An Embarrassment of Riches

A Wild Ride, Defensive Driving and Randy Wayne White - by Helen I recently returned from a trip to the Cape Coral area of Florida. While on Sanibel Island, I spotted a place called Doc Ford's. My sister said, "Oh, Doc Ford is the marine biologist in the novels of Randy Wayne White. I've read a few of his mysteries and enjoyed them."

Since I've come back I've read a couple of his mysteries and want to read more. (I've not read them in order, although, I think that they should be read this way because the characters grow and change and the stories build on one another.)

I picked up Shark River first. It's a story of murder, kidnapping, drugs and revenge. Add a Bahamian woman with a treasure map who claims to be Doc's long lost sister and the stage is set for a wild ride.

Maybe it's the sense of place and wonderful descriptions of sea life, mangrove swamps and the habits of horseshoe crabs; or maybe its the patterns of speech of Doc's Bahamian cousin in Shark River that attracted me. Perhaps it's my experience of a tiny bit of the Florida that he describes.

I saw much bad driving in Florida, but Randy Wayne White describes it best: "We went south on U.S. 41- an illustration of crazed manners and automotive chaos. In South Florida, melting pot driving habits are so unpredictable and dangerous that defensive driving is not enough."

If you want quirky characters, fast action, humor and good writing, give the mysteries of Randy Wayne White a try.

Birds of a Feather - if you like Alexander McCall Smith - by Helen Read all the books in No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series and looking for another good read?
Check out A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson. 

Mr. Malik has been secretly in love with Rose Mbikwa who has been leading the Tuesday bird walks. Now he faces competition from an old rival of his schooldays. The two decide to make a deal. The one to identify the most species of birds in a week's time will have the privilege of asking Rose Mbikwa to the Asadi Club's annual ball in Nairobi, Kenya.

This is a charmer of a book with an old-fashioned feel.

Captain Slocum's Circumnavigated World - by Helen

Ever since our stay at the Slocum house in West Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard, I've been curious about the life and voyages of Joshua Slocum. I feel lucky that I chanced upon The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum by Geoffrey Wolff.

It is a wonderful tale of adventure, luck, skill and derring-do. I appreciate the way that Mr. Wolff incorporates history, literary allusions and his own personality into the story. Sometimes an author's intrusion into a story is distracting, but I found the story enhanced by Mr. Wolff's comments and footnotes.

This is one of those books that give you a real sense of the time and place -- sailing for profit is giving way to shipping by steamship. The old ways are again being replaced by the new.

The Brooklyn Bridge has just been completed and Slocum's son remembers the workmen dabbing the topmost masthead of his father's ship the Northern Light by a playful bridge workman. I love that Mr. Wolff stops the story of Slocum to give us a very brief look at the Brooklyn Bridge complete with an excerpt from Hart Crane's poem "To the Brooklyn Bridge".  

A few pages later, Slocum is sailing the Northern Light between Java and Sumatra while Krakatoa is in full eruption. The sea is boiling and "fretting about the ever-changing depth, Slocum ordered the lead line cast, and it came up from the bottom with its tallowed tip melted." Details like this add so much to the reader's enjoyment.

Slocum endures many trials and much controversy, both on land and on the sea -- from mutiny to squalls and battles over payment to some people's disbelief in his solo voyage.  

Much is made of Slocum's love of reading, his shipboard library and his writing skills. Enough examples are given that I now must turn to Slocum's own words in Sailing Alone Around the World.

A Different Kind of Normal - by Helen

How do you pick books? From the bestseller list? From blogs? Recommendations from friends? By reading reviews in newspapers and magazines? By browsing and scanning the shelves? By using Ask the Librarian?

Attracted by the unusual cover, I recently read The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry. What a terrific surprise! Ginny is a young woman with Asperger's syndrome. She hates loud noises, being touched, and frequently hides in the closet when life becomes too much. Over the years, she has saved scraps of the use of the word "normal" gleaned from newspapers and magazines to prove to herself that normal has many different meanings. She has been sheltered and protected by loving parents but now they are dead in a tragic accident.

