A 50-Book List from rocketjk in San Francisco

Greetings! I've just joined LibraryThing and started posting my library. I've already got three books read/finished in 2008, and look forward to trying to make the 50-book grade!

The Master List (Touchstones included with individual listings below):
1. Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau
2. Bystander by Maxim Gorky
3. Modern Short Stories: The Uses of Imagination
4. The Birth of the United States by Jim Bishop.
5. Baseball for British Youth by Eric E. Whitehead
6. Felipe Alou . . . My Life and Baseball
7. From a Hard Rock to a Gem by Pamela M. Johnson
8. Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards 1987
9. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
10: The Life of Our Holy Father Maximus the Confessor based on the life by his disciple Anastasius, the Apocrisiarios
11: Another Hill by Milton Wolff
12: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
13: Voices of Liberty
14: The Medici by G. F. Young
15: The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky
16: Walking Tractor and Other Tales of Old Anderson Valley by Bruce Patterson
17: The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes
18: Plain Speaking: an Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller
19: No Man's Land by Kevin Major
20: The Twelfth of April by Roy Doliner
21: Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio
22: Voices of the Valley, Volume III (An Oral History of Anderson Valley, California)
23: Amulet by Roberto Bolano
24: Frank Frisch: The Fordham Flash by Frankie Frisch
25: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
26: John Paul Jones: Father of the American Navy by Valentine Thomson
27: Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
28: We by Yevgeny Zamiatin
29: The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James
30: My Dreams Out in the Street by Kim Addonizio
31: Pravda by Edward Docx
32: California Historical Society Quarterly - June 1955
33: Selected Tales by Nikolai Leskov
34: Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan
35: Indignation by Philip Roth
36: Poems that Touch the Heart by A. L. Alexander
37: The Gettysburg Review: Spring 1996
38: Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
39: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
40: The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough
41: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley
42: British Baseball and the West Ham Club: History of a 1930s Professional Team in East London by Josh Chetwynd and Brian A. Belton
43: Our Fair City by Robert S. Allen
44: The Good Old Days: A Journey through Anderson Valley's Historical Past by Jeff Burroughs
45: We Hold the Rock: the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz, 1969 to 1971 by Troy R. Johnson
46: Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
47: Women with Men by Richard Ford
48: A Tale of Pierrot and Other Stories by George Dennison
49: The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

Here are my first three:

1. Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau: I started this right after New Year's on the urging of a friend. Extremely interesting and detailed book for those who like reading about U.S. history.

2. Bystander by Maxim Gorky. Long (very long) and slow, but in the end it added up to a curiously disturbing picture of the indolence of the Russian gentry in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution.

3. Modern Short Stories: The Uses of Imagination: This is a very nice anthology designed for use in high schools and colleges, as it is broken into sections with a scholarly introduction for each. The stories are, for the most part, classics, by writers like Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, James Agee, etc. This was one of my "between books." What's a "between book"? Well, I've never really liked reading anthologies, be they short story or essay anthologies, from cover to cover all in one go. I find that the works tend to blend together too much if I do that. So I will usually have 8 or so anthologies that I'm in the middle of. Between each full-length novel or history that I read, I will grab four or five of these books and read one story/essay from each. Then I'll move on to my next full length book. Hence, "between books." I just read the last story in this book last week, so I'm happily adding it to my Furious 50.

So that's it: three books down, 47 to go! I've got a few "between books" to read from, and then I'll be staring The Birth of the United States by Jim Bishop. It's an in-depth account of the four days leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 1-4, 1776.

I'd say you're off to a good start, I added 2/3 to my TBR... good luck on the 50!

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau is the first book I'm working on for my personal list. I'm about half way through, so I'm glad to see that you apparently enjoyed it. :o)

Yes, kasummey, I definitely did enjoy it and find it quiet illuminating. As you may have already found, there is a lot of detail about troop movements and such to get through. Once the battle gets going, there is a horrifying sameness to some of the descriptions. But overall, the book draws you in and keeps you reading. Lots of luck with your 50!

OK! Last night I finished The Birth of the United States for book #4. I'm not sure what I'm going to dive into next, though. I'm going to spend some time with my "between books" (see book 3 in my first post for an explanation of what I'm talking about).

Cheers all!

Book 5: Finished Baseball for British Youth, a baseball how-to primer for English baseball fans, written in 1939.

Book 6: Finished Felipe Alou . . . My Life and Baseball. It was an fairly interesting account of Alou's childhood in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s and also of his early baseball career. There was also quite a bit of history on the pioneer of Latin American players in the major leagues which I assume was more the work of his "as told to" partner in the venture, writer Herm Weiskopf.

