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Review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hillbilly Elegy
A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
By J.D. Vance

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

This is how this book begins;
“My name is J.D. Vance, and I think I should start with a confession: I find the existence of the book you hold in your hands somewhat absurd.”
Well, absurd is how many feel right about now considering the election of Donald Trump. A total opposite of what one would imagine a hillbilly to be. Yet he was elected by what many refer to as the forgotten ones; rural working-class whites. It is from this group that author Vance addresses (in sometimes clumsy prose that truly could have used at least one more edit) an often-neglected sector of voters in search of a hero. His story is full of heart-ache and wrapped up tight in a strong desire to give voice to what he refers to as his people.
“…I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.”
Pretty raw. Instead of me waxing on this way or that, I’m going to let Vance paint more of his life for you.
“I was one of those kids with a grim future. I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me. Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bulls@#t…I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American Dream as my family and I encountered it. I want people to understand how upward mobility really feels.”
And this, this is the sentiment that sums up Vance’s struggle to find his place.
“And I want people to understand something I learned only recently: that for those of us lucky enough to live the American Dream, the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.”
There. That should open the door to this young man’s thoughts and frustrations, his really, really hard struggle to simply find what so many of us, hell, most of us, take for granted.
“…to understand my story, you have to delve into the details. I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, share-croppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.”
After time in the marine corps, Vance is accepted to Yale Law School and graduates with full honors at the top of his class. Yet this is not a story of how to make it in the world, it’s an expose of the underbelly of a world most of us know little or nothing about.
I think it’s time we did.

• #1 bestseller in—Poverty
• Great for Book clubs
• Needs to end—Poverty

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Review: Sundays at Tiffany’s

Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

This is the book, the novel, the one to push this particular genre all the way to the top of your list of—mushball! Honestly. They do not get any more heart-grippingly maudlin or filled with more goo or zipped up all nice and pretty with the happiest ending EVER!
So, I figured it would be ideal to have this story be your Christmas goo-gift to consider giving or reading for the ticket to wonderland it truly is. We all need to escape and what better way to do that than to disappear into a sappy story packed with angst and forlorn plot-twists and ice cream. Famous, New York Times bestselling author James Patterson has stepped away from his thrillers to pen a really different kind of story.
Meet Vivienne Margaux, rich, famous and stunningly beautiful. Plastic surgery to her is like buying new shoes; a must. She’s a New York Broadway producer and self-made husband hunter. Her one and only child, Jane, (as in so very plain) at the age of eight, is a self-proclaimed loner. She lives the life of privilege, at the price, well, the price is what this story is built on and around. Oh, and one more element that plays a huge role in this tale of lonely rich girl looking for love in all the wrong places; Michael.
“Of course I was okay, those Sundays, because I had Michael for company. Michael, who was my best friend in the world, maybe my only friend, when I was eight years old. My imaginary friend.”
Bam! You know you want to find out more about this psycho-girl with the made up dude right? Here’s a little dab more and of course the writing is good, author Patterson has been at it for years.
“I will never forget that day, in the same way that someone who survived the Titanic can’t just put it out of her pretty little head. People always remember the worst day of their lives. It becomes part of them forever. So I remember my ninth birthday with piercing clarity.”
And though I’m billing this as a top-rate mush-ball tale, it has some really poignant moments too and those are maybe what set this particular tale apart. Most romance stories have the perfect couple meeting, losing one another and then, after all sorts of fire and brimstone, they meet at last once again and then they kiss. Well, this story may end well, but to get there is a great deal more work, but along the way there are these little gems;
“I don’t know,” said Michael. “Maybe beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts. Maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside.”
And one more to really get you;
“He finally opened the door, and his eyes took in the room. A nurse sat by the side of the bed, watching a heart monitor. What he saw next took his breath away. His hand went up to his mouth, but a gasp escaped anyway.”
Within this story are woven the many truths about love, loss and letting go and yet, in the end, all there is—is love.
Merry Christmas.

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November and NO Snow—Nice…

 

This is our front door and those awesome sunflowers we grew from seed. Even at my age I still feel there’s a touch of magic in growing things. It just never ceases to amaze me that you can grow something so darn beautiful from a little seed that fits in your palm.

