcott from now on! :) Unless you pronounce it Shcotta!

- TT

#225 TT: It comes from the Greek, actually, Anastasia - it means 'resurrection', which was singularly appropriate at the time I chose it.

Well, that puts it in context and makes it very clear why it is pronounced stosha! Thanks for clarifying--I hate to pronounce you wrongly even if it is just in my head.

ET correct typo.

29 hours have passed and not a whisper on this thread. That has me very worried: did everyone pass on and I'm the only one Left Behind? Maybe I should take a gander out the window . . .

Well, Joyce has been complaining for days about her unreliable computer - maybe it finally gave up the ghost. It's like being in someone's house when they're not home - should we just help ourselves?

Let's raid the fridge and read her books!

LOL, #230.

Darn good idea, though, numbers 229 and 230. Lettuce have a good old snoop-a-thon, but watch out for vicious Fred. And the Ming vases. And her chemistry set.

OK, wise guys and gals--don't think no one's minding the store! It's true--my computer is dead, Apple hasn't shipped my brand-new, faster-than-the-speed-of-light new baby yet, so I'm looking at 3 weeks minimum of being without. I'm on a restricted diet of Internet access--once a day. I'm sharing Mary's computer and I get it from 4:30 to 6 am.

Certainly #231, that's wise advice. Fred is a moody, sullen, unpredictable problem!

lol at the chemistry set! These days, it's a weather station.

Plus, I might add, our washer and bathroom scales went south! We've been doing nothing but putting out brush fires of this type. Then my credit union refused credit in one of the stores here, 2nd time in 2 months, and I had to call them (and no toll-free lines here!) to figure out why. First time it was because they really didn't believe Panama had indoor plumbing,never mind Internet, so how could I be buying etc., etc.? This time, it was a block on a vendor here--a chain, could have occurred in panama city--with whom they have had troubles with fraud. Great. Problem is I don't know all that,and It costs me to find out.

However, one real advantage of no computer is that I've really buckled down to my study of Gettysburg. doing a very good book--Harry Pfanz's Gettysburg, the Second Day but the first quarter of the book--7 chapters or more--where he's describing troop movements there isn't one map! I'm using another book of maps strictly of that campaign; it's not meant to accompany Pfanz's book, but with work I can figure out who went where. It's really fascinating.

I got so caught up in it that last night, I watched the movie for what is approaching the 10th time, I kid you not. Fast-forwarded through the speeches and "human interest" scenes, winced at Martin Sheen as Lee on a horse, mourned that for perfectly valid reasons of length of movie some things were cut--like, unless you know you see only the beginning of the charge of the First Wisconsin to sop the Confederate advance cold on the first day and save the Union--everyone always talks about Little round Top, and it's true, but there were half a dozen such engagements that, had they gone the other way, would have broken the Union line and given the victory to Lee.

Some of the casting is utterly superb--just love Jeff Daniels as Chamberlain--I think he's a fine actor--and Tom Berenger gives an outstanding performance as Longstreet. The film is far from perfect but of its type, it's the best I know of, and I never tire of watching it. Stephen Lang is perfect as Pickett. Whoever cast Brian Mallon as Hancock should be exiled to an ice floe in the Bering Sea.

I've been thinking abut making what is probably going to be my last trip t the US this summer to visit the Gettysburg battlefield,and every time I read something really good or see this movie, I get closer to doing something about it. gotta start looking into places to stay and possible other areas to visit soon.

MY COMPUTER HAS SHIPPED!!!!!

It left Apple at 3:15 pm yesterday and arrived in Sacramento at 4:15 am today, after a brief stop in San Jose.

YES!!!!!

Woo Hoo! Now just send one a bit north up to me . . . . :-)

Joyce, if you make it to Gettysburg or anywhere else in PA this summer, please make sure I know when and where! I would love to try to get together, however we might manage it.

I really am planning to do it. I'm going to start looking into lodgings, etc., soon. What I can't make up my mind about is when. I have to check out the Web site and get as much info as I can from there first.

I think it would be fun to get together. Wasn't it last year that we talked about maybe a bunch of us doing the battlefield together? Pretty sure Laura was in on it as well.

#235: Yeah Joyce's computer!! Fly, fly, fly!!!

Listen, this is a serious, take no prisoners machine! It hurt inputting my credit card info when I looked at the total, but knowing that Mary is already green with envy and the thing isn't here yet was worth every cent. 24" screen is the real killer--she won't be able to be anywhere in the house without seeing it glowing radioactively. Hers is only 17"! (nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah NYAAAH). HahahahahaHAHA!

#240 I hate to have to say this, Joyce, but I think you're a bully and a brat.

I woudn't blame Mary if she attacked you with your bunsen burner, uh, weather station.

Congrats, though, on your new 'puter in transit.

Well, Charlie, I hate to confirm your worst suspicions, but you're exactly right! Mary is quite nice while I basically am not. I try to provoke her as much as possible on this issue, because sooner or later she's going to get a new one, and the shoe will be on the other foot. She won't gloat--she'll just be condescendingly kind and pitying and I will think of doing her great bodily harm.

>238 Joycepa:: Wasn't it last year that we talked about maybe a bunch of us doing the battlefield together? Pretty sure Laura was in on it as well. Oh yes! I'm about 2 hrs away. I think Cariola was also in on that discussion. Definitely let me know if you're heading to PA, Joyce !!

243: OK. I'd love to go in June, but that's one of the most beautiful months here, my favorite. So I'm thinking of July/August, particularly the latter since that's the start of the rainy season here, and I don't mind missing it.

One potential glitch: Mary couldn't rent a car in MO because she has Panamanian auto insurance (as do I) and for some reason, car insurance wasn't available to her. I'm definitely going to have to look into that or see what alternative transportation is available. If I can't get a rental car, that will limit my itinerary quite a bit and may change the dates that I'll be considering.

MY iMAC JUST LEFT SACRAMENTO! Oh, joy.

If I start hearing shouts of 'Hallelujah' from Panama, I will have no doubt as to where they are coming from!

I'm going to make every effort to restrain myself.

I'v also named my new treasure "Fred". I figure that's only right. Lucy and Ethel, the other two dogs, are International Travelers, having come with us from WA. But Fred is a native Panamanian, and has never been outside of the province, even! So this way he can get a vicarious thrill.

#247: this way he can get a vicarious thrill. I am sure he is duly appreciative.

10. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin.

I consider this a masterpiece. For 860 pages, Helprin wrote a book whose hero, no matter what happens, lives in a state of exaltation thanks to the beauty he sees around him.

It's also an incredible paean to love of family. And that description is so inadequate as to be pathetic.

The review will be had to write.

#134

re Wings of Fire

What a disappointment. At first it really sounded like I was going to find a new series to love--especially since I particularly like WWI and post war. But it sounds like no matter how good the plot is the writing would drive me crazy. I have finished a lot of books that weren't all that great a story because the writing was good. If I have to sit there and mentally edit the writing I lose track of the story--so forget it.

At least, thanks for the warning!

#142 Joycepa

"and of course I can still see Gregory Peck as Atticus."

I went to see the movie shortly after I had read the book for the first time and I was completely blown away by Atticus. Peck was almost exactly how I had visualized Atticus when I read the book! I felt the same way about Scout, too. That is probably the only movie made from a book I love where I also love the movie. Of course there were many things that had to be left out, but what was left in they really "got it right!"

Okay--Mistress of the Art of Death sounds like it is a "must read." I'm looking for it this weekend!

Just a quick question--Are you and alcottacre in a contest who can have the longest thread at the end of January? :-) At least I am finally caught up! Of course, no time to read now. Some of us have to sleep!

#253: Are you and alcottacre in a contest who can have the longest thread at the end of January? Not that I am aware of - if we were, I would pad my thread while Joyce was sleeping!!

#253-#254: You see the disadvantage under which labor, MusicMom--she doesn't need to sleep!

Plus she reads so fast that I've decided that by the time I write one post, she's completed 3 books!

Re Mistress of the Art of Death: it's superb. You will not be disappointed.

#255: she reads so fast that I've decided that by the time I write one post, she's completed 3 books!

I do not believe I am quite that fast!!

#256: Can't prove it by me!

I'm going to do something I almost never do--post a review here as well as on the book page (if I can ever get to it). This is of A Soldier of the Great War

In 1964, Alessandro Giuliani, an old man who is a professor of aesthetics, catches the last streetcar from Rome to Monte Prato, where he wishes to visit his granddaughter and her family. Through a bizarre circumstance, he finds himself walking to Monte Prato along with Nicoló Sambucca, a 17 year old illiterate factory worker. Taking the high road over the mountains for a journey of days and nights, Alessandro tells an increasingly fascinated Nicoló the story of his life.

Alessandro Giuliani is the son of a well-to lawyer who is enthralled by beauty--not just the classical beauty of art, but also of music and nature, of life itself. He is exuberant, living life as he finds it, and reveling in the beauty that is everywhere around him. His family is a close one, and Alessandro loves them passionately. He races locomotives on his horse Enrico, he rows, he climbs mountains. He lives, utterly.

But in 1914, war engulfs Europe and Alessandro is drawn into the conflict. For four years, Alessandro is a soldier of the line, fighting in the trenches under unspeakable conditions, a hero, a prisoner, and finally a deserter. He falls deeply in love--only to lose his beloved to the war as he has lost everyone else he has loved to the war in one way or another. But Alessandro never loses his exaltation in beauty even in the midst of unimaginable horror, his quest for a God in which he alternates belief and disbelief with utter serenity, and his realized hope of redemption and resurrection.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no way to summarize this book adequately in a review, because I personally can not find a way to describe the dazzling richness of the prose, the always off-center viewpoint of Alessandro who is both deeply affected by the war and yet unscathed at his core, the lyrical descriptions especially of the mountains the sheer exaltation of the prose. In hands less skilled, Alessandro would be a caricature, a joke. Instead, for 860 pages, Alessandro burns as brilliantly as any of the stars over the Alto Adige, totally believable, completely real, in a world gone mad.

The other characters in the story, both major and minor, are utterly real and unforgettable as well: his gentle father, his fried Rafi, his wartime comrades in his regiment, the brief, searing acquaintances with other Italian soldiers whose names he doesn’t ever know but whose memories stay with him, his beloved Ariane, and most especially, because he epitomizes the insanity of war, the dwarf Orfeo. All are etched with prose that is as lucid as it is extravagant, no mean feat.

The last chapter is so heartbreaking that it is painful to read.

I have never read a work of fiction that so deeply moved me, both when I read when it was published in 1991, and now, in a much different time, in 2009. It is magnificent, a tour de force, both an epic saga and a paean to love of family. Written by an American, it is also very Italian, and captures that skeptical attitude that Italians bring to war in particular. Its descriptions of the war are searing. The people in it are unforgettable. It is a masterpiece.