Book 7: Finished From a Hard Rock to a Gem by San Francisco writer Pamela M. Johnson. This was a gripping story about a young girl growing up the hard way in the tough, tough, neighborhood of East Oakland. I'd never heard of this book or this author, but found the book in a thrift store a couple of weeks ago and decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

Book 8: Finished one of my "between books," Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards 1987. This was a very nice collection, including stories by Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, Gina Berriault and Joyce Carol Oates.

Now it's on to The Omnivore's Dilemma!

Book 9: It took me a while to read The Omnivore's Dilemma, even though I found it enlightening, fascinating, by turns disturbing and uplifting, and very well written. It was more the fact that this is not a book that can, or should, be breezed or rushed through. I'm glad I read it, and look forward to my wife's reading it, so that we can talk over the ideas and knowledge the book presents.

Book 10: The Life of Our Holy Father Maximus the Confessor based on the life by his disciple Anastasius, the Apocrisiarios (modern translation by Father Christopher Birchall). This is a short biography of a 7th century Eastern Orthodox martyr and saint. I found it in a Russian Orthodox bookstore near my home in San Francisco. I found the story of Maximus' life very interesting, and learned a lot about the beliefs of the Orthodox Church and how they differ from those of the Catholic Church.

Book 11: Another Hill by Milton Wolff. This is one of the best novels about war I've ever read. It's an "autobiographical novel" written by the man who was the last commander of the Lincoln Brigade, the battalion of American volunteers who went to Spain to fight against Franco in support of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. It's very well and and very humanely written. It gives a great picture of combat, from the point of view of someone who's more or less a natural-born warrior, as well as from someone who realizes once he gets there that he doesn't have the stomach for the dangers of combat. The political realities of the Spanish Civil War are gradually laid out, as well, as are the horrifying frustrations of fighting a righteous battle against fascism while being denied aide by the democracies who should have known better. Not only did England, France and the U.S. not help the loyalists against Franco, but they threw up an embargo and blockade to keep arms and supplies from getting in, all the while the Franco forces were being supplied by Germany and Italy and the German Luftwaffe was taking a direct role in the war. The point of the embargo was to avoid offending Hitler and "prevent" a larger European conflict.

At any rate, this is a compelling book, extremely well written, about a fascinating time.

I read The Color Purple during my week in Las Vegas visiting my mom and my sister and her family.



It was a fast read, but very compelling, as most of you probably already know. This was just one of the those books that I always figured, "Well, of course I'll get to it someday." Then there I was looking at it in the bookstore for the billionth time and thought, "Well, how about now?" I'm glad I finally read it.

Color Purple is one of those I read first year college (and led me to Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison) and I've always wanted to get back to and re-read... thanks rock, I'll add it to by TBR pile...

Book 13: Tonight I stepped away from The Medici for a bit and finished the last story in Voices of Liberty, one of my "between books." (See Book 3 in my initial post in this thread for an explanation of "between books" if you care to.)

For some reason, the touchstone for this book never works, but Voices of Liberty is an anthology that canvasses essays, history and even fiction, chronologically exploring the evolution of what we (in the European tradition) mean by "liberty," starting with the Magna Carta and moving up to 1941, when the book was published. There are some big time names here, like John Locke and Edmond Burke and John Stuart Mill. Heck, even Mark Twain gets to say his piece (with a short story called "A Daring Deed"). I even got to reread that old chestnut, "The Man Without a Country" and got a nice glimpse of "The Young Man Washington" courtesy of Samuel Eliot Morison.

All in all a fine collection.

Book 14: Well, a long, glorious Saturday afternoon stretched out on San Francisco's Ocean Beach looking out at the Pacific and reading peacefully finally allowed me to read the last 100 pages of The Medici by G. F. Young.



It took me quite a while to read this one, but I did enjoy it throughout. For one thing, this is a beautiful, old Modern Library edition, and those are always fun to read. But more importantly, this book, written obviously after exhaustive research and originally published in 1930, provided a quite interesting journey through the Renaissance and into the late 17th Century as we followed the Medici family through their rise and fall, seeing all that they accomplished.

The early generations really were responsible for quiet a lot, as they used their money (made mostly in international banking) to fund the search for and uncovering of a great amount of writing, learning and art from the Greek and Roman ages that had been buried under rubble or secreted away in remote monastaries through the Dark Ages.

In addition, the book provides descriptions of the the politics of Europe during the centuries covered, and a terrific glimpse of the lifestyles and standards of Italy from the 1400s through the 1600s.

759 pages of thunder. Long but worth it.

Book 15: The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky.



This book surprised me in some ways. I was interested in it specifically because my wife and I visited French Basqueland two years back. The book was very well written and very engaging, but I was a bit surprised that it was more or less a straight history of the Basque people from around the Middle Ages to the present. By "straight history" I mean it was mostly a traditional political history, with less cultural information than I was expecting, less about the mythology and social history. Also, much of the book from the post-World War II period onward was a description of the repressive measures of the Franco regime and its predecessors and about the radical and violent ETA nationalist terrorist group. Although all of that is of course important and central to the modern Basque story, the book made it seem as if there was little else going on in the Basque areas of Spain and France but that. So I didn't really feel that I got a very good picture of the modern Basque people.