She must learn to cope with her grief and with her sister who wants to protect her. Ginny has long used thinking about the tastes and textures of food, and cooking techniques to help calm herself. Now she discovers that she has the ability to cook up family ghosts from their handwritten recipes. What she learns about cooking and ghosts, grief and love and the many ways of being normal make for a lovely book. I dare you not to be touched by this surprisingly good novel.

John Muir's Hymn to Nature - by Helen

I've discovered a wonderful coffee table book that is a hymn to nature. It is the 100th Anniversary Illustrated edition of My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir. It is a dip-in and refresh yourself kind of book, one that needs to be read in short sessions of meditation. Read and listen for the poetic language.

Come, climb to the top of a nearly cubical mass of granite:       

"...the one big stone with its mossy level top and smooth sides standing square and firm and solitary, like an altar, the fall in front of it bathing it lightly with the finest of the spray, just enough to keep its moss cover fresh; the clear green pool beneath, with its foam-bells and its half circle of lilies leaning forward like a band of admirers, and flowering dogwood and alder trees leaning over all in sun-sifted arches."

Feel the frustration after an afternoon spent forcing a flock of sheep across a small stream:      
"The wool is dry now, and calm, cud-chewing peace has fallen on all the comfortable band, leaving no trace of the watery battle. I have seen fish driven out of the water with less ado than was made in driving these animals into it. Sheep brain must surely be poor stuff. Compare today's exhibition with the performances of deer swimming quietly across broad and rapid rivers, and from island to island in seas and lakes ; or with dogs, or even with the squirrels that, as the story goes, cross the Mississippi River on selected chips, with tails for sails comfortably trimmed to the breeze. A sheep can hardly be called an animal; an entire flock is require to make one foolish individual."

Listen to the bubbling brooks:
"A more tuneful set of streams surely nowhere exists, or more sparkling crystal pure, now gliding with tinkling whisper, now with merry dimpling rush, in and out through sunshine and shade, shimmering in pools, uniting their currents, bouncing, dancing from form to form over cliffs and inclines, ever more beautiful the farther they go until they pour into the main glacial rivers."

Glory in the description and renew yourself. 

A Voice Like Honey over Smoke - by Helen It's the voice. Someone described Rick Bragg's voice as 'honey over smoke'. That intrigued me. I listened to a CD copy of Rick Bragg reading The Prince of Frogtown. That Alabama rhythm caught me, that pure Southern sensibility; the words just seem to flow. The storyteller's magic takes over.

In All Over but the Shoutin' Rick Bragg wrote about growing up poor in the hill country of Alabama, especially about his mother picking cotton and cleaning houses so her boys would have more than the welfare checks she received. Rick's father was an alcoholic man and very violent. He seemed to float into the life of the family and out again at regular intervals.

The author Willie Morris once told Rick that he would never have any peace until he wrote about his father. In The Prince of Frogtown, Rick pieces together the story of his father's life from interviews with his faithful boyhood friends.

The people seem so real. His father, Charles, was destroyed by drink and destroyed by his hard scrabble, blue-collar life in the mills of Jacksonville, Alabama. Yet Rick lets the soul's true light shine through the awfulness.

You can't help but like this young mischievous, hell-bent for leather boy. Rick retells one incident where Charles and his friend were flying a kite so high that it was nearly invisible in the sky.

Another boy comes along and asks, "What you doing with that string?"

"Why we're fishing," Charles answered.

You ache for the alcoholic man and the family that he has let down. Rick does not whitewash or rewrite his father's life. You get a sense of the man that could have been, but for that evil drinking and the streak of violence that resulted from that drinking.

No one is more disappointed than Charles himself. He knew he could not be with his family, that he had ruined all the chances of a life with them by his ceaseless drinking and violent temper.