#258: Well, you have me convinced I need to read it, Joyce. I just put it on hold at my local library!

It's an utterly amazing book, Stasia. You'll see when you read it--in the hands of a lesser writer, it would be ridiculous. Instead, it's a masterpiece.

joyce, with a review like that, this book's got to be on my list!

An excellent review, Joyce, and I know how difficult it is to do some books--the recent "blurb" I did on Wally Lamb was tough, trying to put so much feeling into so few words.

BTW, I'm halfway through Mistress of the Art of Death and I'm enjoying it immensely. Adelia is quite a woman.

#262: But you did a beautiful job, Charlie!

And yes, Adelia is a spunky sort! :-)

>258 Joycepa: Joyce, I thought your review was excellent and very lyrical, too! Especially "Alessandro burns as brilliantly as any of the stars over the Alto Adige."

Your review reminded me of another book The Secret of Santa Vittoria which is also full of the joy and exuberance of life. I must reread it and I recommend it also.

- TT

#264: Just checked it out and have added it to the list!

TT & Joyce

I read The Secret of Santa Vittoria years ago--I had almost forgotten it because I had to leave it behind when I moved. I loved that book with a passion--but was very disappointed in the movie. I can't remember why, but it was nowhere as good as the book even with one of my favorite actors (Greek--I see his face but his name won't "pop in" right now) in the lead. My younger self highly recommends it--I'm going to try to find it and read it again to see if I still get the exuberant feeling!

#264 & 266: I felt that way about A Bell for Adano.

But I have to warn you that this is NOT that kind of book. It's not exuberant. Alessandro lives in a state of exaltation, which is not the same. The war scenes are, to understate, grim. This is no comedy or light-hearted story. There's nothing even remotely light-hearted about it. The story is gripping, and you want to turn that page and find out what happened, but you're caught by the prose because you don't want to miss a word.

It's heartbreaking--I defy anyone to come to the end and not be in tears. I knew what was coming, because you don't forget--not the way Helprin ended that book--and I STILL cried, possibly more than I did before. I suspect it's because I'm a lot older and understand only too well what Helprin is driving at. But anyone who has given even a moment's thought to the foundations of love and to mortality will be moved by this book.

#267 Joycepa

I didn't mean to compare Santa Vittoria with the Mark Helprin book--I was just seconding TT's suggestion that it was a great read. It does, however, compare well with the John Hersey book. If you haven't read it (which you probably have) I think you would enjoy Hersey's Hiroshima--the later edition which includes the part where he goes back many years (40?) later and does a follow-up on the people he interviewed in the '40's. I didn't know about that book until our library had a community group read on it a couple of years ago. (yeah--sometimes my husband thinks I have my head in the sand--a lot of things I don't notice until they slap me in the face! That's why LT is so great for me--y'all slap me in the face with great reading ideas!)

As it turns out, I haven't read Hiroshima (but will bet every last dollar I have that Stasia has!). That would definitely be a book I'd be interested in.

As for me, I always like to keep up with what my distant (Italian) relatives are or have been doing! :-)

>266 MusicMom41: Carolyn, are you thinking of Anthony Quinn? However, although people think he is Greek, he is actually Mexican!

- TT

You know, I was trying to remember his name as well! He's played more Greek roles than Zorba, hasn't he?

#270 TT

Yes--thanks! I know he is (was?) Mexican--he played Zorba the Greek! Wasn't he also Greek in The Guns of Navaronne? (sp?) That was a great movie! That's where I was seeing his face--hence Greek. (remember, I'm a squid; my brain is wired differently!) ;-)

#269 Joycepa

I'm not taking that bet at any odds!

>264 TheTortoise: & 266: I've never met other people who have read The Secret of Santa Vittoria. They either say, "Huh?" or "I saw that movie...did they make a book from it?" It was a book I enjoyed and I'm surprised it doesn't have greater popularity.

ETA: Anthony Quinn played Andreas in "Guns of Navarone". I can't speak for "Zorba" as I haven't seen the movie.

#268 & #272 I don't know you, MM41, but I kind of feel sorry for you: A squid with her head in the sand.

And doesn't it drive you NUTS when you can see an actor or actress in your mind but can't remember their name--until about 3 a.m.?

#275: Well, for me the name usually comes at 2 am! :-)

#276 Since you are the lexographer of computer shorthand, what the heck does ETA stand for?

The obvious is Estimated Time of Arrival, or the less obvious, Eat Three Artichokes.

>277 BrainFlakes:: Edited To Add

# 277BrainFlakes

ETA mean Edited To Add--

"Squid" was referring to the book Proust and the Squid which talks about the science of the reading brain. Maryanne Wolf spends the last 1/3 of the book discussing dyslexics which she calls squids because their brains are wired differently. Most people's brains develop reading ability mainly in the left side of the brain (starting at a very young age and usually completed around 8 or 9, as I recall) which is the "faster" side of the brain. Dyslexics' brains develop reading ability mainly in the right side of the brain, which is slower and not as efficient for that task, which is why so many of them "get left behind" and usually don't become skillful readers. I'm dyslexic--but one of the lucky ones who had parents and a couple of good teachers early on who made sure I didn't get left behind--even though then it was not understood why I had reading, spelling and handwriting difficulty when I was obviously not a "slow child".

Actually, though, Hubby would agree with you--I often seem to have my head buried in the sand! :-)

A soldier of the Great War sounds great. I don't really seek out war stories, but it seems that a lot of really great books have a war (or some fighting) breaking out somewhere. I remember both A bell for Adano & The secret of Santa Vittoria from a long time ago. A book Somewhere in France in on my TBR pile, my 75 book goal this year is to diminish Mt. TBR. (this also means stop adding to it which takes more strength of character than I posess.) So it looks like a lot of my reading will be about WW1.
When I was around 20, I worked for the US Army Ordnance corps. All of the guys in our office were either Vets of WW1 or WW2 & there was always kidding going on as to which war was the most -- well- warlike I guess. The WW1 vets were outnumbered, but insisted their war was the greatest. But WW2 was bigger.

#278 & #279 Thanks to both of you for your help and explanations.

I didn't think Eat Three Artichokes was correct.

And I'm glad, MM41, that you had a good support system to overcome, or at least manage, your dyslexia.

Charlie

#280: I usually don't like war stories that are simply that and nothing more, although certain types, like The Guns of Navarone I thought were great because of the thriller aspect of them.

While a great part of he book centers on WW1, I wouldn't call A Soldier of the Great War a war book per se--it really isn't. It's more what the experience of the war taught Alessandro. so to me it's far more interesting than a straight story about the trenches. although I think I would like to read more history in that area.

11. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters This book could have been the best to date (it's her 3rd) but for the fact that it does drag on too long in Part 1. However, by the end of Part 1 there's no more complaining, boredom, or restlessness, or wondering if you should be reading another book! By the end of Part 2, you're racing along absolutely agog, and Part 3 leaves you dazed. Because of the dragginess of Part 1, I can't give it 5 stars but I guess 4 will have to do!

Waters' problem is that she is a major talent (we all should have such troubles) and therefore the standards by which we unconsciously judge another of her books while reading are extraordinarily high. No question that this is a really good book, and definitely worth reading. Just put up with Part 1 if it starts to seem as if it's never going to end. It will. Oh yes indeed, it will.

message 238

Can I barge in on your trip. I live in PA and would LOVE to meet you all.

A Soldier of the Great War has just been added to the wishlist!

And I knew you would love Fingersmith - wasn't it a rollicking, rollercoaster ride? I actually forgot that it took me about 100 pages to get into it because once I was in, I could hardly put it down.

#284, Linda: Yes! In fact, I might pop over to Bethlehem to visit Lehigh and see if any of the people whom I knew are left. I've been doing nothing but putting out brush fires here for over 6 weeks, with a time out for Christmas, so I haven't had much time to find out my big question, that will be the go or no-go for a trip--can I rent a car?

#285, Tracy: That's exactly what happened to me--began to wonder if the story would ever get going--and then it did! It really does need some editing in the beginning. I have The Night Watch waiting on a shelf, but am not going to start it for a while.

OK, I'm going to continue what I started with A Soldier of the Great War: putting the formal review here as well as on the book page.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Sue Trinder is an orphan who, at 17, is an accomplished fingersmith--pickpcket -in Victorian London. Her foster mother Mrs. Sucksby, has always treated Sue like a daughter, protecting her from the more violent aspects of life in the Borough, a section of London that is home to the very poor as well as thieves of all stripes. The household includes Mr Ibbs, a fence for the stolen goods that flow regularly through the house, Dainty, John, and a variety of infants, because Mrs. Sucksby runs an infant “farm”--a place where women pay Mrs. Sucksby to take their children; she cares for them and at times sells them o couples who want a child of their own, often times to raise it as an apprentice or thief. A friend of the extended household, known as Gentleman, another rogue, comes to Sue with a plot. He has recently made the acquaintance of a bizarre household out in the country about 40 miles from London. The head is Mr Lilly, a well-to-do older member of the landed gentry who has a passion for strange books. Mr Lilly has a niece, Maud, who is an heiress to a large fortune--which she only inherits if she marries. Gentleman, hot after the fortune, feels he needs help in wooing Maude and persuades Sue to pose as Maud’s lady’s maid in order to gain her confidence and urge her to marry Gentleman. Once married, Gentleman plans to commit Maud, a high-strung rather odd young woman of Sue’s Age, to a mental institution and thus gain the fortune without encumbrances. With misgivings Sue agrees.

In this her third novel, Waters has written a combination of Victorian Gothic novel, thriller, love story, and evocative description of Victorian life. Waters excels at characterization and dialogue; every one of her characters is distinct, complex when appropriate, and believable. The dialogue serves beautifully to give the characters distinctive voices. This is enhanced by the structure of the novel, which is in 3 parts: Sue narrates the first and third parts, while the middle part is narrated by Maud. Because the voices and moods are so distinctly different it works beautifully to move the story forward and set up a number of really excellent twists in the plot. Slowly gathering speed, the twists increase in number as the novel races on towards a fascinating resolution.

Waters continues to excel in her descriptions of Victorian life. In each of her books so far, she has focused on some major institution of Victorian life; in Fingersmith, it’s private mental hospitals, certain aspects of Victorian literary life, and the subculture of petty thieves. It is superbly done.

The only problem I had with this books is that the first part moves too slowly . After about 75 pages or so, you wonder if the story is ever going to develop and this first section end.

And then it does. Oh, my, it most certainly ends, and after that there is no time to complain because now the plot just races along, carrying you breathlessly with it.

BUT--there is that first section. I really think it is unnecessarily long and could have benefitted from editing. Still, there’s no question that Fingersmith is an outstanding book and that Waters is a major talent. Highly recommended.