Nevertheless, as I said, I did enjoy the book and feel that I've learned a lot that's interesting about the Basque people, their history and their culture.

It was also interesting to me that the book intersection so strongly with two other books I've read recently, for the section on the middle ages through the Renaissance helped provided some interesting perspective on things I'd recently read about in The Medici. And the detailed chapter on the Spanish Civil War, in which the Basques played an important role, mainly on the Loyalist side, resonated with the novel on the conflict, Another Hill, that I read a month or so. Funny how you can get some interesting congruence that way without even realizing you're doing it.

Book 16: At lunch today I read the final selection in one of my "between books" (see first post, Book 3): Walking Tractor and Other Tales of Old Anderson Valley by Bruce Patterson. This is a collection of semi-autobiographical stores portraying the author's years spent logging and working ranches in Anderson Valley, which is a beautiful, rural area in southern Mendocino County about two hours' drive north of San Francisco. My wife and I have a house there, which explains my interest in the topic. Patterson, whom I've come to know a little bit in one Anderson Valley bar and another, is a good writer, and adept at weaving logging and ranching lingo into his stories to create an interesting flavor and flow to his narratives.

Book 17: The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes



An English novel set in the period between the world wars, the book follows a young, naive member of the English gentry from his Welsh countryside manor through his journeys to visit distant cousins in Germany. We also get a very close-up view of the political turmoils of Germany during the early 20s, as the narrative switches around quite a bit. The whole story is really an allegory for the relative states of awareness of the English and German societies during the period. Our English hero is entirely ignorant of the politic unrest going on in Germany, believing it to be a passified and now peaceful place. It's hard for me to be wholly drawn into a story where the protagonist is almost entirely and in every possible way, clueless. Still the book was quite interesting to read, and did definitely hold my attention.

Here's a passage near the end of the book, as the protagonist gazes upon a mostly frozen Danube River, that gives an idea of the metaphorical thrust of the narrative, as river and ice stand in for pre-WW II Germany:

"The road to the station took Augustine close to the river itself. Even now the river was not everywhere frozen: here and there where the current was strongest there were still patches of dark grey water that steamed in the sun, so that the solitary swan indefatigably swimming there was half-hidden in vapour. But elsewhere the Danube seemed to be frozen solid in heaps. It was wild, yet utterly still. Huge blocks of ice had jostled each other and climbed on top of each other like elephants rutting and then got frozen in towering lumps: or had swirled over and over before coagulating till they were curled like a Chinese sea. None of them had remained in the place where first it had frozen: each block was complete in itself but now out of place--like a jig-saw puzzle glued in a heap helter-skelter so that now it could never be solved.

It was all such a muddle! Although it was utterly still it expressed such terrific force it was frightening: the force that had made it--thrusting flows weighing hundreds of tons high into the air, and the force it would release when it thawed. When that ice melted at last it would go thundering down the river grinding to bits everything in its path. No bridge could possibly stand up to it. The longer you looked at its stillness, the greater your feeling of panic...Augustine hated Germany: all he wanted now was to get away as quick as he could."

Book 18: Plain Speaking: an Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller.



This book is a compilation of transcriptions of a series of interviews Miller did with Truman, and with others who knew and/or worked with Truman. The book covers almost Truman's entire life. The interviews were done (and filmed) for a TV documentary on Truman's life that was never completed.

The book is extremely interesting, in that I learned a lot about Truman, and about the era he lived in. For one thing, I had never realized Truman was such a populist and, in many ways, the last of the "self-made men" to become president.

It is refreshing that Truman is unequivocating here about his antipathies, stating quite forcefully his loathing for Eisenhower, Douglas McArthur and Nixon, for example.

The only real drawback to the book is that Miller frequently, and quite admittedly, pulls his punches in his questions, refraining from posing questions that he worries will offend or anger Truman. His reasoning is more or less understandable: he was always afraid Truman might withdraw from the project if irritated too much. Still, it leaves a reader wanting some tough questions asked relatively frequently.

However, overall, this book serves as a terrific history lesson, covering the period of the Depression through the early 60s, and a great introduction to Harry Truman. It has made me anxious to read the McCullough biography.

Book 19: No Man's Land by Kevin Major



A very powerful fictionalized account of the Newfoundland Regiment in World War I as they prepare for the slaughterhouse battle of Beaumont Hammel that would take the lives of almost the entire regiment. I became interested in this book, and in Newfoundland history in general, when my wife and I vacationed there last year. A relatively short novel that draws you in from the first, and no less powerful at the end for the fact that we know what is coming.

The McCullough biography is great, by the way. I knew next to nothing about Truman before reading it, and I am now a huge Truman fan. I cannot imagine having to make some of the decisions he was forced to make.

