Louis Arata's Blog, page 3

Book Review: Hell of a Book

A writer on a book promotion tour can no longer tell what is real and what isn’t. As events blur from comic to tragic, he cannot avoid facing the memories he is repressing.

Hell of a Book, by Jason Mott, may be a personal story about a writer untethered from his memories, but its scope is much broader. This is a heartbreaking critique of systemic racism, in particular the exhaustive grief that accumulates in the face of racism. Racism’s relentless presence wears people down, riles them up, outrages them, and yet it feels all but insurmountable to address.

Mott’s story alternates between the unnamed writer and a boy who is called Soot. The writer initially has comic misadventures – in one scene, he flees naked down a hotel corridor, pursued by a jealous husband – before shifting into more disjointed and unsettling encounters in which he cannot distinguish between reality and his over-active imagination.

The other story follows a boy who is cruelly nicknamed “Soot” by the bullies at his school because his skin is so black. When Soot is young, his parents teach him how to become invisible so that no harm can come to him. His father tells them that so long as he isn’t seen, he will stay safe.

At first, Soot playfully tries to turn invisible, if only to avoid the bully on his school bus. He only masters the talent on the day he witnesses his father being shot down by a police officer. The trauma drains him of identity, as he is now one more indistinguishable child who has lost his father to a racist shooting.

Mott brings the writer and Soot together at crucial junctures, whenever the writer is going to absurd lengths to avoid learning about the latest shooting. The tone turns serious as the writer begins to unravel. During interviews about his book, he cannot even remember what it is about:

“I can’t remember anything about my book. Haven’t been able to since I wrote it. Writing it was like carving out a piece of myself. And once it was cut away, I left it there. I moved on, perhaps a little more incomplete than before, but at least able to ignore the pain of the emptiness more than I could bear the pain of the memory.”

Memory is a key theme throughout, as Soot discovers that writing preserves the presence of his father in his life, whereas the writer cannot bear to recall the death of his own mother. On a larger scale, the memories of violence against BIPOC become so overwhelming that it is difficult to distinguish one shooting from the next. What do you do when the relentless grief is crushing you? There is no opportunity to process and to heal from one shooting before another rises.

Mott also skewers assumptions about racial identity when he clearly identifies the boy as black by his cruel nickname, “Soot,” and yet waits until a quarter of the way through the book before identifying the writer as Black. Only when Renny, a limo driver, states explicitly that the writer is Black does the writer discover this fact: “’Am I?’ I ask. I look down at my arm and, sure enough, it turns out that Renny is right. I’m Black!” What follows is a fascinating discussion about the assumptions that Black writers should only write about the Black experience (and what does that even mean?).

What this scene also addresses is the reader’s assumptions that the main character must be Black, because Mott is Black. Yet, are all other characters White by default, unless otherwise indicated? It also raises the question about Black writers wanting the freedom to write anything, but given the prevalence of racism, how can they write about anything else? Their craft is forcibly being limited by the expectations that they can only write about one thing.

As challenging as all this may sound, Mott does promise that the book is a love story. The opening chapter is filled with idyllic scenes of a happy family, of all that is possible when we are safe. The goal is how to make this the reality. Mott suggests that it comes from facing memories, trauma, racism, and rediscovering love, that it is possible. As the narrator-writer states, “Like maybe Narcissus had spent his whole life hating himself before that one day when he saw his own beauty, his own worth.”

Book Review: The Mill on the Floss

Three times I’ve made it through George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss – 1996, 2006, and 2021. And I can honestly say that I don’t ever need to read it again.

Two years ago, I started revisiting George Eliot’s novels. They were supremely important to me when I was in my twenties and thirties. My fascination with all Victorian novels led me to read Dickens, Trollope, Gaskell, the Brontes, and at the top of the list was Eliot. Something about her work fascinated me. Maybe it was the combination of analysis and passion, and the depictions of life as a series of challenges. While there was always some romance in the plot, at the core her novels were not simply love stories but rather examinations of personal moral choices.

The Mill on the Floss is the story of the Tulliver family. The patriarch, Jeremy, owns the Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss. When a neighboring farmer diverts the river water to irrigate his lands, Tulliver takes him to court. The case goes against him, and he becomes a bankrupt and loses the mill. To make matters worse, the defense attorney Wakem purchases the mill and hires the disgraced Tulliver to manage it.