#287: I read Fingersmith last year, and agree that the first section could definitely have benefitted from some judicious editing. I have not yet read any of Waters' other books but plan to do so some time this year. Great review, BTW.

#288: All three of her books are very different. I think she is superb at first-person narration. I also think that she is a major talent--all three of her books are top-notch. Her first, Tipping the Velvet probably remains my favorite so far, with Affinity breathing down its neck. There isn't much to choose between them in quality--I just really liked the picaresque quality of the first novel and the really inclusive view of lesbian subculture in Victorian London. Her focus on dance-hall entertainment was superb.

Dagnabbit, you people are *not* helping me shrink the ol' TBR pile. Fingersmith looks awesome!

#290: All of her 1st 3 are! Let y'all know about The Night Watch in a few weeks--I really don't want to run out of Sarah Waters books too soon!

ETA: I'm thrilled to announce that there are fresh Mistress of the Art of Death converts right and left! It's a great book. The sequel, The Serpent's Tale, is in my next book order, which I'm lining up now for next month.

Fingersmith does sound great. *sigh* My wishlist is pages and pages now and my TBR pile is growing by the day. Thanks for the review, nonetheless, joycepa!

Oh dear -- I've added so many books to my wishlist over the past few days thanks to this group that I forgot I had already added Fingersmith. Geez -- guess you just clinched that I definitely should read it!!!

Any more, I just keep an open Word document titled Book List open on the desktop when I read LT, so that I can put in the books reviewed. Just typed Sarah Waters in--loved your review, Joyce.

Am visualizing your Mac getting closer and closer to Panama all weekend. I hope it is coming by air?

#294: You know, some sort of Word or Excel document sounds like the real way to go rather than an Amazon wish list(s).

Right know, it's traveling UPS ground, somewhere east of Salt Lake City on its way to Miami. From Miami it's air freight to Panama City, where it has to go through Customs. Then, by ground--usually a day--from panama City to the town nearest us David. Then we pick it up!

It's supposed to arrive in Miami on the 21st. From there it'll take anywhere from 7-12 days to reach David.

I have the UPS tracker open all the time!

The thing about Amazon Wish List is that anyone buying a present can find it.

#296: True, except that anyone looking at, what 11?, of mine is going to be so overwhelmed as to fold their Internet tents and quietly steal away.

Plus the only person who does have the nerve to buy me books as presents knows my tastes so well that she doesn't even bother checking anymore and just buys what she thinks will interest me. She hit the jackpot in October! :-)

#295. It seems like a virus could get to you faster than your computer.

Oh lordie, Charlie, you do make me laugh! At this point, I feel as if almost ANYTHING could get to me faster than that computer! I'm sharing Mary's computer and that works, only because some access is better than none!

I keep a Word document open for adding books to, plus both my local libraries websites and my Amazon wish list. Yes, I realize I am hopeless.

Your problem, Stasia, is that you have to do all that in order to keep track of all the books you read and plan to read! Have you thought of hiring a private secretary to manage your book lists?

I could certainly use one. I did not even include the Word document that I have to use to track the library books I already have checked out. I reached my local library's limit today: 99.

You know, I think I'll just simply agree with you--you are indeed hopeless! :-)

Do you think there is a vaccination available for bibliophilia?

No--because those who would need the vaccination wouldn't want it! :-)

word document--why didn't I think of that? You can take notes on that which you can't do on library lists or Amazon lists!

That's what I do, use a Word doc and make notes along the way! I find it very helpful... also, I can print it off every so often and stick it in my purse, just in case I ever find myself *coincidentally* near a used bookstore or the library... ;D

#306: Oh I do love the various stratagems that we use to delude ourselves that THIS time we're going to be disciplined, THIS time we're going to march right by that bookstore and refused to be seduced by the books in the windows, THIS time we will remember that the kids are running around barefoot in the snow and the rent is past due!

And it never works, ever!

12. Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 by O. Edward Cunningham. This isn't a book for the casual reader in the American Civil War. While other battles had taken place before Shiloh, the two-day battle that occurred on April 6-7, 1862, was by far the bloodiest up until that time Casualties shocked both the Union and the Confederacy.

Shiloh, in Mississippi, was the one and only time that either Grant or Sherman was taken by surprise; Sherman repeatedly refused to believe reports from pickets that the Confederate army was at hand. The result was a near disaster for the Union Army, which by the end of the first day's fighting had its back up against the Tennessee River. However, with reinforcements, Grant fought to a tactical victory on the 2nd day. It's always counted as a Union victory. It

This book was the Cunningham's doctoral dissertation in 1960; it was published in book form in 2007. The text is quite good although he didn't use the modern method of reporting unit organization that's used these days. OK, well, no one expects great literature from a doctoral dissertation (mine is eminently forgettable). Still, the confusion could have been easily lifted through the use of good, modern maps. Howeer, the cartographer, one of the co-editors, for some bizarre reason didn't use the standard notation for designating divisions, brigades, and regiments in symbolic form that has been employed on such maps for decades now. It was impossible to follow unit movements described in the text suing the maps. You just sort of had to guess, trying to remember the Battle Order who belonged to what and which commander had what unit.

Still, you do get a good sense of what happened in the fighting especially on the first day, at famous sites such as the Hornet's Nest and the Peach Orchard. Why peaches figured so prominently in Civil War battles is beyond me; Shiloh had its Peach Orchard, Gettysburg an even more famous one.

The books is ok for those of us who like to know more about the individual battles but even then, I wouldn't recommend it because of the problem with the maps. so, don't feel bad if you're not moved to learn more about Shiloh--you haven't missed much. Read Shelby Foote--you'll get a great grasp of the battle through his historical narrative of the Civil War, and his novel, Shiloh.

# 307 Joycepa

LOL!

However, I do find that a list helps eliminate "impulse" buys that end up never getting read!

Back in the early 100s BDB said it took him a while to read the thread. Wish I'd found it then! Have no idea how you were overlooked, but I'm here now :)

I appreciated the review in >153 Joycepa: very much of Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. If I have a complaint about Cadfael it would be I'd like more meat -- You've answered this quite nicely. Thx!

> re: rental cars. We have French insurance which they don't count either. We always have to get their insurance (ouch) -- is this not a possibility for you too? Actually for one long trip, we took out a State Farm policy and canceled it when the month was over. The office knew that was our plan when we signed up and it worked out quite nicely, saving us a bundle.

#310: I'm hoping that I will be able to purchase their insurance. I only intend to be at Gettysburg a week, and that probably will include one or more side trips. So, I wouldn't have to purchase it for long--yes I know the cost! Not looking forward to it. The real puzzler is why mary could not rent a car--she isn't clear if the rental car agency simply didn't offer her the option and she didn't ask or if it wasn't available at all. It's something I have to clear up before I go any further in my plans. But your experience gives me hope!

The only trick is that the driver's license and credit card names have to be the same. I had my license but no credit card. Hubby had his cards but had forgotten his license... frustrating.

Hmmm. Mary wouldn't have had that problem. I really don't know what happened with her. Fortunately, she was able to borrow an uncle's vehicle.

I do tend to view Missouri (site of Mary's experience and visit) as an alien planet.

Joyce, any word on the delivery date for your new computer? Are you tracking it daily? Inquiring minds want to know!

#314: *she wails loudly, striking her head against the desk* I am on the UPS tracking site four or five tiems DAILY, and the only thing I can get out of them is that it's on its way to Miamia somewhere east of North Salt lake City. today is the 20th. Delivery is promised by tomorrow, so I'm on tenterhooks Then, I have to allow a flat minimum of 8 days to get from Miami to David. Normally, we just swing by the office of our courier service whenever we're in DAvid--it's on the same street as our vet's, and we're ALWAYS at the vet's for one reason or another. However, I'm going to ask Gabriella, the charming and competent young Panamanian woman who staffs the office, to call me the minute the box arrives. 40 minutes later--God willing and there's no traffic accident--I'll be parked in the office, ready to shell out whatever small fortune it's going to cost me to get it through customs and shipping.

#315: I knew you should just have paid me to hand deliver it - not as much waiting time, lol.

#316: Darn, I truly missed out there! Had I known about the irresponsibility of the UPS tracking service I'd have definitely given it a shot, Stasia--the uncertainty is killing me!

Bad as a kid waiting for Christmas, isn't it? I sure hope it gets their soon, for your sake, Mary's sake, and the sake of everyone here on LT who will be hearing the wailing from Panama until it gets there!

Yeah, well,I do complain a lot! :-)

However, it's particularly frustrating today. We don't have TV--that is, Direct TV, which is what most gringos have here. We never have been TV watchers. We do have a TV set, which we use exclusively for videos. Every once in a while, I think about putting up a small antenna to catch Panamanian TV so I can find out what happened in the latest lethal accident on the road to David, but then some brush fire happens, i rush to put it out and forget about the aerial.

Out of three computers--2 desk tops and a lap top--my desk top is dead, Mary's lap top is on its last legs, and only Mary's desk top is working. That means a somewhat difficult situation during the inauguration. mary is a Yellow Dog Democrat--she worked for Obama's campaign on Election Day and I am a cynic whose last hope resides in Obama--so we are definitely interested in watching the ceremony. But we'd have to do it by computer,and that will take some doing. I can maybe arrange for a couple of Panamanian friends to kidnap Mary for a few hours--it could be done, really.

I'm hoping that,barring such extreme measures, her laptop will gasp along long enough for me to get at least some viewing time in.

I can maybe arrange for a couple of Panamanian friends to kidnap Mary for a few hours

I wish you would have told me that earlier. I have a friend who has a friend who knows a guy . . .

Poor Mary.

re: tv -- it's the same for us. We just used it to watch movies, but have since traded it in for a large screen :)

>311 Joycepa:: The major rental companies will rent to you if you don't have personal auto insurance. However, they usually require you to buy their insurance, which is quite expensive. It might be cheaper to buy a policy than can be cancelled from one of the cheap guys. I think www.directinsurance.com is considered reasonably cheap.

#322: Good to know and I will check it out. As I say, I only want a car there for a week. I've paid for car rental insurance before and know about the cost! *wince*

I live in the states and have several active auto policies from a major company. My agent recommends that we take the insurance on rental cars, anyway. It does increase the cost, but that way if there is a claim it doesn't go against our insurance rating. I never thought about taking out a short-term policy from a discount company - that is a good idea for a long trip.

For all inquiring minds: Freddie the iMac is in Miami, loaded on a FedEx vehicle for delivery this morning!!

It means that there's a hope--a slim one, to be sure--of Freddie the iMac arriving at his new home by the end of the month.

Yesterday, I graciously shared Mary's computer with her as we watched the inauguration, the speech and most of the parade. She was suitably grateful.