 

Love the mystery of it.

 

Could be why I enjoy the art and freedom and yes, mystery of writing. When the words are flying into my head and zipping through my fingers and onto the laptop-page, well trust me, I feel something. Not a believer in having a muse or wearing a lucky hat or all that other stuff so many authors seem to lean on. I simply read a poem to warm up, or gaze at a bouquet of wild flowers or sneak a look out my window, and if things are unfolding with my story in all the right ways (or wrong) off I zoom!

 

If the words are not lined up and ready to move onto the page, I get up and do something else. If I force the work—that’s exactly how it will read.

 

So, if inspiration doesn’t come into your current project—

 

Know that in the spring the seeds will grow again and somewhere—the sun is always shining.

Review: The Poet

The Poet by Michael Connelly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Poet
By Michael Connelly

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

So, I’m at my folks for an overnight and forgot the book I was reading at our farm. My dad hands me ‘The Poet’ and I take it thinking, yeah, right dude, another spy novel and you know how much I like those. Not. This is a murder-mystery-thriller of the highest caliber and it will hook you bad. Try this first taste;
“Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it. I treat it with the passion and precision of an undertaker—somber and sympathetic about it when I’m with the bereaved, a skilled craftsman with it when I’m alone. I’ve always thought the secret of dealing with death was to keep it at arm’s length. That’s the rule. Don’t let it breathe in your face.”
The main character of the entire, twisty, puzzle-stuffed, thrill-ride novel is Jack McEvoy. A Denver based reporter who, as the tale opens, learns that his homicide-detective-twin brother, Sean, has just killed himself. I immediately smelled a rat especially since the detective had left behind a line from Poe on the inside of his steamed up cop-car. Most who commit suicide leave behind a note on paper. Most, but not all, but a line from Poe? How original is that?
McEvoy takes a leave from the paper. He’s so distraught by his brother’s death since they were identical twins and were very close, McEvoy knew in his reporter-gut his brother didn’t off himself. So he does what any reporter would do. He does some research. Lots of it. Since this book was written in 1997, there was much less use of the internet, let alone the availability of my favorite detective; Mister Google.
No spoilers, really. But I have to share some more of this tale. Just a few more bites to grab your imagination. And by the way, this book is nearly 600 pages long and the one thing you will constantly worry about is; Oh no, I’m nearly done!
So, of course he finds out that low and behold just maybe his brother was murdered and how he finds this out is by some really interesting forensics tests. And off the story blasts since McEvoy is a reporter and now he has this major story. He learns that there has been an alarming amount of ‘apparent’ suicides by homicide detectives all over the country. Why no one has never looked into this is mainly due to the potential embarrassment of the detective world. They don’t want the public to know that the job of murder can really get to a person. One can only imagine, I mean, how do they do it?
So now the story starts really flying, the more that McEvoy uncovers, the faster it moves. There is a lot of layers and characters and sub-plots and, of course, a hot babe. An FBI hot babe with all the makings of a murderer. This is where author Connely really hits his mark, he is very clever at weaving many characters together into a team trying to find the bad guy and yet all along maybe, just maybe, the bad guy is right there in the team.
Or not.

• Talk about Twists
• Yes, there’s a sequel
• You’re waiting for?

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Review: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

By Caitlin Doughty

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

I would imagine that some of you are humming the song, right? Well, this is not a review about the Platters or their song or even about eyes. It is about smoke. More to the point, cremation. And, I should mention before I lose most all of you, is that this memoir is really funny.

Honestly.

Author Doughty describes herself as “functionally morbid.” After reading her book, I certainly would concur. A should-read if you think you or someone you know, may end up dead one day.

I’ve got you now!

This is the first sentence, talk about a hook; “A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.”

So begins author Doughty’s first day on the job. Though it took her nearly 6 months to land her first gig in the, shall we say, death-trade, land she did. You would think that this type of occupation is desperate for (pun intended) new blood, but the real kicker is that no one wants to hire you unless you have prior experience. Let that settle in.

Though the actual act/job of cremation is well documented by Doughty, the bulk of the tale is woven around our really peculiar way of dealing with death. Or not. Not only are we in total denial, but we have this creepy ritual of dressing up our dead to look as though they are only in eternal sleep. And the embalming? Well, did you know the real reason why you have to now place your embalmed body in a cement case? One word—Kaboom!