Thanks, jfetting! Guess I have to put it on my short TBR stack now! I agree with you about those decisions. I have to admit I'm still not sold on the reasoning behind the A-Bomb, but I do understand the thinking much better. But I certainly do have a whole new perspective on the quick decision to resist the North Korean invasion of South Korea. They saw it as a direct attack on the authority of the only newly formed United Nations, and they had clearly in their minds the dire consequences suffered by not standing up to Hitler's early aggressions only 15 short years beforehand.

Book 20: The Twelfth of April by Roy Doliner



A fun spy novel that supposes that Franklin Roosevelt did not die of natural causes but instead was murdered by a Russian agent under the orders of Stalin. The story is told through the point of view of a woman who, as a young adult, leaves Russia to escape the horror that the Russian Revolution was becoming under Lenin. She becomes involved in an informal but occasionally effective underground group of Russian ex-pats trying to combat Soviet espionage efforts in the Free World, so the story takes us through her life from the early 20s through the early 60s. Although the plot is quite engaging, it's of interest that this book is really more character based than plot driven, especially the final third. That's not a criticism, though, as the protagonist is fairly interesting. This is not a great espionage book but it is a good one. Genre aside, as a novel, I would say it is above average to good. I enjoyed it, at any rate.

Book 21: Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio



A lovely novel about a woman dealing with the break-up of a marriage and her struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder and her interactions with a single teenage mother. We see the story through the eyes of both characters, and also, quite believably and imaginatively, through the eyes of the baby. The strength of the book is in the characterizations of the two women, and in the down-to-earth yet often excilerating quality of the prose. That's not too surprising in light of the fact that Addonizio has been a National Book Award finalist for her poetry.

Book 23: Amulet by Roberto Bolano



This is a reverie-like novella in which we drift around through the memories of a woman describing her life living among the starving young poets on the fringes of society in Mexico City during the 60s and early 70s. The sub-text is the political repression going on in Mexico and, by inference, throughout Latin America. It is hard to do this work justice. I found the writing to be spell-binding and the descriptions lucid and moving.

Somehow, Book 22 got deleted when I tried to make an edit . . .

Book 22: Voices of the Valley, Volume III: an Oral History of Anderson Valley, California



Several years ago, the high school students of Anderson Valley, California, a relatively isolated area of southern Mendocino County, engaged in an oral history project, interviewing the elders of the valley and publishing them in a series of books. My wife and I bought a house in this region a couple of years back, which explains my interest in these interviews. There are five volumes. Volumes 3-5 are still available, although I've never seen Volumes 1 or 2 for sale. Once I get through with 3-5, I guess I'll search the local libraries for 1 and 2. Anyway, this was one of my "between books" (see description of Book 3 in my first post on this thread) and I enjoyed the interviews immensely.

Book 24: Frank Frisch: the Fordham Flash by Frank Frisch, as told to J. Roy Stockton



This is a terrific autobiography written by a Hall of Fame infielder and manager active in the 20s, 30s and 40s, and full of anecdotes and observations about life in the big leagues during that time. Especially fascinating are Frisch's description of playing under the great John McGraw with the Giants and playing with, and managing, the famous "Gas House Gang" St. Louis Cardinals of the 1930s. The book was published in 1962, and I have no idea if it's still in print (I was lucky enough to find it at a thrift store or garage sale--I can't remember which--in Mendocino County, CA), but if you're a fan of baseball history and you can find this book, I highly recommend it.

And now, halfway through 2008, I'm at 24 books. I'm feeling pretty good about making it to 50!

Book 25: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon



Extremely memorable characters, a wholly inventive yet almost fully believable world, and a terrific story. Don't know what else you'd want in a book! I loved this one.

Book 26: John Paul Jones: Father of the American Navy by Valentine Thomson.

This was an anniversary present from my wife, who knows how much I enjoy reading old biographies. The book was written in 1939 by Thomson, whose father, Gaston Thomason, was, according to Wikipedia, "a French politican born January 29, 1848 in Oran and died May 14, 1932, at Bône (Algeria). He was a member of the French Chamber of Deputies for the Department of Constantine for fifty years and three months. Minister of the Navy in the Cabinets of Clémenceau and Rouvier, his tenure saw the construction of numerous warships, cruisers and battleships, improving the power of the French Navy."

So we can see where his daughter Valentine's interest in naval history comes from, as well as her interest in Jones, who spent a major part of his career, especially during the American Revolution, in France.

The took told me a lot about Jones I didn't know, but that wasn't a high bar to reach, as I didn't know much. Unfortunately, Thomson was inordinantly interested in Jones' romantic life. Some of these accounts are based, according to the author's notes, on relatively scanty primary resources, and are admittedly recreations, almost novelizations, of what may or may not be actual events. Thomson was additionally dead set on using Jones' presence at the pre-Revolution court of Louis the XVI to describe that society in very great depth. Too great.