#325: We shall say our prayers that Freddie arrives both speedily and in excellent condition!

Glad you got your CNN time after all

#327: It was by no means smooth or complete, since the bandwidth coming into panama is not all that big and we only have a 256 K connection. But we got most of the swearing in and a good part of the speech live. We've downloaded the video of he speech and will be watching it this morning. It was frustrating at times, but worth the effort.

#325. Yesterday, I graciously shared Mary's computer with her as we watched the inauguration, the speech and most of the parade. She was suitably grateful.

Joyce, you're a real peach.

#329: I thought so, I thought so. I've always tried to be a class act.

13. Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman. Superb, utterly superb. This is the second in her trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, although the first book is primarily about the civil war between Henry's mother Maude and Stephen of Blois for the English crown. The first book was very, very good--this one is even better. It follow Henry's middle years as king, his growing estrangement from Eleanor, and of course the famous murder of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury. For those who like historical fiction, this is a must read--but, of course, after you read the first novel, When Christ and His Saints Slept

#331. Darn it, Joyce, you know I have a weakness for medieval fiction and my behind just gets behinder and behinder. I guess I'll add them to my Amazon wishlist, where they'll stay for a week or two . . .

#331: Where does The Sunne in Splendour come in, Joyce? I want to read the books in the correct historical order, and it is on my list to read this year.

#333. I'll save Joyce the trouble and point you to this list at Amazon:

Penman in Order

I want to finish up the Henry/Eleanor series (Devil's Brood is next) before I tackle anything else of hers, but I most definitely intend to read more of her works. The Sunne in Splendor looks like a great stand-alone, Stasia. Although it's 3 centuries later.

#s 331-334: All of those books look fantastic!

I'm with Missy -- I need them :)

#334: Thanks, Charlie Brain.

#335: Ditto, Joyce.

ETA: I have read all of her mysteries, which I very much enjoyed, and would recommend. This year, though, I want to tackle at least 1 of her historical fiction books.

Hi Joyce...
I'm enthralled with English History. I'm adding Time and Chance and When Christ and His Saints Slept to my tbr ever growing mountain of books.

Thanks!

And, I see that you have quite a wonderful thread here! I enjoy checking your posts each day.

This is my formal review:

Time and Chance
Sharon Kay Penman

The second novel in her trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Time and Chance covers the period of the middle years of Henry’s reign, up to and including the notorious murder of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury. That, along with the deteriorating marriage to Eleanor are the twin foci of the book; given the tumultuous events of Henry’s reign who, besides being ruler of England, controlled more land in France than did the King of France (although Henry was nominally a vassal of the French king), there is plenty of drama to fill the pages of this superbly told and equally well-written story.

Penman’s first in the series, When Christ and His Saints Slept, covered the period of the English Civil War between Maude, Henry’s mother, and Stephen, who seized the English after the death of Henry I, even though Henry had exacted an oath from his barons to honor his choice of Maude as heir. In that book, Penman does an outstanding job of presenting both sides of that bitter, 19 year war that devastated England.

She does an equally brilliant job in presenting both sides of the increasingly bitter and finally lethal conflict between Henry and Beckett over the respective boundaries of power of Church and State. The long view of history is on Henry’s side. BUT, in the context of the 12th century, as Penman so deftly shows, not only was that not clear but there was also a powerful argument on Beckett’s side. Two different men--less stubborn, less proud--might have been able to settle the differences; there were certainly countless attempts to do so, especially efforts by the then-pope. But Penman makes clear that both men were at fault for their inability to yield. The controversy which ended in the murder of Becket was one of the most dramatic events of the Middle Ages; it was recorded in detail. Equally so with Beckett’s murder; there were five eyewitnesses, who wrote detailed accounts. so Penman has plenty of rich material to work with, and she does an outstanding job.

Just as fascinating is her rendition of the marriage between Henry and Eleanor, the probably causes for their increasing estrangement, which no doubt will culminate in her third and final book on Henry and Eleanor. But Penman does a masterful job in her presentation of the couple, again showing both sides of the troubles between them. It’s nearly impossible, however, not to side with Eleanor, arguably the most powerful and fascinating woman of the Middle Ages.

Stashed in between the two central dramas are wars with the Welsh and various rebellious barons of Henry’s domains, and the tension between Henry and Louis VII, the St.Louis of French history, with whom Henry had to walk a fine line as he struggled both to keep his lands on the continent and expand his power whenever the opportunity arose.

In Penman’s hands, all the characters come alive. Henry, Eleanor, and especially Beckett reveal themselves both in words and actions to be complex characters. Penman is particularly good at dialogue. Most of her main cast are historical figures; carried over from her first book is the fictional character of Ranulf, supposedly one of Henry I’s many illegitimate children (as Penman puts it, Henry had at least 20, so why not use one of them), and therefore uncle to Henry II. Ranulf serves beautifully, as he did in the first book, as an window on the Welsh at this time, important actors during Henry’s reign.

I particularly liked the structure of the book, which she used in When Christ and His Saints Slept. Segmented into slices of time set in particular locales, the structure is very effective, allowing for abrupt changes in time and place without disrupting the narrative in the slightest. There is also a nice sketch of England and France, showing the locations of major cities, towns, and castles, especially those that play an important part in the story. The book opens in July, 1156 at Chinon Castle in France and ends in Wales in 1171, with much unresolved, waiting the final chapter in The Devil’s Brood.

There is no finer historical fiction that I know of. Highly recommended.

Wow, after that review, this series looks like a must-read! Thanks Joyce!

Joyce...
What a great review. I wish I could teach students who work on the newspaper and yearbook to write as well as you!

#342: Well,maybe by the time they're 71..... :-)

>342 Whisper1: Excellent review Joyce. I have never read any of Penman's books - now I am drooling, they sound marvellous!

- TT

Joyce
After reeading your reviews, I am so thankful I sent my order to Amazon for the Penman books last week, because now all the people here will be ordering & they probably will run out. (Tho I'm sure thy'll find more.)
Actually, I heard Sharon Kaye Penman speak at a writer's conference at Kent state Ohio, about maybe 15 years ago? It was when she was just starting out & hadn't become well known. She told us about going to the Library of the British Museum in London & how you had to sign in & the atmosphere - it alone could carry you back several centuries. She said her goal was to be as accurate as possible & when she wasn't sure about something she worried unti she was able to find the right answer. If she was still too much in doubt, she wouldn't use it. She also visited the English countryside where the action took place.

I read all her earlier books & then got more involved with US history, but a few years ago I started the Brother Cadfael series & now I'm stuck in the middle ages , at least for a while.

Can I just add and say that every single thing by Penman is a must read. I have read two by her and they are so absolutely fantastic I can't wait to devour the rest of them. I love historical fiction and long books I can get my teeth into, and she offers both.

Yay for Penman fans, I can't wait to hear more good things about her cos I think she is great.

#345, Marian: I LOVE listening to or reading authors who talk about their process--it's a wonderful window on creativity. It doesn't surprise me in the least that her research is so thorough and she is s scrupulous--you can tell from the books--they have that feel of authenticity that something just sort of cobbled together can't have.

I'm a big fan of the Brother Caedfel series and have started collecting them again. They take place in the same time frame as When Christ and His Saints Slept, the time of the Civil War between Stephen and Maude. Clearly Peters favors Stephen. Penman is more even-handed.

While the Brother Caedfel series is pretty light-weight, I still enjoy it a lot because Peters writing is very good. Plus I do love medieval mysteries!

#346, lunacat: I have the third book of the trilogy, Devil's Brood, all set up to order in February. I full intend o get her mysteries, too--I think she's a fabulous writer.

Joyce,
First, I hope your computer gets there soon because I really enjoy reading your thread and that will only mean that you will be able to add more to it.

Second, while I hae been reading your notes today (I was a few days behind) I added 6 books from your list to my TBRs. Could you slow down so that the rest of us can get caught up! I know that Stasia makes everyone feel that they are lagging behind, but no one will ever read the way she does! Be kind to us normal-speed readers, please!
Cheli

ETA - I meant to mention that I keep track of my books from the library by a tag CKDOUT - so then I always know which books I have for a limited amount of time. When I get home from the library , I add them to LT or adjust the tags (if they were on my WISHLIST then that tag is deleted) and by looking at a list of tag= CKDOUT I have my list of library books. Works for me!

#348: In my own defense, I must mention that there is at least one other person on the thread who has read more books than I have this year!

Joyce, any computer news yet? We are waiting for bated breath for a long yelp from Panama!

#348, Cheli: You know, Cheli, I might have some compassion but your brought up The Big Stumbling block--Stasia! I look at her thread--28 books already in less than 21 days--and I creep away,knowing my humble place in life.

#349, Stasia--and who is that, might I ask? Some cyborg?

As for Freddie the iMac: he was delivered to Miami on the 21st--BUT now I have to wait for delivery to Panamá and after that to David. Tomorrow we go into David to do our weekly shopping, and I will drop by our courier service to ask Gabriela if she will call me as soon as it arrives. Today being the 23rd,I figure anywhere from 6-9 days more.

It can't come too soon. Today, while Mary had the nerve to work on her own computer, I was forced to deal with the laptop, and I thought I would scream with frustration at one point. The poor thing is really having a hard time, and drops the Internet connection after 5 minutes. While I have compassion for its dying throes, I also have no patience.

I work on and post reviews in the very early morning, because that's the only time I can be assured of computer/Internet access.

But wait, just wait! Once Freddie gets here!!!

Just to give you an idea of the attitude or point of view that Penman takes towards her characters, this is from the front of the book:

"Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise,nor riches to the intelligent,nor favor to men of skill but time and chance happen to them all."

It's a quote from Ecclesiastes, which is one of my all-time favorites of the Hebrew Testament, second only to the Book of Job in my estimation.

#351 Joycepa

Ecclesiastes and Job--I didn't realize you were such a Pollyanna, Joyce! ;-) (However, I love both of them, too. "To every season..." )

Joycepa and MMom...has either of you seen the gorgeous, as in scrupmtious, Joan Chittister book There is a Season. It is a remarkable series of meditations on the passage from Ecclesastes in both word and art....I have it on my 999 challenge as a 're-read'--too good not to savor at least once a year. The artwork of John August Swanson is worth twice whatever you'd pay for the book. It is exquisite. I've found it makes a particularly special wedding gift.

edited to fix touchstone.

#352, MM41: Oh so perfect that for once--and mark this day on your calendar--I have no comeback!! :-)

#343, tt1st: No, I don't know that particular book of Chittister's. I have two others, Illuminated Life: Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light and Life Ablaze: A Woman's Novena. I haven't read the latter yet, but can recommend the former as the same sort of book that There Is A Season sounds like--and the art work is, yes,scrumptious as well. Chittister doesn't say anywhere, but clearly she's a Thomas Merton follower--some of her writings are practically straight out of Zen Buddhism. She is one of my very favorite writers on practical spirituality.