The first half of the novel primarily focuses on Tulliver’s children, Tom and Maggie. Like his father, Tom is stubborn and righteous. He holds people to high moral standards and exhibits very little compassion for weakness. His younger sister, Maggie, is intelligent and passionate but is often minimized and criticized for her impulsive nature. Their relationship is at the center of the story – how Maggie longs for Tom’s love and approval, and how he withholds them when Maggie doesn’t measure up to his standards.

After Tulliver loses the mill, Tom takes a job in his uncle’s company, and through shrewd practice, he is able to save enough money to pay off the family’s debts. He even hopes to purchase the mill back from the lawyer Wakem.

After her father’s death, Maggie takes a position teaching. During a break between terms, she visits her cousin Lucy, who is betrothed to Stephen Guest. There is instantaneous attraction between Maggie and Stephen, and while they endeavor to resist it, soon they are pulled along (literally) by the current of fate. Stephen wishes to elope, but Maggie refuses him, and she returns to her home to face her disgrace of breaking her cousin's engagement.

Much of Eliot’s novel focuses on the judgments of society. Everyone has an opinion about how people should behave. Each of Maggie’s aunts (the Dodson clan) holds herself superior to all other citizens of the town, often with the assertion that the Dodson way of doing things is the most proper way. Clearly, Tom has inherited their judgmental views, as he refuses to have anything to do with Maggie so long as she acts independent of his wishes.

As with all of Eliot’s novels, her characters face a moral crisis, usually at the intersection of personal desire and the public good. Maggie herself longs for love and affection but feels she must renounce them as nothing more than selfish desires. In her mind, it is better to deny what gives her pleasure; self-abnegation helps you put other people’s needs first.

The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. The tension between Maggie and her brother is reminiscent of her relationship with her own brother, Isaac, who broke off all contact with her when she began living with a married man. You can get a sense that Maggie, with her intelligence and deeply-felt passion, is something of an avatar for the author.

Out of all of George Eliot’s novels, I have to rank The Mill on the Floss as my least favorite. I’ve tried – three times! – to enjoy it, but the truth is I can’t get past the characters. Admittedly, they are realistically portrayed, but I just don’t like them. I don’t like Tom and his stubbornness, I don’t like the father’s impulsivity or the mother’s flightiness. I don’t care for the aunts’ judgmental sides, and I got tired of Maggie’s neediness. I can understand them, maybe even sympathize with them, but overall I simply get bored with the family dysfunction.

Now that I have been revisiting Eliot’s novels, I am able to look at them with a more mature eye. I understand on a deeper level the themes that are raised, and I recognize the craft which the author brings to her work. But after careful consideration, I finally accept that The Mill on the Floss is not the novel for me. I’m glad I gave it one more shot, but it’s going to be the last one.

Book Review: Harry Potter and the ...

When it comes to the Harry Potter series, I have a mixed reaction. On the one hand, J.K. Rowling has written an immensely entertaining series which taps into our imaginative psyches. She creates relatable heroes and villains – characters with strengths and weaknesses who face moral conundrums and moral ambiguities. She carries Harry from youth to adulthood, an extensive bildungsroman of literal life-and-death adventures.

Rowling also exhibits a delightful sense of whimsy. Magic is unexpected, yet commonplace. No one thinks twice about casting an unlocking charm – alohamora – but it doesn’t always work. Students struggle with homework assignments: “Change this animal into a water goblet.” “Levitate this feather.” Along the same lines of getting one’s driver’s permit, sixteen-year-old students must be licensed to apparate. If you aren’t completely successful in transporting yourself from one spot to another (i.e., if you leave behind an eyebrow), you don’t pass the test.

But magic can have a darker side. In the final novel, Harry, Ron, and Hermione apparate to escape capture, but in their flight, Ron is splinched: Part of his shoulder and arm are left behind, leaving him grievously wounded.

Rowling explores magic in all its possibilities, even into the darkest magic of all: Horcruxes. The act of shredding a human soul in order to perpetuate mortality.

Overall, I have no fault with Rowling’s creativity. The fact that her stories have become a part of our culture speaks to their brilliance. And yet, I always balk at the extensive cruelty in the stories.