Reading Jones' biography in any case would seem to be a frustrating endeavor, if Thomson's account is accurate at all, since he spent a whole lot of his life waiting around for other people to keep their promises to him. Basically, he was a commodore without a ship for long, long stretches of his life, as opposed to, say, Lord Nelson, who spent large chunks of his life at sea.

I'm tempted to seek out a more modern and perhaps authoritative biography of John Paul Jones at this point, just to find out what the real story is thought/known to be on some of these matters nowadays.

At any rate, I'm happy I read this, especially as it was a gift from my squeeze.

Book 27: Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross



Although I was underwhelmed by the first 100 pages, overall, I did have fun reading this book, an historical novel set in 9th Century Europe. The author managed to steer around some of the danger spots (as in "Danger! Cliche plot development ahead!") I thought we were going to bump directly through. The second half was a little better than the first, I thought, or maybe I was just used to the fact that there wasn't going to be much in the way of real character development by then. You start to enjoy a book for what it is rather than worry about what it isn't, I guess. So this one had a story line that moved along and was interesting in an adventure-novel sort of way, plus some very interesting historical information. The writing style was not particularly noteworthy, but was smooth enough not to get in the way. Except for the several occasions when we read, "Neither one of them guessed . . . " or "Little did she guess . . . " Really, isn't this what editors are for? That sort of thing will make me take an otherwise entertaining book less seriously, I'm afraid. I'm giving it three stars, but I'm feeling sort of generous in doing so.

Yes, jk, that's a generous 3-star rating. I'd personally give ol' Joanie here -1.125 stars. Hated everything about this one. However, to be completely fair, I only read a Pearl-rule plus 20, for a total of 70pp. So had I soldiered through the trenches of Woolfolk's muddy prose, would I have reached No-Man's-Land or an actual machine-gun emplacement? Alas, I shall never know, because this book was donated to Goodwill with loathing and distaste.

So now do you post the other 23?

"So now do you post the other 23?"

I'm postin' em as I'm readin' em, bro! Because I spend so much time with my "between books" (see description of third book in Post 1 for explanation of "between books"), I don't get through these as fast as some others. I've usually got two or three days of reading between finishing one "full length" book and starting another.

The 3 stars for Pope Joan stems from the fact that by the time I got halfway, I did get interested in the story. I can easily see how you put it down after 70 pages, but I'm one of those obsessive people who almost never gives up on a book. C'est la vie!

Book 28: We by Yevgeny Zamiatin

Written in the late 1920s, this is a Russian sci fi novel. It's a tale about a totalitarian state in total control of every individual, and it's easy to believe that this novel was highly influential to both Orwell and Huxley in the writing of their famous distopian novels, as claimed by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, the translator and annotator of my edition of We. It's also easy to believe that this book was not seen favorably by the Soviet authorities at the time.

I found We to be very interesting in the telling, and I liked the somewhat hallucinatory, descriptive writing style. The first person protagonist was a character that gained my interest despite his rather frenzied viewpoint. The plot is slow in parts, but the story draws to an exciting, and surreal, ending.

I read this novel as part of my slow progress through the collection An Anthology of Russian Literature of the Soviet Period. It is with the advice of my fellow LTers that I finally decided it was cool to include this as a stand-alone entry for my 50-book list, since it does exist in many editions on its own.

Book 29: The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James



This was a "between book" (see description of book 3 in the first post of this thread) which I finished last night. James is one of baseball's most respected (or reviled, as the case may be) baseball statistics and history gurus nowadays. It took me a long time to work my way slowly through this one. It has a chapter for each decade of baseball history, through the end of the 20th Century (the volume was published in 2001) and then it has one chapter for each position wherein James gives his ratings and opinions about the 100 greatest players in Major League history for each position. These entries run anywhere from a paragraph to several pages each. All told, the book is over 900 pages long, so I just read it through little by little, over the course of a year or so.

Although in some cases the book is already outdated, almost all of the information and opinions offered were quite interesting, and James is, thankfully, a decent writer as well. For baseball junkies only, of course.

Book 30: My Dreams Out in the Street by Kim Addonizio



There's a lot of rough stuff in this book about a young woman who finds herself living and sometimes selling herself on the streets of San Francisco's Haight/Asbury and Tenderloin districts, and the people who orbit her life in one way or another. The sights, smells and feel of some of SF's seedier sections are drawn exceedingly well. There is a lot here that it ugly but a lot of the background action is based on real events: the private investigator in the story is based on a real person, and many of the incidents either portrayed or described in passing are events he witnessed or learned of through his daily work.

At any rate, there is a lot of tough but beautiful writing here, characters that are well drawn and hold a reader's interest without being over sentimentalized, and a cascading storyline that builds to what I found to be an excellent finish.