I also tend to give Chittister's books as gifts, or I used to, back in the US. They're suitable for anyone no matter what belief, because she is nearly totally non-specific--she doesn't narrow the definition to any particular brand.

ETA: I have to make a reservation on that last sentence for the women's novena book, which I haven't read yet--it does sound terribly Catholic to me, but she has a real gift for turning things general. I will get to it sometime this year--novenas are BIG here before Christmas. We weren't able to attend this past year, although we were incredibly flattered to be invited to the one in Potrerillos, because only Panamanians attend it--but we have made our usual resolutions to Be Better People for this year! :-) I suspect that will go the way of most of our resolutions. Especially that one!

Joyce - Time and Chance sounds absolutely wonderful, but no more Penman is added to my wishlist until I finally read Sunne in Splendour! It's been anchoring one of my TBR piles for much too long . . . .

#350: Mrs. Bond and I think there is one other, but the name is not coming to mind at this particular moment in time.

Tracy--you don't want to read it before you read the first one, When Christ and His Saints Slept, anyway. I'm intrigued by Sunne In Splendour and want to read it. Can anyone remember the name of the historian who wrote a multivolume set on the history of the Plantangenets? It would have been nearly 50 years ago. Whoever it was, he was one of the first to reject the notion of Richard III as an evil man who conspired to take the throne and killed his two nephews. Made some very convincing arguments. So much so, that I have never, ever been able to appreciate Shakespeare's play because of it.

I think you may be referring to Thomas Costain. My parents must have belonged to some book club that featured his books. I can still see a shelf of them in the glassed in secretary in the dining room. When I was left to babysit three younger siblings, they allowed me to forget the chaos and go off to a faraway land and dream of being a Queen. The Last Plantagenets,The Black Rose, and The Three Edwards were among my favorites. wonder what happened to those books, she said, slinking off to call her mother.....

#358, tt1st: That's it! That's the name! I loved those books. Costain wrote beautifully, made the history come alive. I had a set for years, then, like so many others, they vanished.

If your mother knows where they are, let me know! :-)

#358-359. You both bring back a name I haven't heard since Moses's sandals were new. My mother read Costain too, but Moses only knows whatever happened to them.

When books vanish, which they have a tendency to do, I wonder where they go.

I still have my Costain books! Of course, they are in a box in my garage, but they are there.

#360: I think the Costain books disappeared before one of my cross-country moves, so probably to a garage-type sale for them.

since Moses's sandals were new Definitely have to add that one to my repertoire, definitely. And, by the way, I NEVER give credit to the originator. Sorry--you're out of luck, Charlie.

I wonder if they're still in print. Got to check---

I've only read (and own) one Costain, The Silver Chalice. Long a favorite of mine. I'll have to re-read it when I get back to France. Sure do miss my library.

#363: How much longer will you be living in Romania? Will you be getting back to France any time soon? Is the end in sight - and the reclamation of your library?

2-4 more years... so no. The good thing is I'm reading stuff I never would have touched and occassionally am even glad I did :)

#365: Sorry to hear that, Susan. I know how you feel - my books were in storage for 3 years and even though we moved into our own house last year, I still have boxes of books that remain in the garage due to lack of shelf space.

Imagine - LT expanding your reading horizons! Happens to me all the time, lol.

I remember reading a review in the New Yorker about one of Costain's books & the reviewer said " Costain is the only author I know who can make the murder of Thomas a Becket boring"
I preferred the women writers of historical fiction - maybe it's those little touches they add - descriptions of clothes for example & room decor & furniture.

#367: I haven't read Costain's books for about 30 years, but I remember them being incredibly exciting.

Can't think at the moment if I have any preference one way or the other for gender of author.

I'm in the middle of The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, and it is unmitigated horror--the story of the 8 years of the Dust Bowl in the High Plains. That had to be the greatest human-made ecological disaster in world history--I cannot think of anything even remotely like it.

I've been reading sections of it aloud to Mary; neither one of us can grasp the extent and depth of the disaster. I told her that for my next book, as a mood-lifter and pepper-upper, I'm going to read The Grapes of Wrath. That's my idea of humor right now.

Oh, my---another old Costain fan here. I was very fond of him in high school (that would be about 40 years ago...ahem.) I remember The Black Rose. I have The Silver Chalice and The Tontine. Both belonged to my mother originally.

My Mom's books seem to have gone somewhere--I suspect to one of my sisters. Cataloging what was left of my dad's library was what actually got me started on LT. I checked and there's only the Last Plantagenets left. I called Mom right after posting last night and told her to save it for me. There are still a few in our public library, and I suspect they are still holding pride of place in many used book stores. It's always good to here that others enjoyed the same books you did.

14. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. This is a terrible book, one that had me stopped cold for two days as I tried to digest the unimaginable catastrophe of the Dust Bowl, and, at the end, the equally unimaginable stupidity of those American farmers who willfully deny its origins and are participating in what will be yet another avoidable, human-caused ecological disaster in the same area, the High Plains of the Midwest/Southwest US, one that will again turn that area into a desert. It won a National Book Award. I don't understand why it didn't win a Pulitzer. Every American should be forced to read this book.

15. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver writes tough, realistic life-affirming books, and this is one of them. I could not bear to pick up anything really serious in the way of nonfiction after The Worst Hard Time, so I turned to Kingsolver to rid my mind of the images of dust storms that blackened the sky, shut out light, and lasted for 100 hours. This was a good choice. Kingsolver writes about the Southwest--Arizona--and the underclass, composed mainly of women, that struggles to survive despite all the odds in a tough but thoroughly compassionate way. This is a marvelous book.

The Worst Hard Time is already on Continent TBR or I would add it again.

I have not yet read Kingsolver's The Bean Trees but maybe I will get to it this year. I already have her Animal, Vegetable, Mineral on my TBR list for the year.

Stasia, I seem to be following you around, seconding other people's recommendations...
I re-read The Bean Trees in the summer of 2007, as an antidote to difficult circumstances. It was perfect medicine. I love her prose and her characters. And I still need to read Animal, Vegetable, Mineral myself.

Joyce..
It seems that every day I add a book from your thread to my ever growing pile. I cannot help myself...You and Stasia are addictive. Today's addition is the Worst Hard Time.

The Worst Hard Time certainly does sound like a worthwhile read!

#372 So, did you like Worst Hard Time or just feel that, despite being unpleasant, it is too important to miss? I don't know much specifically about this book, but it is on my list to read this year. Having grown up in Kansas, the ruler-straight rows of trees around all the fields and along the rural roads were ubiquitous. I was only vaguely aware that they hadn't always been there. But, in the 1980's, when farmers began tearing out the wind-breaks that their grandfathers had planted, I was appalled at their audacity. I couldn't believe they honestly believed that it couldn't happen again. That modern farming techniques would protect them. That the few extra acres of planting they gained was worth the risk of losing all their topsoil. Some things just never change. People are greedy and have short memories.

#377: It's hard to "like" the book--I'm writing the review and all I can use--and feel that they're inadequate--are words like "catastrophic", "disaster", and gems like that. I've been what is known as a micro-farmer--a market gardener--and so it was impossible for me to read descriptions of trees dying, cattle dying with their eyes frozen open by the dust, crops burned by static electricity,cows dying of of starvation because their stomachs were packed full of dirt without being nearly paralyzed with horror. Then to read about babies dying of dust pneumonia, coughing and crying, with i>broken ribs from coughing--babies-- without an equivalent reaction.

Yes, at the end, when I read, after Roosevelt's great effort, that farmers were pulling out the painfully planted and nurtured windbreaks, I felt like screaming.

The accounts are from survivors who stuck it out in Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. The stories of the near-starvation, the desperation--no one can read them and not be moved,not be horrified. The pictures of the black blizzards--the dusters--and the pictures especially of Black Sunday--are beyond my description to portray fear and horror. the dusters came on so suddenly, that if you got caught outside, you were instantaneously enveloped in blackness--you couldn't see--children died of suffocation just a few yards away from their homes.

And those miserably stupid, greedy criminals want to do it again? Even I don't dare write my very profane reaction. May they all go to hell and rot there for all eternity.

I was so upset when I finished the book last night that I couldn't sleep.

#377--378. Ladies, your discussion gives me goosebumps. To me, "modern farming techniques" means giant John Deeres instead of two mules and a plow, as well as better insect control and higher yields--dirt is still dirt, and it will blow away without windbreaks.

The goosebumps? I am a firm believer in history repeating itself, especially when greed and stupidity are involved. The "war" we are in right now is a pefect example of a repeat . . .

#379: Why do you think I call myself a misanthrope? I have no faith whatsoever in the "improvement" of the human race.

I'm a scientist, but I am sickened by the uses to which science is put. And the religion--blind, superstitious faith--that people have made of it. It's one way to look at the world and it's a good way--in its proper place. But evidently no one is ever going to learn that there are consequences to every act. Just applying science and engineering to patch up a problem and then ignoring the consequences of the action and history are insane policies. I speak here of the technological ability to tap 500 ft and more into the Ogallala aquifer, draining it 8 times faster than the water can be replaced. And when that goes, there goes 30% of the water used for irrigation. And then what? What's the next "solution"?

Egan says that by 2010, pars of the Texas Panhandle will be once again without water. Who will they rob next?

And the farm subsidies? I had not realized that originally the New Deal handed them out to farmers as a way of forcing up prices and sustaining the families until they could earn some money through farming. Now, as most of us know,those subsidies go to big operations who don't need it. In one of the most damning paragraphs, Egan talks about precious water from the Ogallala aquifer going to raise cotton--there it is again, shades of the Civil War-- not to sustain American manufacturing, oh no, but to ship to China where they will make cheap clothing to be sold in Wal-Mart.

Well, my computer access is over, which is just as well, given the flat rage I've been in for nearly a day. Time to go study about the 2nd day at Gettysburg, Little Round Top now. I'd rather read about people killing one another than about the rape of the planet.

Well, I think I will definitely be reading the book sooner rather than later. I've lately become interested in the dust bowl days/depression era but haven't made the effort yet to learn more. Time to begin.

#379 "Modern" farming techniques include more than just giant machinery! They leave the stubble in the ground after harvest as an erosion prevention and don't disk it under until they get ready to plant the next crop. They also terrace the fields, and contour the rows to trap more moisture and reduce water run-off. And lots of other things, I'm sure. But I agree, dirt is still dirt and it will blow away. There will be another drought. And the wind never stops blowing out there. Anytime humans are present, greed will be involved. And sometimes stupidity. Actually, even more than stupid, I think people are just short-sighted. They never look beyond their own little lives. They think that "it will never happen to me", even though they may be quite willing to admit that something could happen to someone else, sometime, someplace, just not here.