An aspect of this memoir that I found refreshing was Doughty’s constant dipping into the role of philosopher—death-philosopher. Though she may have a rather macabre sense of humor and at times pushes it over the edge, she does have a point about our culture. We are in denial. But something new is emerging.

“Historically, death rituals have, without question, been tied to religious beliefs. But our world is becoming increasingly secular. The fastest-growing religion in America is “no religion”—a group that comprises almost 20 percent of the population in the United States. Even those who identify as having strong religious beliefs often feel their once-strong death rituals have been commoditized and hold less meaning for them.”

What began as a career in the cremation world unfolded into what the author calls, “cultural death denial.” A cause she has embraced and is now a very vocal spokesperson for. Not the death part, but bringing the very fact that, surprise-surprise, we all are going to die. There is also a slew of interesting, as well as, disturbing factoids to consider.

“The fastest-growing segment of the US population is over eighty-five, what I would call the aggressively elderly. If you reach eighty-five, not only is there a strong chance you are living with some form of dementia or terminal disease, but statistics show that you have a 50-50 chance of ending up in a nursing home, raising the question of whether a good life is measured in quality or quantity.”

This is an important book for anyone who questions their mortality, who wonders what really happens at the funeral home. This is not a trick or a treat. Consider this; we all begin to die the day we’re born.

• Happy Halloween!

• www.orderofthegooddeath.com

• Everyone does it…

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Review: Locally Laid: How We Built a Plucky, Industry-changing Egg Farm – from Scratch

Locally Laid: How We Built a Plucky, Industry-changing Egg Farm – from Scratch by Lucie B. Amundsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Locally Laid

By Lucie B. Amundsen

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

I assure you this book review is not going to offend even the most conservative of you out there. Honestly. It’s not what you think, though the title is hilarious. It’s a scratch of the surface of this cluck-filled-adventure-memoir written with clear and open and totally refreshing humor. The chicken jokes alone are worth the read. But in the end, the main theme is to follow your dreams.

Even to Duluth.

And there are chickens, lots.

This book is packed full of so much. Author Lucie used to grace my chair when I had a salon back in Minneapolis as did her husband, Jason. There is just no easy way to review this story. It has so much wallop and truth. Right from the get-go you can see that this lady has written before, which adds a great deal to the overall tone and depth of her ‘reporting’ while her engaging voice pulls you in.

Though I do plan to someday write my memoir, I find the entire process daunting. Like, how much about your personal life do you share? Well, Lucie tossed the censor out the barn door and all bets are on!

Now, to understand the main thrust of this tale, you should learn a little about Jason who clearly wanted to make this egg-laying business happen. So he did what all wife-fearing men do when about to share a life-altering act with their main squeeze. He took her out for supper. Then he told her what his dream was and it wasn’t pretty. Think loud and sobby and very public and you’re close.

The deal was Jason wanted to create an egg-laying business that would offer the hens a better life than the standard cages often housing five to ten hens in wire crates 2.25 feet by 2.25 feet and 14 inches tall; the ‘industry’ standard. And he wanted them to go outside and enjoy a healthy diet of grass and tasty worms and well, have a life.

“Chickens that get outside, eat off the land and exercise produce eggs with: 1/3 less cholesterol, ¼ less saturated fat, 2/3 more vitamin A, 4 to 6 times the vitamin D, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E & 7 times more beta carotene..”

But, of course, then you have to charge more for these eggs and finally, FINALLY, consumers are coming around to the fact that hey, farmers have to eat too!

Imagine.

“Fortunately, the message that cheap food is not cheap after all, and that natural resources have real value, is getting out there—slowly. It’s a tough sell, the idea that we should spend more money now for a viable growing environments in the future.”

Another way of putting their focus on literally locally laid is how passionate Lucie and Jason are about what they refer to as Middle Ag. They don’t want to be so huge and they certainly don’t want to go back to having 5 hens in the backyard.

This would totally make a great movie and could teach young people why small or Middle Ag is really the way to return back to more manageable, small scale, for-profit farming. In the meantime, suggest your public school order a case of her books and certainly your library should have a few on hand…

• www.locallylaid.com

• Get a t-shirt!