Full disclosure time: Kim Addonizio is a friend of mine, as is the PI whose stories greatly inform the novel and to whom the book is dedicated.

Book 31: Pravda by Edward Docx.



This is a story about a pair of adult non-identical twins who begin trying to untangle the truth about their family history, and sort out their own unravelling lives, after their mother dies. The book takes place in London, New York and, to a great extent, Petersberg.

I almost gave up on this book on page 19 when I came upon the following passage:

"But just the same, she dared not allow her mind to look up, for she sensed that the tattered images of her dreams were still hung high on the masts of her consciousness like the ragged remainders of sails flapping after a storm."

I thought, "Uh oh. 380 more pages of this? Doesn't (I had to take a look) Mariner Books have editors?"

But I decided to keep on with it for a while longer. It turns out the prose only gets that flabby intermittently. Otherwise, although Docx does seem to be in love with the sound of his own voice just a little, this novel turned out to be quite readable, if dense in spots.

It's the sort of book wherein the plot is advanced not in any real linear way, but in chunks of character description and observation. However, the reader's interest remains engaged as the two protagonists, and the several characters whose stories connect with theirs, get on with their search.

There is depression galore in this narrative, there's nothing light about the story or the storytelling. In fact, I think Docx could use a bit lighter touch in places. But I think the book was well worth reading.

Book 32: California Historical Society Quarterly - June 1955



I was born in July 1955 and I like to find periodicals published during or close to that month and year. Since the CHSQ is a quarterly, June is as close to July as one can get. Having them on the shelf is nice, but once in awhile I like to actually read them! Anyway, this edition had some interesting articles. I read a couple about some relatively obscure figures of the California Gold Rush era, a piece about the far western theater of the American Civil War and one about the California National Guard's role in the U.S.-Mexico border clashes of 1914-1916. Nothing earthshaking, but some fun information about relatively unknown (to me) corners of California history.

Book 33: Selected Tales by Nikolai Leskov



This was my first exposure to Nikolai Leskov's work, and I found it quite enjoyable. Leskov was a Russian writer of the 19th century. Although he has never gained much fame in the U.S., in Russia, evidently, his reputation is much greater. At any rate, these are stories about middle class and working class Russian life in the 1800s, told with wry wit and just a touch of fantasy. Extremely enjoyable for anyone who likes the tone and pace of writers like Turgenev and Chekov.

Book 34: Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan



Yea! I finally finished this very funny book. The only thing that held me back from racing through this one was all the time it took my wife and I to pack up and move (and now to unpack and set up in our new home), plus the baseball playoffs. This is a very enjoyable romp about two gay men and one straight woman who get together to set up a "marriage of convenience" simply to score a payday on the gifts. Hilarity, as they say, ensues, with all sorts of double-crosses, misadventures and pratfalls. Keenan was instrumental (producer, I think) in the Frazier TV series. That will give you an idea of the type of humor found here. As I said, lots of fun!

Book 35: Indignation by Philip Roth



I whipped through this book in about three sittings. The book is a spare and focused tale that I found a very effective and moving allegory for how life and expectations can come quickly unraveled when the times become scary and confusing. And of course, there's Roth's wonderful writing style. For the most part, here, except for one or two spots, he leaves the polemics behind and just concentrates on pure storytelling.

I've been a huge Roth fan for over 30 years, but his last few haven't impressed me that much. Indignation, though, I found to be Roth's most moving book in many years.

Book 36: Poems that Touch the Heart by A. L. Alexander



This collection of "inspiring" poems, published in 1941, was a "between book" (see Book 3, above). The poems are all corny to a greater or lesser degree, some affecting, some downright awful, but still, I enjoyed reading through them two or three at time over a period of several years.

I ran a Google search today and learned that the editor, A. L. Alexander, was a 1930s radio personality who hosted a popular program called "Mediation Board." As best I could tell from the wikipedia entry, the show was a radio version of Judge Judy and her ilk.

Here's an article about him from the Time Magazine online archrives: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774454,00.html

I love learning tiny snippets of cultural history like that. Old books are cool!

Book 37: The Gettysburg Review (Spring 1996)



Finished up another "between book" last night. Once in a while I like to buy literary periodicals and then once in a while I like to pull them down from the shelf and actually read one. This was a nice collection of fiction and poetry, featuring a short story by Joyce Carol Oates called "Acupulco Gold."

(For some reason, I can't get a touchstone for this particular edition of the GR. C'est la vie.)

Book 38: Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott

What a delight to dig into an old fashion adventure story, with enjoyable swashbuckling characters set in a fascinating time, and learn a lot about Scottish history/mythology at the same time.

The book takes place in the early 18th century, but it was published in 1818, so Scott's knowledge of the time and place is much more recent than any similar novel written today would be.