Review of The Worst Hard Time:

Winner of the National Book Award for 2006, The Worst Hard Time is a gripping, masterful account of the greatest human-made ecological disaster the US and possibly the world has ever known. It is a page-turning, horrifying account of the consequences of ignorance and greed, and the havoc that human beings can wreak on a land. It is also the grim account of the catastrophic consequences of such havoc, of the horrific way the land can strike back.

If the language seems extreme, it’s actually an understatement. There’s no exaggeration. In fact, I know of no way to convey adequately the magnitude of the disaster.

Egan uses statistics sparingly and effectively. But the real impact comes from the stories of the survivors, those who settled the High Plains--what would later become known as the Dust Bowl--in the years right after WWI. Cowboy Bam White, his wife and three kids, following along behind starving horses, finally forced to stop and settle in Dalhart, Texas in the Panhandle, when too many horses died to pull their wagon. The Lucas family, who settled in Boise City, Oklahoma, a town created by land fraud in the middle of No Man’s Land. The Volga Germans, fleeing from conscription into Russia’s army, bringing with them the precious seeds of their hard winter wheat. The Osteens, the Folkers, Doc Dawson, others. They settled on land that was never meant by climate to be farmed--western Kansas, southwestern Nebraska, southeastern Colorado, the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. Lured by the promise of cheap land, the last left in the US, and what were artificially high prices for wheat, they came to a land that experiences cycles of drought and wet--and they came during a period of years of unusually high rainfall, enough to for wheat. They tore up the the greatest expanse of natural grassland on the continent with the plow, later aided enormously by the introduction of mechanized farm machinery, and sowed wheat. In a few years, families went from living in dugouts cut into the soil to clapboard houses, with pianos, washing machines, and Model T Fords.

First came the Depression, when prices for wheat plummeted and farmers watched their wheat rot by the railroad stations. Many of those who answered the lure of advertisements for land were what was called “suitcase farmers”--salesmen, teachers, mechanics--others, who had no experience in farming and who were immediately discouraged by the years of desperation following the crash of ’29. They literally just walked away from the land--leaving it bare.

Then came the drought, which would last 8 years. And with it, from the ever present winds, the dusters, the “black blizzards.” At first, people thought it was a temporary phenomenon. But by the third year, the dusters increased in number and intensity as tons of topsoil blew across the plains. The farmers‘ situation grew from serious to desperate. The scenes make the whole genre of horror movies and books pale by comparison: trees dying, cattle dying with their eyes frozen open by the dust, crops burned by static electricity, cows dying of of starvation because their stomachs were packed full of dirt. Children and babies dying of dust pneumonia, coughing and crying, with broken ribs from coughing. Otherwise healthy young men dying of silicosis, a disease that usually takes at leas 15-20 years to develop, but with the high silicon content of the soil and the fact that nothing could really keep out the very fine dust particles, killed people within three years. The dusters came on so suddenly, that if you got caught outside, you were instantaneously enveloped in blackness--you couldn't see--children died of suffocation just a few yards away from their homes. One terrible dust storm--15,000 feet high and hundreds of miles wide--rode a temporary system of winds straight to the East Coast, where it dumped tons of topsoil on Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York, even going out to the Atlantic Ocean.

The photographs of the land taken at that time, the pictures of the black blizzards, and especially those of Black Sunday, are beyond my description to portray fear and horror.

Egan describes well the indifference of the Hoover Administration and the efforts of the Roosevelt Administration to pin down the soil through reseeding with native and other grasses,and Roosevelt’s dream--the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees by the CCC to form windbreaks between which the land could be farmed. The painfully slow progress and hard-earned success. Only to have farmers, in the 40s when grain prices shot up, tear out the trees to plant a few more acres of wheat, able to so so because of tapping into the vast Ogallala Aquifer of water that lay underneath the High Plains. The aquifer is being drained at a rate 8 times faster than the water can be replenished; given that it provides the water for 30% of current irrigation in the US, the stage is being set for the next act in the worst ecological disaster the US has ever known. The first time was through ignorance; this time, greed and stupidity rule.

But nothing is as dramatic as the stories of those families who stayed--either through a bond with the land or because they were unable to leave. At the end of he book, Egan includes entries from the diary of Don Hartwell who lived in Inavale,Nebraska ; it is heartrending. The bank took Hartwell’s farm in late 1938, land that the family had owned since 1909. Hartwell ended his diary with the following poem, written by a woman, Eleanor Chaffee:

We had a crystal moment
Snatched from the hands of time,
A golden,singing moment
Made for love and rhyme.

What if it shattered in our hands
As crystal moments must?
Better than earthen hours
Changing to lifeless dust.

Uh oh, Joyce, I feel your blood pressure going up again from here!

BTW- did you see the article about global warming being irreversible for the next 1000 years? If you are interested, it can be found here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090127/ts_alt_afp/uswarmingenvironmentclimate;_ylt...

#384: Just what I need right now! *snort* I wouldn't be surprised. Destruction is quick and easy. Repair? Much longer, much harder.

#385: There will never be repair as long as human beings inhabit the world unfortunately.

Review of The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingolver:

Taylor (née Marietta) Greer was born into poverty in rural Kentucky but had the great good fortune of choosing a tough, loving, totally supportive mother, who cheered her on. Successful in her twin goals of avoiding pregnancy and escaping, driving a beat-up VW bug that has no working starter, Taylor starts her odyssey by crossing the Pittman County line, promising herself that she will keep driving west until her car just simply stops running.

This more or less comes to pass--but not until she has had thrust on her by the aunt an Indian baby girl outside a run-down diner in Oklahoma; the girl, whom Taylor estimates to be around 18 months old, has been sexually abused.

Not exactly sure what to do about the situation but feeling a curious bond with the child Taylor drives on with the child who never makes a sound until the VW gives up with not one but two flats in front of the Jesus is Lord Used Tire mart in Tuscon, Arizona.

Kingsolver has an amazing ability to write about the economic underclass that is composed of women and usually, in her stories,Native Americans as well. Set in the 70s or 80s (the timeframe isn’t clear), The Bean Trees is a remarkable story of survival--of tough women who learn to depend on “the kindness of strangers” but who also learn to depend on one another. It is also the time of the sanctuary movement in the US, started by Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in Seattle, when churches of all denominations and people of all faiths quietly smuggled Central American refugees, illegal aliens, especially at that time from Guatemala,to safe houses and new lives in the US. The story of one such couple figures prominently in the book.

Kingsolver’s prose is off-beat, her dialogue true to character, and her humor wry, as befits the people and the situations she is describing. She manages to portray the life these people lead realistically--not as some rosy dawn that is about to break in their lives but as a struggle to survive but with hope and dignity. It is a remarkable achievement--to be able to entertain but do so in a way that illuminates lives that are a far cry from those that most of us live and do so empathetically and with humor.

Highly recommended.

joyce, i don't want to contribute further to raising your blood pressure but the story of the Dust Bowl reminds me of what happened to the Aral Sea. are u familiar with it? the case is considered to be the world's worst ecological disaster --- where the diversion of water by the Soviet Union from this important water resource in Central Asia, the 4th largest inland sea in the world, to irrigate vast cotton fields have left only a ghost sea, virtually a desert, now only 10% of its original size. this catastrophic experiment has led to the loss of an unknown number of species, loss of entire livelihoods, and displacement of thousands of people. it is also heavily polluted as it was the site of weapons testing, and as a result of runoff from intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides, thus contributing to a host of serious health problems. the retreat of the sea has also caused "local climate change."

there u go...and governments continue to act as if history has nothing to teach! ok, ok, i better stop here...don't want to agitate anybody further...

#388: No, I am totally unaware of this. Do you have a link or some other resource I can check out? Why worry about my blood pressure when I can continue to reinforce my belief that no one ever learns.

there are various, although the Scientific American article from 2008 is still the most authoritative i've seen so far available publicly. here is the exact same article, posted online. here u go...

www.wioc.wisc.edu/pac/readings/reclaiming-aral-sea.pdf

wasn't sure if u got the link the first time.

www.wioc.wisc.edu/pac/readings/
reclaiming-aral-sea.pdf

To go back to #382 and its reference to modern farming, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is chilling on factory farming, especially the long first part which is guaranteed to make you think twice about eating beef ever again. The later parts explore some more ecological, smaller-scale alternatives.

And one of the best books I've ever read on water in the US, although it may be a little out of date, is Cadillac Desert by Mard Reisner (I see the touchstone indicates there is a revised edition, so perhaps it's been updated since I read it in the 80s).

One of the great satisfactions of living here is the fact that there can't be any large-scale farming. We have a cattle operation right smack behind our property, one of the larger ones--and it's all range beef. There is nothing like a feed lot here in Chiriquí--it's all free range. When we do our weekly drive to David, which is our largest town here in the province and the third largest in Panamá, we almost always encounter some kind of converted pickup truck, taking 3-5 head of cattle to the abbatoir or 2-3 pigs. There is large-scale farming of chickens but still not on the scale of the massive factory farms in the US.

The issue of water has been one of my concerns for nearly 40 years, as well as the disappearance of good farm land thanks to urban sprawl. That happened to coffee land here in the province in the beginning of the development explosion, but most of us want land to grow something on, and there hasn't been that much productive farm land taken out of the cycle. Unlike in the US, farmers and ranchers here can get far more for their commodity crops than in the US (proportionally) and they have resisted selling land for development. Only coffee producers have run into trouble because commodity prices have been so low.

Yet food is cheap here. And that's because there isn't the middleman problem the way there is in the states. Farmers can make money, and food still can be reasonable.

Of course, we, like everyone else, experienced higher food prices when oil went so high, because Panama still has to import rice and corn, but the government stepped in and subsidized prices for rice in particular so that poor people wouldn't suffer too badly.

Joyce, wonderful reviews (mes. 383 & 387). I grew up in central Kansas, among the hedgerows but in an area where you could grow wheat without irrigation, to see many farmers turn to corn and soybeans, which DO need irrigation, in my 20's. It's a major concern, but between the agricorporations and their lobbyists, and the family farmers desperate to keep their land, I don't see a way out. There need to be major changes in farm policy and legislation, and I don't see that happening.

For more about water, the American Museum of Natural History did a wonderful exhibit last year; it is now traveling around the US and the world, but there is a lot of information on their website.

#394: I don't know what to say--I have so little hope that there will be a way out because it means making very hard decisions that I'm not sure the majority of people in the US are willing to make. I know about con--it's one reason why I never would grow it. I wasn't aware of soybeans.