Harry famously suffers at the hands of the Dursleys, the Muggle family that raises him. They have nothing but contempt and disdain for him and for anything magic-related. They verbally abuse him. His cousin, Dudley, is a bully. And yet, Harry must live with them over each summer. At one point, Rowling tantalizes with the possibility that Harry might escape their abuse, but in the end, he is forced to remain.

There is also Snape, the Potions professor, who loathes Harry. There is, of course, a motivation for this: Snape was in love with Harry’s mother, Lily. But Rowling never tempers Snape’s jealousy with any other emotion. He is deliberately cruel to Harry over and over again. And no one ever calls him on his outrageous behavior. Not Professor McGonagall, not even Dumbledore; they all turn a blind eye to Snape’s ridiculous behavior, as though they are advising Harry to simply shrug it off.

But the worst abuse heaped on Harry is the chronic incidents of death and loss. He rarely catches a break from trauma. He loses friends and loved ones. And somehow, he manages to persevere. Of course, he has his closest friends, Hermione and Ron, and the Weasley family looks after him. Sometimes, though, the tragedy gets too crushing.

I’m not suggesting that Rowling should soften her tale into a tasteless pudding. But I question the relentless horrors that Harry must endure in his quest to defeat Voldemort. One fan proposed a rationale for it: Since Harry himself is a Horcrux, his life is tainted by the presence of dark magic in his own person. Rowling, of course, never spells it out that way, but I can buy the theory.

My other complaint with Rowling’s work is that the later books become baggy, unwieldy tales. A bit of judicious editing could tighten the stories. There is still plenty of room for imagination without redundancy. Case in point: Hermione’s crusade to liberate the House Elves in Goblet of Fire. It’s an important moment of awareness for Hermione that there is sanctioned injustice in the world. But given the amount of real estate it is afforded in the book, I had expected more to come of it.

I have watched the movie series probably a dozen times, and in many cases, the images from the films have supplanted that of the books. Movies, of course, can’t always do justice to all the details of the books. That is why going back to reread the series helps me appreciate Rowling’s stories all the more, particularly her humor.

Book Review: The Immortality Key

I love a good radical history book, one that turn a concept on its ear. From Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States to Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, the types of investigation that give a new perspective on the past.

In The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion with No Name, Brian C. Muraresku delves into religious rituals from prehistoric times up through the modern Catholic church, not simply the belief systems but rather the use of drugs to bring about religious ecstasy.

The book is divided into two sections. The first investigates the earliest known religious rituals, long before Christianity or even Greek mythology. Muraresku tracks down sites containing hints of ancient practices: caves with murals, shards of pottery. He follows up on early scholarship that addresses alcoholic beverages that may have been tainted (deliberately or not) with hallucinogenic drugs. These drugged beverages appeared to be used to bring about visions to their imbibers.

At first, it sounds a bit peculiar, the notion that drugs may have played a key role in religious practices. But Muraresku begins his trail at the site of Eleusis, known for its ancient cult of Demeter and Persephone. He links the festival to the notion that Demeter, as goddess of the harvest, taught the priestesses to infuse their ritual drink with ergot and other drugs. Later, the author explores the history of Dionysus, the god of wine-making and fertility.

In Part Two, the investigation truly takes off. Now the author begins making connections between Dionysus and Jesus, and how early Christians in the Mediterranean region adapted their proselytizing to include Greek imagery. In other words, to get their foot in the door, these missionaries may have conflated images of Jesus with Dionysus in order to convert people to Christianity. Or it could have been the other way around: the drug cults may have infiltrated early Christianity by incorporating their own form of the drugged Eucharist into religious practices.

At its heart, The Immortality Key poses the idea that the Christian Eucharist is a tamed version of earlier religious brews. If drugs were crucial to early religious practices, why would the Christian church want to suppress their usage? Muraresku posits that the male-dominated church has done so in order to maintain power in its own hands. If the early women priestesses were brewing concoctions that brought about religious revelations and were making them readily available to any willing initiate, then the Catholic church did everything it could to wrest the power from these women and to modify the drugged wines into the solely symbolic Eucharist. In the end, it’s all about who has the power.

Were aspects of history purposively suppressed in order to protect the Catholic church? It certainly sounds like there has been deliberate oppression of women and drugs over the generations. The further along I got in the book, the more I accepted the author’s views. He cites reputable scholars, and the bibliography is intriguing enough to send the more curious-minded on new trails of investigation.