It was fun, if time consuming, working my way through the English protagonist's representation of the heavy 18th-century Scottish accents of many of the characters.

The reading was made more entertaining for me, still, by the fact that I was reading an edition published in 1898 but evidently (from the uncut pages) never read before. In some strange way I felt like I was setting that book free by opening the pages to the light, perhaps for the first time, cutting the uncut pages and fulfilling the book's "destiny" by finally reading it. A little goofy, I guess. C'est la vie!

The volume I was reading also includes the Scott novel St. Ronan's Well. I enjoyed Rob Roy so well that I will probably read the second story, not immediately, but sometime in the near future.

Book 39: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde



I enjoyed the most recent of the Thursday Next series quite a lot, but still thought it was missing some of the spark of the earlier books. From the ending of this one, it appears there is at least one more coming. Or perhaps Fforde just left himself an opening to do another if he felt like it. At any rate, I certainly will read it if there is another, but I do hope the quality comes back up some in that case.

Well, the time-consuming nature of our move from SF to Boonville cut seriously into my reading time this fall. That and the fact that I dug into several longer woks this year may keep me from my 50-book goal. Here I am at 39 with only 6 weeks to go. Will I get 11 more books read (and/or "between books" finished) in that time? Maybe not. My next full-length book, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough, is over 400 pages.

Wish me luck!

You can do it! Good luck! :)
--BJ

Thanks!

It's so nice to see someone else include the occasional lit. journal! If you're ever looking for a new one to order or explore, try Tin House or Lake Effect--they're the only two I subscribe to since they never seem to disappoint :) Good reading...

Thanks, whitewave . . . I don't subscribe to them. Just pick one up once in a while, stick it on my shelf, and then get around to reading it a couple of years later. That seems to be the pattern, anyway. I'm up to about 1,800 books in my library I haven't read yet, so my literary journal reading will probably be on the skimpy side until I get through those. :)

Book 40: The Final Confession of Mabel Stark by Robert Hough



This is the (very) fictionalized account of real-life tiger trainer Mabel Stark, who was known as the first female tiger trainer in U.S. circus history. The story presents a vivid picture of the heyday of the traveling circuses during the early part of the 20th Century through the Depression.

The narrative is wholly character based, and at first it seems that there's not much going on except the plot details of the heroine's life. But as the book goes on, you realize there's a lot going on under the surface, and pretty soon it's clear that this book has a lot to say about human nature, and particularly about the ways we have of convincing ourselves we don't deserve happiness.

In the end: an intriguing book about an intriguing character and setting.

Here's a good interview with the author that provides more background into Stark and her world: http://www.bookpage.com/0304bp/robert_hough.html

Book 41: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley



A somewhat entertaining satire in which we see the most ostentatious form of wealthy American industrialist through the eyes of a bemused English academic in Depression Era Los Angeles. The satire is good, but the book gets bogged down, in my view, by an overabundance of philosophical conversations between the characters. One rather overbearing character continually propounds the theory that everything a person does is necessarily evil, unless he divorces himself totally from wordly desires. I don't know enough about Huxley to know whether he's satirizing this point of view or expounding it. At any rate, I did enjoy the book, but don't know if I'd recommend it.

Book 42: British Baseball and the West Ham Club: History of a 1930s Professional Team in East London by Josh Chetwynd and Brian A. Belton



An account not just of the West Ham Hammers of the 1936-1937 English National Baseball Association, but a fascinating overview of the history of baseball in England, and the many attempts to popularize the game there. The West Ham team represents one of the pinnacles of these efforts, an attempt that seemed to be gaining steam until World War Two put an end to the experiment. This book certainly contained a lot of information I had no idea about, but it is without doubt recommended only for those interested in baseball history. The writing is adequate but not great, but the subject matter made up for any shortcomings, at least for me.

Last night I finished two of my "between books" (see first post, book 3 for explanation of "between books"), bringing my total now to 44. Since my next book is only 52 pages long, it appears that I am going to come tantalizingly close to my 50-book goal, but not quite make it. Sort of like Moses gazing down longingly from the mountain at the Promised Land. Or, you know, maybe not. Anyway . . .

Book 43: Our Fair City by Robert S. Allen



This book is a collection of essays, each about a different American city. Each essay is written by a prominent journalist of the city in question. The key to this book's fascination for me is that it was published in 1947. So we get a fascinating insight into the history, political makeup, problems and strengths of 15 different U.S. cities as of the immediate post-WW2 period. The problems of race, political machines and corruption, the growth of the suburbs and a host of other issues are all presented here in what amounts in the current day to a series of time capsules. How will L.A. manage its growth, its need for ever greater amounts of water and the apparent political apathy of its citizens? How will Mobile overcome its festering race problems and the economic tension caused by the fact that its major industries are all owned by out-of-town concerns who do not care for the city's well-being? How will Boston deal with the fact that the well-to-do classes have opted out of city management and left things to machine politicians of questionable ethics? We get all of these questions posed to us circa 1947. I very much enjoyed this book and learned a lot.