What is totally depressing to me is the percentage of farm land that is now no longer owned by US farmers but corporations held by foreign countries, such as Germany and especially Japan. I also understand that some Middle Eastern countries,looking to spend all their petrodollars, are also investing in farm land.

Who is o speak up for and take care of the land? Japanese? Sure, like they do for whales.

Agrobusiness has a stranglehold on agricultural policy. We'll see if any inroads will be made with the current administration. But current attitudes towards food and and use among the vast majority of the people of the US will have to change, and that I'm afraid, will be extremely hard to accomplish.

Joycepa--

I can't even begin to tell you how much I have enjoyed this discussion. Attitudes will be hard to change, but the possibility of change begins with education and information. I'm going to read The Worst hard Time, but I suspect the best I could do when finished is to link to your review.

Thanks for the reviews, joycepa. I remember The Bean Trees fondly (I read it several years ago), and highly recommend The Poisonwood Bible if you haven't read it already. Completely different set of circumstances and setting between the two novels and the amount of research it must have taken to write is astounding.

I have the privilege of living in a rural area where the farms are still locally owned (so far as I know) and operated. There are other frustrations though, like the refusal of the residents to start curbside recycling, even though we are on the Chesapeake Bay. Argh! I'm certain I'm the only one on my street, which ends at a cornfield at one end and abuts a bay tributary on the other, that bothers to take my recycling in town to the recycling center that is completely run by volunteers (most of whom are transplants to this area, like me, who can't believe there isn't already pervasive recycling here). Sorry to bring up yet another bp-raising matter...

#397: I fervently agree with you that the only hope is through education--I have believed that my entire life. What I don't know--and question--is if it will be enough. In that, I think, the jury is out. Information on the causes of the Dust Bowl has been around for over 60 years, but as two people have remarked on this thread, farmers began yanking out the belt of trees, the ones that did survive, the minute prices started going up and water was available. Greed and stupidity are two conditions that are enormously difficult to overcome.

However, we are obligated to try.

Oh Joyce, I hate to add another drop of gloom to your reviews of agriculture gone out of control but there is a new addition to all this. Ethanol.
Corn prices have stayed low ($2.00 to $3.00 a bushel) & local farmers have planted mostly soybeans. Then the disovery that corn could be used to produce a substitute for gasoline!Suddenly old fields were being cleared & every piece
of land that hadn't been sold to developers was planted in corn.
Not a good thing. Corn takes a lot of nutrients from the soil. There uused to be a rotation, corn, then soybeans, then
a cover crop like winter rye that is tilled back into the soil for nutrients. Not Now! It's $from ethanol & fence to fence corn.
But scientist are at work & soon a cheaper substitute for corn will be found to turn into ethanol & meanwhile thy are working on something better than ethanol - so we shall see, Meanwhile the housing bust has stopped all the crazy construction around here & I hope it stays stopped. Do you read Kunstler's site? His outlook is grim, but some inteesting facts. He posts a new column every Monday.
The worst hard time has been on my tbr list - I was waiting til I could find a cheaper copy. I'll check again.

16. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. There are so many books about Lincoln that you would think there isn't room for one more. Well, I can say that this one is superb. It's not a biography of Lincoln, but instead focuses on the members of his contentious Cabinet, especially Salmon Chase, William Seward, and Edward Bates. These three were Lincoln's rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination. But Lincoln deliberately chose for his Cabinet other men whose views were hardly those of the Republicans, whether conservative or radical (and Chase was definitely a Radical). Goodwin does an absolutely outstanding jog of showing Lincoln as a political genius whose compassion, kindness and integrity combined with his ability to manipulate politicians at a time of the greatest danger to the country to make him the finest President the US has ever known.

The book is massive--754 pages--but reads like a novel. In fact, better than most novels.

Team of Rivals looks interesting - I've added it to the list. Thanks for the review!

#400. Rest easy, Marian--I've been aware of the ethanol idiocy for a long time. Believe me.

Yeah, yeah, cheaper substitute and all that--all of which produce CO2.
There is nothing that you can burn, in the conventional sense, that doesn't produce greenhouse gases. Hydrogen is the only possible answer that will not produce CO2. How far are we from an engine that will utilize hydrogen? VERY far. Plus, you have to expend energy to get it. One part of the answer? Sure, mass transit. Where is it in the stimulus plan? Nowhere. Other potential part of the answer? Give up the suburbs as currently constituted. That'll be the day. Another impossible dream? Fewer cars, less mobility. Yeah, sure.

Did you know that Team of Rivals is an influential book for our new president? I believe it contributed greatly to his goals in the makeup of his cabinet.

#404: No, I didn't know that! One had to wonder, though, when you looked at Clinton as Secretary of State. I don't think there are others as controversial as many of Lincoln's cabinet were, although certainly Geithner is coming in for his share of criticism, as is Holder--the latter for very different reasons than Lincoln's appointments (and I'm not talking about race). I'd like to believe that there is no one there as slimy as Salmon Chase.

All we can do is watch it play out! :-)

Ah yes, for those of you in the US Midwest and other affected areas: temperature right now here is 84 degrees, with a slight wind. I really had a lot of work to do in the garden this morning, watering tomatoes and fruit trees, potting up papaya seedlings, checking on cantaloupe vines, weeding around my amaryllis, chasing the jays away from one stalk of bananas--it's a tough life, let me tell you! *snicker*

Okay, after the last post, I wasn't sure I was going to play with you anymore...nevertheless, I thought you might be interested in this 1936 documentary "The Plow That Broke the Plains," which can be found here: http://www.archive.org/details/plow_that_broke_the_plains
with information on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plow_That_Broke_the_Plains

Seriously, though, enjoy your gardening. It sounds lovely!

#407: I would love to see the Plow that Broke The Plains, since it's mentioned prominently in The Worst Hard Time.

I am a nasty, aren't I? :-)

And GRAND ANNOUNCEMENT: FREDDIE The iMAC IS HERE! I'm on my way down to David to get it. Oh JOY!!!

>408 Joycepa:: Congratulations Joyce!
I've been lurking here on your thread and really enjoying the dialogue. Glad to hear your new toy has arrived!

chiming in on the posts regarding Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, I've wanted to read this book for awhile, ever since listening to talk about it on Meet the Press. At that time, Hillary Clinton was still in the running for US President and as I recall, Goodwin said she would not think Clinton would be a great president primarily because she would not adopt the model Lincoln set forth, ie, as you explain in your review, compiling people of different opinions to be a major part of the cabinet. I seem to remember Goodwin using Hilary's way of dealing with the health care system when her husband was president and that when things didn't go her way she did not want the opinions of others.

FREDDIE IS HERE!! AT HOME!! Absorbing megabytes of info at NAFAL speed!

Marvelous! Congratulations, Joyce. And I'm still speaking to you, unlike most of the others, because here in San Diego it's pushing 70 degrees F. and when I get home from work, I'll be picking roses and fresh lettuce from the garden. Now if only I didn't have to go to work all day...

(Ahhh, the joys of a fresh Mac, that most glorious of machines!)

Oh ronincats, you're a true soul mate! I'm speaking to you via Freddie the iMac, who is lighting up the western sky with its blazing 24" screen. The lustre of its external case! The brilliance of the screen saver!

Just as well it got here today, because things were getting a little stiff around here. Mary was starting to demand time on her computer, which I thought gauche of her, really. I did gloat all the way down to David. I allowed her to plug it in to the UPS. She's now sulking at her computer with its paltry 17" screen and 1/3 the speed of Freddie. Life is good! :-)

#410, Linda: Not to mention the famous Clinton vindictiveness. Well, I wish her all the luck in the world at State because God knows she and the US are going to need all they can get.

And Laura--toy! Don't you realize that a Mac is a way of life? Toy, indeed! *she kisses the keyboard to make the hurt go away.*

>411 Joycepa:, oh, Joyce. I'm so glad Freddie got there already. Although, I suspect, not as glad as Mary.

So fast too!

ET correct the post number......

Lucky Freddie
How nice to be a computer in the land where palm trees grow instead of the land where snow has drifted up to the windows.

Well,Marian, do I detect a slight note of envy there? Up to the windows, eh? :-)

Pleased to meet you, Freddie. Hope you're a rugged sort of fellow---I don't think you'll be getting a lot of time off for a while.

>414 Joycepa:: please give my apologies to Freddie. I did not intend to hurl vindictive insults his way. Rather, I was thinking of how much fun you would have once Freddie was permanently ensconced in your Panamanian abode. And that made me think of toys. Plus, isn't a Mac just so much more fun than a PC? Do you see my meaning now?

But wait. What does the original Fred think of having a Freddie in the house?

WOOO HOOO! FREDDIE IS IN THE HOUSE!! Congratulations, Joyce.

BTW - Completely agree with you on Team of Rivals. Simply put, one of the best nonfiction books I have read in the past 5 years or so and one of the few that as soon as I finished it wanted to immediately read again.

Well, and here we are this morning, in our own little corner of the house. Hmm--it may be that we're going to save on electric bills--I sure don't need a lamp on with this screen! And I have to say, it's just a little intimidating! But gives me incentive to download The Plow That Broke the Plains.

Still sort of at loose ends after The Worst Hard Time--I usually have at least one fiction book of some sort going but haven't been able to pick out any that suits my mood from my TBR shelves. Because I'm reading through the Pulitzer winners for fiction, I'm on Arrowsmith which I find one of the most boring books I've read in a long time--which is startling, because every single one of the Pulitzer winners I've read so far, from the very first one, has been excellent.

I have to finish up Team of Rivals review, too. I must be a reading masochist these days, because after finishing that one (754 pages), I immediately picked up the memoirs of a Confederate general, Porter Alexander, and that's well over 500. I've been reading quite a few books of 500 pages and more lately--need some good trashy police procedural to break this streak of Righteous Reading!

Here's the formal review for Team of Rivals:

With the immense number of books written about Abraham Lincoln, one would think that there is hardly room for another. Yet Goodwin has written a superb addition to the literature on Lincoln, examining the relationships, not only between Lincoln and his Cabinet members, three of whom were his rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination, but among the Cabinet members themselves, showing how Lincoln was aware of the differences and tensions and managed to extract from each man the best that man had to offer the country.

The first part of the book examines the lives of the four candidates up until the 1860 Republican convention: William Henry Seward from New York, considered at the time an abolitionist; Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, a radical Republican; Edward Bates of Missouri, a slave-holding, conservative Republican, and Lincoln himself, a moderate from Illinois. In a series of chapters, she recounts the lives and political development of each man in turn; in “longing to Rise”, she brings the story of each to young adulthood; in “The Lure of Politics”, what brought each of them into public service; and continues, in succeeding chapters to follow each through the turbulent years preceding 1860. She gives her greatest attention in each chapter to Lincoln, but the accounts of the other men are extremely absorbing.