Interspersed with chapters about his father are chapters about "the boy" Rick's stepson. In these chapters, he describes his own journey into fatherhood and his growing love for this boy. This story gives light and humor to a dark tale. You grow to love this boy and his stepfather who tries so hard.

Now I want to read Ava's Man, the story of Rick's maternal grandfather and the culture that shaped him.

Tocqueville and US: An Endearing Honesty - by Helen

A new edition of Letters from America by Alexis de Tocqueville has arrived at the library and what a find it is for me! Chatty, opinionated and full of history from the perspective of a Frenchman in America, these letters were written in 1831 and many of the trends and characteristics that struck Tocqueville are still evident even today. I can't resist commenting below.

His main opinion about the American character is that Americans have an "immoderate appetite for wealth, and a desire to get rich quickly."

Did this play out in the financial melt down of recent years?

He also characterizes Americans as living "in perpetual fickleness, a continual need for change, the total absence of old traditions, ancient mores, a commercial and mercantile spirit applied to the most incongruous things."

Perhaps this seeking spirit is why we are such an inventive, creative and industrious people today.

He and his companion and fellow lawyer, Gustave de Beaumont came to America to study the American prison system. They wrote that in the prisons of New York absolute silence was required of all inmates and harsh punishment for violations was rigorously applied. Tocqueville goes on to say, "Strength lies not in numbers but in association, and thirty individuals united by constant communication, ideas, common projects, schemes, have more effective power than nine hundred people whose isolation is their fatal flaw."

Does our strength lie in always being in touch through Facebook, Twitter and texting?

Tocqueville was concerned for his family left in France during much political turmoil. He writes, "While the political world engenders revolutions in Europe, here physical nature is prey to frightful convulsions. All the talk is about enormous hurricanes and appalling devastations; New Orleans, the Antilles, have been the theater of these calamities."

I couldn't help, but think about the recent devastation in New Orleans and Haiti.

De Tocqueville and Beaumont, visit the virgin forests of the Detroit area. I was surprised when he wrote, "some of the forest dwellers use the bears as guard dogs; I saw a few tethered near doorways."

I was also surprised to learn that "The custom among women of the forests (Chactas Indian)  is to have their feet pointing inward...It is achieved by binding the feet of female infants. By age twenty, a woman walks pigeon-toed, and the more pigeon-toed her walk the more fashionable she is thought to be."

I admire Tocqueville's endearing honesty: "In short, there is no one in the world I know less well than myself; I am a permanently insoluble problem. I have a very cool head and a reasoning--even calculating--mind; at the same time, ardent passions carry me off without convincing me, subdue my will without compromising my reason. I see the good very clearly, and spit it every day."

Tocqueville is clearly thinking of writing a book about his experiences and ideas about America when he writes, "I shall write what I think or write nothing at all, while bearing in mind that wisdom does not want every truth aired." This book would be his famous Democracy in America published in 1835.

My friend told me about a 2006 book by the Frenchman Barnard Henri Levy called American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville. He apparently traveled in America recently. Shall I make this my next read? What new surprises will I find?

The Gift of Sight - by Helen Suzanne Jauchius and Jeanne Boylan, collaborators and friends, have both been asked,"Why can't you just be normal?"

Both Suzanne Jauchius, a modern day psychic, who sees things about people, and Jeanne, who works with crime victims to draw pictures of assailants, have written books about their search for authenticity.

Suzanne was only eight when her mother declared,"You can only go to the party if you promise not to bring home all the prizes…It's not normal."

But even with a blindfold, Suzanne could see where to pin the tail on the donkey or who had the thimble. She thought she was just clever and smart. Shamed for who she was, Suzanne began the lifelong quest to find her place - to find where she fit in - to find her way home. It took eight years of intense therapy, supportive friends and constant work to gain a new awareness of who she is and how she can use her gift.

Suzanne read excerpts from her new book, You Know Your Way Home, at a recent Brown Bag Lunch and Learn at the Central Library. She detailed how she overcame a lifetime of criticism and skepticism from those closest to her to follow her passion. Listen to the podcast here.