Muraresku does an excellent job building his argument, even at the risk of some conspiracy-minded language along the lines of “could this be the clue I’ve been looking for?” My sole complaint with The Immortality Key is that Muraresku tends to hammer certain ideas over and over to prove his point, so the redundancy can cause the research to drag a bit. Overall, I found it an intriguing read and plan to dig into some of the books listed in the bibliography for another good radical history.

Book Review: The Quest for Saint Camber

It took me a little more than two years to read the first four trilogies in Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series. In reading order, the four trilogies are:

The Legends of Saint Camber

Camber of Culdi

Saint Camber

Camber the Heretic

The Heirs of Saint Camber

The Harrowing of Gwynedd

King Javan’s Year

The Bastard Prince

The Chronicles of the Deryni

Deryni Rising

Deryni Checkmate

High Deryni

The Histories of King Kelson

The Bishop’s Heir

The King’s Justice

The Quest for Saint Camber

As I’ve mentioned before, Kurtz’s series were immensely important to me as a teenager. They were second only to The Lord of the Rings. Fascinated by the blend of medievalism and ecclesiastical politics, I eagerly awaited the next installment.

Across the course of the series, there is Camber, a Deryni mystic who is canonized as a saint. The trouble is, Camber didn’t die but rather assumed someone else’s identity. He watches helplessly as people misinterpret seemingly miraculous events and attribute them to him. As a result of his canonization, there is a violent backlash against all Deryni, which results in oppressive legislation that all but eliminates the rights of anyone who has magic.

The final book in the series is The Quest for Saint Camber. It follows King Kelson’s quest to recover religious relics so that he can reestablish the cult of Saint Camber. Meanwhile, his cousin Conall – an arrogant and driven young man – is eyeing both the crown and Rothana, a Deryni princess. When Kelson is swept off a mountainside and is presumably drowned, Conall takes advantage of the situation by moving himself up the ladder toward kingship. Kelson, of course, survives and returns to confront his treasonous cousin.

The most compelling aspects of the stories are the machinations that are such a prominent part of medieval politics: rebellious nobles, neighboring kingdoms, the awarding of landed titles. Also significant is the role of the church. Kurtz describes in great detail the ecclesiastical hierarchy and how it leverages power alongside the throne. Kurtz’ Gwynedd feels as real as Middle-Earth, albeit without fantastical creatures. She excels in presenting real-world problems and challenging solutions. In fact, many of her characters are nuanced so that even when they are fighting on the same side, they have their own agendas. Overall, plenty of humans distrust the Deryni and go out of their way to oppress them. It sets up a fair amount of sympathy for the Deryni, but here’s the thing. Kurtz doesn’t sanctify them. Rather, the Deryni, at times, can be a bit manipulative with their magic. In order to protect themselves, they may resort to magic to put a human to sleep or to modify their memories. It seems harmless in each instance, but each time it happens, you wonder about the ethics of it all.

Kurtz's knowledge of medieval culture is impressive. She describes in detail the pageantry of the court and the solemnity of religious services. Clothing and jewelry receive particular attention, no doubt to paint for the reader the splendor of colors and textures. Her prose can be quite an immersive experience.

This is my third time through the 12-book series, and I confess to having mixed reactions to it. Why was I so fascinated by the story? It certainly has compelling moments and sympathetic characters, and yet I found stretches of writing rather tedious. How did my distractible fifteen-year-old self manage to wade through pages upon pages of description? At that age, I preferred action, so the fact that I had the patience to keep reading must be a testament to Kurtz's narrative powers.

Now, as middle-aged adult, I find the story dragged down by excessive description. For example, in every single book in the series, there is a scene in which the Deryni use special dice-sized cubes to set magical wards for their arcane works. It’s the same process each time, so I wound up skimming these pages. Likewise, in scenes of ecclesiastical pageantry or a religious service, I browsed the paragraphs for the more important points.

I lost track of the number of times that characters gathered for a meeting, and there would be a minimum of two to three pages establishing where every person was in the room. It was like actors getting to their places on stage and waiting for the director to call action. The descriptions did little to advance the story.