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Review: Our Souls at Night

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Our Souls at Night

By Kent Haruf

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

This novel is barely 180 pages long. You can read it in one swoop. But don’t. Relish it. Take slow, easy bites; sit alone and be with author Haruf’s words. They’re gems. Each one selected as carefully as one gets dressed for church or a party or a funeral. I had the pleasure of listening to a talk by local author Nickolas Butler and he had this book in his hands as he took the podium. That was enough validation to read this for me. Need more? Haruf is the author of Benediction, Eventide, Plainsong, The Tie That Binds and Where you Once Belonged.

Not only is the story totally and completely compelling, it is, but the writing. Well, here, have a chew on this;

“That’s sort of like marriage, isn’t it.”

“What is?”

“Cold Feet.”

“It can be.”

“Yes. Well, I’m just going to say it.”

“I’m listening,” Louis said.

“I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me.” “What? How do you mean?”

“I mean we’re both alone. We’ve been by ourselves for too long. For years. I’m lonely. I think you might be too. I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me. And talk.”

There. That’s what the entire tale is built around. That question. Think about it. All the elderly that are shuffling through big, empty houses on streets like yours and mine. Maybe you know someone like Addie Moore or Louis Waters. We all do. They sit alone in movie theaters and are put in the back, if they even go, of restaurants. You see them at the mall walking in circles. Usually an older woman, but there are a lot of men out there too. Makes you wonder.

And of course author Haruf takes it many steps further, this request to sleep together has ramifications. First, one of Addie’s kids has a boy that needs taking care of. A messy relationship isn’t panning out. The boy comes to live with Addie for a while. Add in gossip from nosey neighbors and you have a storm brewing out of, what you first imagined to be no one’s business but two old people trying not to be so alone. Yet, for a while, they find each other.

“You’re being too hard on yourself again. Addie said. Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out of old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings. Except I still say that this isn’t true of you and me. Not right now. Not today.”

There is a hitch, of course. I’m not going to spoil it for you because I know you’re going to read this. It should be on every book club’s list as this is a subject that is going to get more and more discussion as all the Baby Boomers out there find themselves in a very similar situation as Addie and Louis. What will you do?

• Email; jay@jaygilbertson.com

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Review: A Voice from the Field: A Newberg Novel

A Voice from the Field: A Newberg Novel by Neal Griffin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Voice From The Field

By Neal Griffin

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

It’s nearly summer, so, it’s beach reading review time. I recently zipped through a crime-thriller-novel a friend from my Eau Claire Memorial High School wrote and boy was it a page-turner! Perfect for the cottage porch, women as well as men have been devouring it and it’s a must-read for book clubs. One of the main focuses, human trafficking, is one author Griffin knows of only too well and the book is filled with many facets related to this horrible dilemma to discuss and chew and debate.

A little background on Griffin first as it gives his writing a hefty dose of significant gravity, not to mention the guy is a real life crime solving expert. He’s been involved in many aspects of police work for over twenty-seven years. Growing up, he was a huge fan of author Joseph Wambaugh and episodes of Police Story and One Adam Twelve. After serving eight years in the Marines fresh out of high School, he’s worked on a number of police beats from patrol, narcotics to homicide investigations and he attended the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Soon to retire from the force in Escondido, California, he will hang up one hat and take on another—full time author!

Out of Griffin’s extensive exposure to all things cop, he has created a cast of characters that had me flying through the pages. One of his stars is Tia Suarez. A first-rate detective who carries a past filled with her own demons that not only gives her street cred, but shows how the many sides of police work can rub away the Hollywood glamour and expose the raw humanness underneath. Her love interest, and a character I hope Griffin expands, is Connor Anderson.

“She didn’t see him again until three years later, on the Medevac chopper that carried them both out of Helmond Province. Tia with a flesh wound from a nasty fall that took a dozen sutures to close; Connor with his right leg shredded from the hip down and his left gone at the knee.”