Now an intuitive consultant with an office in West Linn, Suzanne uses her ability to help others discover some truths about their lives. She and Jeanne Boylan first became acquainted when working together on a case in England. Jeanne was able to produce a sketch that is the precise face of the last person seen with the victim. Over the years, the two women became friends and have worked on many cases together including the Polly Klaas kidnapping.

Early in her career when Jeanne was still trying to leave the business of interviewing victims and drawing police sketches in order to have a normal life, Suzanne sees Jeanne "doing a lot of work for the FBI, writing a script or manuscript and working with a man named Ron or Rod… this work will never let you go..." All of this comes true.

Jeanne did work with the FBI, wrote a script and continues to work with police. She worked with law enforcement on the Susan Smith case and the Oklahoma City bombing and was the one to produce an accurate sketch of the Unabomber. Read about her interview techniques and details of the cases (as well as Suzanne's predictions) in Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals.

Lessons from a Prodigal Son - by Helen My brother has a copy of the Rembrandt painting of The Return of the Prodigal Son outside his office. During a conversation about the painting, he mentioned that one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, had written a book about that very painting.

Henri himself had been drawn to a copy of the painting. The original painting was acquired by Catherine the Great in 1766 and installed in The Hermitage, a museum that she founded in St. Petersburg, Russia. Through the courtesy of some friends, Henri was privileged to be allowed to spend many hours contemplating the painting. He relates how he studied the "light-enveloped embrace of the father, the son kneeling before him and the ... mysterious bystanders." He tells how he just looked and watched the interplay of light from the Hermitage window. "I was held spellbound by this gracious dance of nature and art."

Inspired by the painting and having faced a crisis in his own life's journey, Henri turned this experience into a wonderful book, The Return of the Prodigal Son.  
Henri observes how Rembrandt painted the two hands of blessing: one is a mother's tender loving hand, the other is a father's strong, firm hand of welcome and support. From his observations and examination of  his own life, Henri draws lessons for all of us.

In looking at the painting, then into our own hearts, we see that we are sometimes like the prodigal son - we've run away, too. We are sometimes racked by resentment like the elder brother. And sometimes, with grace, we become the welcoming, forgiving, eager father. I've read the book twice and have only begun to scratch the surface of meaning.

And now, I've discovered Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Edited by Sue Moesteller after Henri Nouwen's death, this book is based on his teaching and writing and every bit as inspiring. 

Pickett Rides Again - by Helen Joe Pickett, game warden in the Big Horn Mountain region of Wyoming, has now been featured in 10 novels beginning with Open Season.

Nowhere to Run is the newest Pickett mystery by C.J. Box.
    
    Wyoming setting
    Camps looted
    Tents slashed
    Elk butchered
    Do the right thing
   
    Runner missing
    Brothers hiding
    Suspense building
    Pickett searching
    Shootout ending
    Storm coming

Is this the harbinger of things to come in the next Joe Pickett novel?
 

A Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with a Book - by Helen

A friend introduced me to Penguin's Great Journeys series of short travelogues.
I began with Jaguars & Electric Eels by Alexander Von Humboldt. Containing excerpts from the last three volumes of the thirty volume set of Von Humboldt's account of his journey around the New World in 1799, this book is full of sights, sounds and adventures of this thinker and traveler.

Another fun series of travel tales is Crown Journeys by Crown Publishing. This series of literary travel books tries to match interesting writers with interesting places. The writers are all known for their work in other genres: Christopher Buckley on Washington, Tim Cahill on Yellowstone and Chuck Palahniuk on Portland, among others. The only rule of the format is that the writers take their journeys on foot, hence the books tend to be personal and often quirky.

In preparation for a visit to the East Coast, I read Frank Conroy's Time and Tide: a Walk Through Nantucket and Land's End and Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown by Michael Cunningham. Both are in the Crown Journeys series.

Traveller's History is another good series, particularly for the armchair traveler looking for a nutshell history. The library owns many titles in the series - from Canada to Athens to Turkey to New Zealand and the South Sea Islands. Take a look at the variety.