Book 44: The Good Old Days: A Journey through Anderson Valley's Historical Past, Volume 1 by Jeff Burroughs



A short, fun book of historical anecdotes about Anderson Valley, California. This is part of my ongoing project to read everything I can about the history of this region of Northern California. This project stems from the fact that Boonville, CA, the town my wife and I moved to in October after owning a home here for over two years, is in Anderson Valley.

Hi jk...your entry about the July 1955 CHSQ issue reminded me of my 16th birthday resolution to own one convertible from every carmaker made in 1960 (born in September). I owned a 1960 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88, but it was a four-door sedan. I still lust after a 1960 Olds 98 convertible. You can keep the Caddies, for all of me, hate those fins. Plus I am unimpressed by them. We had a new Cadillac in odd years and a new Buick in even years while I was growing up and they just ain't got no black magic for me.

Thanks for the visit, Richard! It was Chevys and Pontiacs in our family. When I was about eight, my friend's father had an old DeSoto with push button transmission that I thought was really cool. Now I've got a small Toyota pickup and a Honda hybrid. Cadillacs never impressed me, either. When I was a kid I wanted a Triumph.

I had such wood for the 1971 Triumph Stag that I can still...errr...access the memory, shall we say. What a lousy car it was, too! My neighbor in Los Gatos had one for eight months and it worked for five of them. That old Buick Special V-8 was NOT the most reliable powerplant after the British Leyland "team" got done with it!

ETA: Oh wait...DeSotos! My lesbian grandmas had ONLY Chrysler products and I was super-impressed with their 1957 DeSoto Fireflite four-door hardtop. THOSE were fins! And they also had a 1955 DeSoto, which I inherited in 1981. My *%$*(^!^ of a father appropriated it. Ain't forgiven him yet.

Book 45: We Hold the Rock: the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz, 1969 to 1971 by Troy R. Johnson



A short, but well-written and fairly balanced primer on the background behind and events of the Native American occupation of Alcatraz. This was an event I knew of, but not about, so reading this short piece was extremely helpful. And interesting.

Book 46: Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

I'd read this once, many years ago, and remember being mostly proud that I'd slogged my way through this "classic" story even though I didn't really enjoy it very much. This time through, about 30 years later, maybe more, I enjoyed it a whole lot more. A sad story of self-deception and spiritual starvation, but so well rendered and with so many skillful illusions, that it was a delight to read this time.

So now I'm at 46. Can I read four more books (and/or come to the end of more more "between books") in the next 11 days? Could be! But I'm not counting on it too much. I promise not to waste any time packing up and moving next year!

Book 47: Women with Men by Richard Ford



Three novellas by Ford, whose best-known book, The Sportswriter, I loved. The three stories here are well written in Ford's mannered style. They're all sort of grim, with just a dollop of optimism to make them bearable. Good observations on human nature, here, but a lot of self-absorbed characters make the whole thing add up to something less satisfying than I was hoping for.

Book 48: A Tale of Pierrot and Other Stories by George Dennison



I selected this book more or less at random from the shelves of the Friends of the San Francisco Library used bookstore. One or two of the stories were very good (including the title story), but some seemed to me to be trying too hard to be experimental and edgy (not that I mind experimental and edgy, but these, as I said, seemed forced). The final story seemed to be very good until the ending, which I realized when I got to it had been telegraphed in what seemed to me a pretty clumsy way. Oh, well. Good, sometimes interesting, stories but not great. I would give this writer another try if I came upon one of his other books, but I wouldn't go out of my way to look for one.

Book 49: The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde



Lots of fun! Very well crafted and great to read. I actually liked this book better than First Among Sequels, the final Thursday Next book.

Well, I got through 87 pages of Book 50, Call Her Savage by Tiffany Thayer, by the end of 2008. The book is 305 pages long, so my 2008 50-book challenge ended at 49.29 books! So close! This year I promise not to spend a month packing up an apartment I've lived in for 20 years and then another month unpacking in a new house. That will help me read that additional 0.71 books! In the meantime, Call Her Savage will become Book 1 in my 2009 challenge. I'll open that thread when I come to it . . . I mean, when I finish the book.

98.58% congratulations! You made it most of the way there, and NOTHING can stop you in 2009. If I failed to mention it before, I really really enjoyed your show on the Internet. I'll be away on the 15th so I can't listen in, drat it.

Thanks, Richard. Here's looking forward to a great 2009 for reading and everything else! My full-time presence in Boonville will limit my trips to San Francisco's wonderful bookstores, used and otherwise. It looks like the thrift stores of Mendocino and Sonoma Counties are going to get some intensive patronage this year!

Congrats on a great year of reading! Best of luck in 2009.
--BJ