Together they make an unlikely pair, in other words, they’re perfect for one another and through their combination of inner and outer obstacles, Griffin has created a true power-couple. This is one of those rare pairings that once set free on the page, will long linger in your imagination. Within this story is another, a sub-plot, a compelling truth about the silent ones. Meet Angelica Mendez-Ruiz. A seventeen year-old Mexican girl who came to America as an illegal. Snatched from what she thought to be a safe house, she was forced into becoming a prostitute. And so much worse.

“She could picture the green hills surrounding the farm where her family worked the fields and lived in a small mud shack. She could recall their faces, but they faded a little more every day…The promise of a life beyond had been many and they had been happy. Poor, but happy.”

This story will wake you up and make you realize that walls are not the answer, that boundaries can’t divide us, that the earth and the sky are everyone’s.

• Try and put this book down

• Get on the waiting list!

• Email; nealgriffin.com

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Review—Telling The Bees

 

Reviewed by Jay Gilbertson

 

Many musicians run through the scales to warm up, runners stretch and breathe, writers (well this one anyway) read something. For me, it’s poetry. I get the daily email from my good friend, Garrison Keillor, The Writer’s Almanac, and yet I sometimes need a more specific poem and so I turn to favorite authors.

Author Shearin is just such a poet. She wraps life around her words and weaves them into an art form that brings me to a place of quiet, a starting point to step into story.

A path to follow.

Here is an excerpt from the poem, Telling The Bees.

“…They were loved for the way they made food that tasted like the village itself: its flowers and fields and rains and grief. You told the bees when someone inside your house took ill; it was the bees you consulted when you found yourself pregnant…”

Sure, it’s great to take a walk in the woods to find inspiration, some writers speak of their muse, and how this otherness sits next to them and cheers them on. Still others put on favorite hats, play special music or sit at a certain table in the same coffee house. But there’s nothing like a good poem to get the creative juices bubbling!

“…You served the bees cake before a party and consoled them when your father died. You spoke to the hive, which is mostly feminine: that fat queen and her ladies in waiting, eternally listening in a castle made of wax.”

Everyone should read poetry. Honestly, you should try it. Find an author that speaks to you, take the time to give this less read literary genre an opportunity to change you. It will. Words can do that, unfold your mind, open your heart and bring you into new spaces.

“…And the bees turned the news, all news, to honey—dark or golden, enough for everyone to survive winter, enough to sweeten dreams or tea.”

The best way to enjoy a poem is to read it all in one bite. Even if it goes on for several pages, as some do, get it all down in a single swallow. Consider it a delicious chocolate, a confection with something gooey and delicious and very surprising in the center.

Try this one called Strangers.

“The dog barks at us sometimes if she cannot see us properly. She points her thin head and makes her most vicious sounds and, for a moment, we are strangers: thieves, thugs, muggers. We are not ourselves until her nose finds us beneath our coats and perfume; we are not ourselves until she licks away our disguises.”

 

Poems come in every flavor.
C’mon, have a taste.

Get Hoppy—It’s National Frog Month!

Welcome to spring and maybe to your first time over here in/on/with my personal website. It’s hard to know precisely how much effort to load into this baby since I am a trusty Facebook dude and post over there constantly. But don’t ask my mom, she is rarely on. Too busy.

 

Yet here I can expand more and not feel as though the entire world (wishful thinking, I would imagine) is going to pop in and place judgement. Being National Frog Month I will hop around a tad, taking advantage of this silly premise because as everyone knows, every day is Frog day—or rather Toad Time!

 

I am partial to toads.

 

Frogs, in my book, can take a leap.

 

Honestly.

 

They tend to be on the slimy side and have only croaks and ribbits to share where’s toads tend toward handing out warts and hop more than swim and certainly are more into hanging in the garden than splashing around in the pond—pad-to-pad—as it were.

 

And since we’re on the subject, (you started this after all, hopping over here) I really find it rather odd why on earth folks munch frog legs and then, on top of it all, say the most ridiculous things such as:

 

“…Tastes like chicken!” Usually with a miniature Kermit-like foot hanging from their surly lips. Is that what a lion murmurs finishing off a human?

 

These and other priceless gems are what you get to devour when you hop on over to this webpage. And don’t forget to add your very own comments and thoughts and ideas of things you’d like to know more about and skip the frog recipes please and that would go double time for toad.

 

Now hop outside and don’t forget to take a book!