If you are traveling in the United States, look for the Art of the State series. These nifty little books have state symbols, cultural arts, roadside attractions and lists of tourist destinations to enhance enjoyment of the state.

Happy trails!

On Grief and Making Toast - by Helen Sometimes I think that I am drawn to books of sorrow. Rather, maybe, I am more attracted to how people survive and work out their grief.

Perhaps it was too soon for the author to write of his daughter Amy's untimely death from heart failure at age 38.  Making Toast: a Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt is so filled with raw sorrow, a touch of bitterness and tender stories of helping to raise three young grandchildren. The children call him, Boppo, and his wife, Ginny becomes Mimi as their lives are forever changed.

Roger Rosenblatt may be familiar from his columns in The Washington Post or Time Magazine. He is also a Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook University and the author of the hilarious novel, Lapham Rising.

Facing this terrible loss is torture, but caring for the children becomes a joy.

Always the teacher, Boppo gives the children a new word each morning to mull and savor. These 'Word of the Morning' stories sprinkled throughout the book and the quiet way that the Rosenblatts instill a love of reading are some of my favorite parts of this memoir. Bubbies, the youngest child, is just under two. One evening just before bedtime, Bubbies points to one of the books in the den and says, "book." It is a copy of The Letters of James Joyce, but Boppo takes the book down and instead reads a story of Bubbies' adventure on the playground.

    "I try to put back the book, but he detects an implicit announcement of his bedtime, and he protests. "Joyce!" he says. Eventually, he resigns himself to the end of his day. He puts the book back himself, and quietly says, "Joyce."

Ginny puts her feelings into the startling poem "Arch of Shade" as she grapples with leading her daughter's life by caring for the children.

    Arch of Shade

    Rachmaninoff and Mozart
    Sift through the haze
    On River Road.
    Two hatted women wait
    In the heat for the Ride-on-Bus.
    The Wii is the summer wish
    Come true.
    Your babies' crib is disassembled
    And taken away
    Accepted
    With gratitude
    To be the bed for a new life.

    I am turning
    To the camp carpool line
    Only thinking of you.
    The arch of shade hovers
    The hot July sun rays
    Dapple the leaf arch
    To highlight the darkness.

    I am here.

Roger astutely comments on his wife and her poetry; "Her graciousness distracts people from noticing that she is alert to life's dark places. She prefers it that way. Her poems hit their mark, but gently. They crack the egg without breaking it."  

Making Toast will both break your heart and show you what is possible in dealing with grief.

Now a Major...Book - by Helen

I rarely watch movies or TV but I thoroughly enjoyed Either You're In or You're in the Way, a book about the making of the independent film, Touching Home (to be released March, 2010).

Twin brothers, Logan and Noah Miller, are determined to honor their father by making a movie about his battle with homelessness and alcohol. They have written the screenplay, but know nothing about acting or making movies so they go to the bookstore, "to make a battle plan, devise a strategy for the road ahead. We wanted books by people who had acturally made movies, not academic works on movie-making, but practical experience from frontline soldiers. We walked over to the entertainment section and plunged in."

The book is written in a unique voice - a combination of the two brothers thinking as one. I love their dogged determination, persistence and can-do attitude.  They need to film spring training in Tuscon this year, not next year: "We had to be an adaptive force. Flexiblilty and quick thinking would be essential: make immediate decisions and act upon them - and work with the consequences, painful though they may be."

Next, the boys need an old car for the scene where they're on their way home from Tucson, canned from baseball. Their friend Shady comes to the rescue. Doesn't this description paint a vivid picture in your mind?

"We drove the Perfect Car around the block. It swayed and creaked. It had no license plates. (Shady had a great story for that one.) The upholstery looked like you kicked a lion in the balls and then threw him inside. The rear window was busted out, looked like you threw a horse inside after the lion. The backseat was portable, the radio had been ripped out, and there was a Cadillac hubcap in the trunk in case you felt like going to the club."
   