I found this structure disturbing, because all four men were fascinating characters; I’d just settle in with Seward, in, for example, “The Lure of Politics”, when suddenly Goodwin would shift to Bates or to Chase, which jarred me. But it did give a sense of contemporaneity to the accounts; you really are following each man up until the fateful year of 1860, not just reading a biography of each. The accounts are excellent on pointing up both similarities and differences in attitudes and approaches to the major question of the day, which was slavery. During those early chapters, you also meet important political figures such as Thurlow Weed, Charles Sumner and others who, if reading biographies of the 4 men separately, would not not appear in one or more of them.

The story of the Republican nomination is well known, but Goodwin adds details of errors made by Seward, Chase’s delusions of support, and Bates’ lack of organization that really fill out and explain what happened at the convention--how Lincoln, who was not quite the unknown as most believe, and his managers snatched the nomination away from Seward (Bates and Chase never really had a chance although they were in the running). It is a marvel of good writing coupled with enough drama for a novel in itself.

Goodwin thoroughly goes into Lincoln’s reasons for choosing his Cabinet the way he did; there really is nothing new there, but what is new and fascinating is the way those chosen viewed not only the President but each other. Lincoln had the most incredibly disparate and divided group of human beings to ever fill those positions: radical, moderate and conservative Republicans, war Democrats, the works--many of whom at least in the beginning viewed themselves as far better equipped to run the country than Lincoln. Throughout the book, in a masterful way, Goodwin recounts the shifting alliances and perceptions, the rivalries, and the antagonisms; she is especially good at portraying Chase, who was a brilliant Secretary of the Treasury, who was obsessively driven by his need to be President, as a man of little to no integrity while posturing as the purest of abolitionists and one who had only the country in mind. Chase winds up as a despicable character--something Lincoln knew well and did not lose sight of but for whom he had understanding; his handling of Chase alone is a marvel. Throughout all this we see other, lesser known figures and the roles they played Montgomery Blair was the Postmaster General, from a politically powerful Maryland slave-holding family. The family home of his father, Frank Blair, is now the official guest house of the government and the place where the President-elect and his family stays just before the inauguration. Gideon Welles from New England was the extremely competent Secretary of the Navy. Edwin Stanton, the gruff, irascible Secretary of the War performed miracles in handling the army. Bates was the Attorney General and played a crucial role in providing Lincoln with the legal opinions he needed, especially on the war powers of the Presidency, which Lincoln used to publish the emancipation Proclamation. Goodwin makes it clear that with the exception of Chase, who was blinded by ambition, all of Lincoln’s cabinet, including later additions, loved and respected Lincoln; Seward was Lincoln’s best friend.

The story of the war years in any decent writer’s hands is a page-turner, and Goodwin handles it well, weaving the political and military situation in with the accounts of Lincoln’s dealings with the Cabinet, with Congress, with the armies, and with the people. She demonstrates Lincoln’s genius at never getting ahead of the people, but preparing them for those leaps forward, such as the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he believed. The tension of the summer of 1864, in which it appeared that lincoln would lose the election is well-done; and Goodwin really pulls a coup by making it clear that the fall of Atlanta, which happened 3 days after the Democratic convention that nominated McClellan as its candidate, was a perfect piece of timing on Fate’s part to give Lincoln the election.

Everyone knows the ending to the story. I, for one, can never keep from crying. For 143 years, the United States paid the price of Lincoln’s assassination.

Most accounts of Lincoln’s death end with, as Goodwin’s does, with Stanton’s famous “Now he belongs to the ages”. But most accounts do not give any details of the attempt on Seward’s life, which was part of the assassination plot; Seward and his son Fred were so gravely injured that it was thought both men would die. Others in the house at the time, including a soldier who was stationed to guard Seward, were badly injured as well.

The book ends with an epilogue that briefly recounts the lives of the major characters in the drama. Seward lived to remain as Secretary of State under a much, much lesser man, Andrew Johnson, and satisfied himself with yet another controversial act in a controversial career, the purchase of Alaska, widely know as Seward’s Folly. Bates retired from public life. Chase schemed unsuccessfully to the end to become president. Stanton basically worked himself to death. Mary Lincoln never recovered from Lincoln’s death. After living in the blazing light of one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known, they ended up as ordinary mortals, with ordinary lives and deaths.

Team of Rivals is a brilliant book.

Joycepa thank you for all your reviews more books to add to my reading list!

#422: Great review of a great book, Joyce!

One of the things reading Team of Rivals did was interest me in getting Gideon Welles' diary. I've seen quotes from his diary before, in Donald's biography of Lincoln, but Goodwin quotes him much more extensively. One of the many things she does really well is illuminate the lesser-known members of the cabinet--you get a really good feel for Bates--I doubt that one person in 100 could tell you who Lincoln's original Attorney General was--Montgomery Blair--another name you read but know nothing about-- and oddly enough, Stanton, who is very well known. I had a totally different picture of Stanton than the one which emerges from Goodwin's book.

I've intended to read Team of Rivals since I first heard about it...now I know I must, and soon.

Great review of Team of Rivals, Joyce. Yet another one I want to get my hands on.

What a review, Joyce! Allow me to be the last to congratulate you on your new Freddie: your review and comments look so much crisper now!

Ah, begorrah, Charlie, I'm going to have to withdraw my challenge of Italian vs. Irish windbags after that one! :-)

#407 theaelizabet: I downloaded and just finished viewing "The Plow That Broke the Plains." It's a well-done documentary and after reading Egan's book, I can understand why the boosters--those that were still left--in the Dust Bowl towns were furious with it. The scenes at the end--the Plains as a desert--dead trees--enough to break you heart.

I would urge those of you who have time to go to the link in post #407, download the film, and see it. It makes a perfect companion to the book.

Joyce,

First I want to welcome Freddie to the family!

Second, I hope you don't mind but I copied a few of your words about Team of Rivals to our US Presidents challenge so that members there would know about it.. It sounds sensational and I for one plan to read it when I get to the Pre-Civil War timeframe. Would you say that somewhere around James Buchanan's term would be a good time?

Enjoy your new friend Freddie!
Cheli

#431: Not only don't I mind, but I'm flattered that you chose to copy any part of the review!

Simply because Goodwin covers the total political life of the 4 men, Buchanan gets mentioned, certainly. I'm not sure it matters. Reading it then will certainly prepare you for any reading you do about Lincoln in general. The bulk of the book, naturally, covers the war years. But I think it's totally up to you!

Here's an invitation to the group to come over to
Roni’s thread
to have a discussion on what other things besides brand new computers give you that special "new" feeling.

>388 deebee1: and the Aral Sea. I think I read something/listened to it at BBC. This is exactly what I thought of too when reading your Dust Bowl review. Happily there is good stuff going on with the Aral Sea at last, or at least when I read!

17. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer. What a heart-warming book--if that's the right description. Even though some things were terribly obvious, it didn't make any difference--I just enjoyed watching it all play out.

#435: I am glad to see you enjoyed Guernsey. It is not great 'literature', but the book made my list of memorable reads for last year simply because it is a charming, heart-warming book, and hey - who doesn't need those? It will probably end up on my list of annual re-reads.

Review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

In 1946, London is a grey, tired, worn-out city and 32 year old Juliet feels the same way. A successful columnist during the war when she wrote amusing articles that did their best to lift spirits burdened by the war, she now finds herself unable to write--unable to make much meaning out of her life.

One day she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, who lives on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands. Juliet’s name and address are on the flyleaf of a second-hand volume of selected essays of Charles Lamb. He loves Lamb, and wishes to know the name and address of a second-hand bookseller in London so that he can buy more of Lamb’s works.

With this innocuous beginning, Juliet finds herself, through a remarkable exchange of letters, drawn into the lives of the people of Guernsey, especially through their experiences of the German occupation of the island.

The story is narrated entirely by letters, notes, and telegrams, most of them Juliet’s with the Islanders, but also with her best friend, her publisher, and her American suitor. There are some hilarious letters exchanged between other characters as well. It works brilliantly to tell this light-hearted, yet tender and at times grave and even tragic story. Shaffer is gentle in her story-telling, but effective in portraying the hardships of the occupation on Islanders, slaves brought over from Eastern Europe to be worked to death, and the Germans themselves. That is the main story. But clearly she has great love for Guernsey Island itself and its people.

This is not heavyweight, great literature. Some aspects of the story are glaringly obvious, but Shaffer’s style and her affection for her characters and setting overcome all that, and you just simply enjoy how the very obvious plays out. The story speaks to the ability of the human spirit to adapt and survive under the harshest circumstance, to the love of books and the really odd ways they can transform lives, and to the quiet courage that can stand evil just so long. Tender, warm-hearted, gentle, uplifting--these are all adjectives that can be used to describe the story, but none really capture its essence.

Just read it.

Highly recommended.

After that review, I think Guernsey's moving up my list!

Joyce-

I have to agree with missyic. I've never been particularly interested in this book, but your review had made me want to read it.

It's a very difficult book to classify. One of the things that works really, really well for it is the format--letters. She does an excellent job.

Also, it's time to start anew thread which is here --I hope.

#437

Joyce, I loved your review! That is exactly how I felt about the book.

I'm not even sure why I bought it--it isn't usually the kind of book I plan to keep--often I don't even read these "popular literature" books! Perhaps it was something someone said on LT last year that burrowed into my subconscious and triggered my impulse buy. But I'm glad I did. I have lent it to friends who also enjoyed it and I know some evening down the road I will want to pick it up for a reread.

#441: Do you know, MusicMom, you are about the third person who has said that--didn't know why she bought it,etc.--and that is exactly my experience--it's not something that I would ordinarily read. Yet somehow I wound up with the book--and I'm so glad I did!

#372 I loved The Bean Trees too which led me to The Poisonwood Bible which is in my TBR's.
I have also been wanting to read A Team of Rivals but it will have to wait, it's way to thick. I'll save it for next year when I fit in better with slower bunch of readers in a 15 book challenge. I also want to read A Defining Moment. Another one of our new presidents favorites. Alas, too thick for this year.
I just found your new thread & I'll continue to follow your reading journey over there.

#442 Joycepa

re Guernsey

Oooh! Do you suppose someone put a spell on the book?! ;-)

#444: MusicMom: wouldn't surprise me in the least! How else to explain its popularity amongst those of us who otherwise wouldn't have touched it with a 10 ft pole? :-)

#443: Carmenere: I actually bought The Poisonwood Bible before The Bean Trees, and just wound up grabbing the latter first off the shelf. I love the way Kingsolver writes--I have her Animal Dreams, which I really like. I want to pick up Pigs in Heaven sometime soon.

Shall we all "meet by the river" on the new thread? :-) (see #440 for link)