They decide that Academy Award nominee, Ed Harris should play the part of their father. They ambush him as he leaves a stage and, talking a mile a minute, win his trust and commitment.

This is a funny and touching story about overcoming many obstacles and never giving up. I admire their determination to keep a promise to their father.  I can't wait to see the movie.
 

The Mercurial Mind - by Helen

Kay Redfield Jamison is a courageous woman and a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. She is also a manic depressive. One of her early books, An Unquiet Mind, reveals her madness, attempted suicide and mental illness.

Her latest book, Nothing Was the Same, is the story of losing her beloved husband, Richard, to cancer and her survival beyond his death. It is also much more. She teaches us about mental illness, depression, grief and loss, and points out the disturbing gap between what scientists and doctors know about mental illness and what most people believe.

 "Moods are contagious; they spread from those afflicted to those who are not. It is rare for even an experienced clinician to remain unaffected by a manic or depressed patient. For those who do not have the protective cloak of professional training, or who are personally involved, it is next to impossible to maintain equanimity."

"Brevity [in manic/depressive episodes] in itself buys no protection. Graham Greene observed that a Mediterranean storm may be over in a few hours, but while it lasts, it is savage enough to drown a ship full of men."

Kay and Richard have a special and wonderful relationship.
    
"[He] was clinically and scientifically knowledgeable about manic depression, and was aware of its genetic basis; he was not inclined to attribute to character what he knew to be disease. He was curious by nature, in the habit of careful observation and he possessed a charitable slant on odd behavior. He was able to make me laugh in the midst of truly awful situations, and he loved me in a way I never questioned."

When Kay decided to reveal her manic depression in her book, An Unquiet Mind, she was wary of being labeled by her colleagues as a manic-depressive psychologist, rather than being seen as a  psychologist who happened to have manic-depressive illness.

Richard supports her all the way and in his own inimitable style arranges one of his treasure hunts in their hotel room in Rome. He fills the tub with rose petals and lilacs flowers, hiding among them a small pill bottle with a note inside: "check the bed".

"It was a hunt. Richard was in his element. After a prolonged search of our exceedingly large bed. I found a small red box. It was from a jeweler in Rome and inside, on silk, was an antique gold ring. Underneath one of the pillows was a note. "Thank you for the happiest year of my life," Richard had scratched in his dyslexic hand. "I know that talking and writing about your illness has been hard. I am very proud of you -- not only as your husband, but as your colleague."

In these pages is hope for the depressed and for their families.
"When I talk to students, so many of whom have tried to kill themselves,. I tell them that it is hard to get well and that it is hard to stay well, but that it can be done. I find myself using Richard's words: Take your medication. Learn about you illness. Question your doctor. Watch your sleep. Use common sense about recreational drugs and alcohol. Reach out to others…"

I dare you to read Nothing Was the Same without shedding a tear or falling in love with Richard, beloved husband of Kay.

Kay Redfield Jamison speaks in Portland on "The Mercurial Mind: Bipolar Disorder and Creativity" on February 22, 2010 as part of the OHSU Brain Institute lecture series.
 

Where the Grandmas Are - by Helen The colorful cover catches your eye -- a group of smiling grandmothers in vivid costume from many countries of the world have joined hands. The sparkling gold stars and slimness of the book are attractive. The story is simple - two grandmothers stand in the park all day long and soon have everyone in town talking. More grandmothers join. Why? Read this charming book by Sharon Mehdi to find out.

And the "story of the story" is equally enjoyable. The idea for The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering was born at a corner table in the café upstairs over Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Oregon. "I remembered something a Native American elder said to me a very long time ago: Men have taken the world as far as they can. It's up to the women to lead us the rest of the way."

Originally intended as a birthday gift for a granddaughter, it was shared with a group of women in the café who then decided that they should have copies to take to a conference. The book grew into a booklet and was read in the Bloomsbury bookstore. Soon orders started coming in from all over the world. Now you can check out a copy here at the library.