What I found most frustrating is that Kurtz would hint at intriguing aspects of magical history. You would get a glimpse of hidden powers and then … the subject would be dropped. Ultimately, this is why I found The Quest for Saint Camber to be one of the more tedious stories. Certainly the plot of Conall vying for the throne was compelling, but when the book is named for a religious quest, you expect that to take more prominence. At the end, Kelson does encounter a secret society of Camberian religious, and there are a few tantalizing moments that might uncover the mystery of Saint Camber. But in the end, there is no true resolution.

I’m glad to have revisited the series. It was worth it to read them again and experience moments of nostalgia. But I doubt I will read her most recent trilogy: The Childe Morgan Trilogy, which falls between The Heirs of Saint Camber and The Chronicles of the Deryni. I suspect I would find it less than illuminating.

The Top Ten Books (I've Read) of 2020

Some books I read last year should be calculated not by page count but by poundage. There were a few hefty ones – Stephen King’s Under the Dome; John D. Rateliff’s The History of ‘The Hobbit’; and American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau.

Others were longish: Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky, and The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings.

One interesting pattern for the year is that a book sometimes led me to reading others, such as the Jane Austen thread. I started with Pride and Prejudice before reading Jo Baker’s Longbourn, which focuses on the servants of the Bennett household, and finished up with Death Comes to Pemberley, a murder mystery by P.D. James.

Likewise, after reading The Man Who Invented Christmas, which relates how Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol, I had no choice but to re-read his The Christmas Books (charming, as always), and I’m currently reading David Copperfield (my favorite Dickens).

As a white, middle-class male, it is high time for me to learn more about systemic racism and how it is perpetuated. James Baldwin, Ijeoma Oluo, and Robin DiAngelo were excellent guides, and their work is leading me to other writers.

Overall, I read 74 books this year (see the bottom of this post for the complete list). So, here are the Top Ten and a few honorable mentions:

TOP TEN BOOK

The American Transcendentalists: Essential WritingsLaurence Buell, ed.

American Transcendentalism (1820s-1840s) is a blend of philosophy, theology, social movement, and literary genre. At its core, it encourages people to cultivate the inherent goodness in themselves as a means to redress societal problems. As a movement, it is forever linked to the writers in Concord, MA – Emerson and Thoreau, in particular, but also Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, and Margaret Fuller. This collection of essential writings provides an excellent overview to a brief but influential literary period.

DawnOctavia E. Butler

Some of the best science fiction reveals our essential humanness, often by contrasting it with the “otherness” of non-Earth cultures. Butler’s book is not only one of the finest SF novels I have ever read, it is an excellent novel, regardless of genre. Lilith, one of the few survivors of a cataclysmic nuclear war, awakens from suspended animation on a space vessel. At first, Lilith is wary of her rescuers, the Oankali, whose physical differences and behaviors she finds unsettling. Butler doesn’t give us bug-eyed monsters, but rather sophisticated beings who have rescued the humans for a distinct purpose. I was fascinated by how Lilith learns about her captors, how she overcomes her prejudice, and how her relationship with them evolves. There are two more books in the series – Adulthood Rites and Imago – which are on my 2021 To-Read list.

Ready Player OneErnest Cline

I watched the movie then I read the book. The movie, while fun, didn’t come close to the creativity of the novel. Cline’s novel is a Valentine to 1980’s era arcade games. In a dystopian future, people spend all their time in the Oasis, a thrilling virtual reality created by James Donovan Halliday. On his death, Halliday reveals that there is an Easter egg hidden somewhere in the vast virtual universe, and whoever solves the puzzle will gain control over the Oasis. Thus begins a world-wide quest by Wade Wilson and his avatar, Parzival. If Cline had kept the story as merely a quest, it still would have been fun, but he uses the set-up to explore our need for human connection. A fun read.

Imaginary FriendStephen Chbosky

Chbosky’s debut novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, was like reading about my high school years. Imaginary Friendis a radically different story about seven-year-old Christopher Reese and his mother, Kate, who move to a small town. Christopher disappears for a week into the woods. He returns, seemingly unharmed, but now he hears a friendly voice telling him he must build a treehouse in the woods or else everyone in the town will die by Christmas. What unfolds is part fantasy, part horror, and while the ending becomes a bit protracted, the conclusion is a remarkable piece of storytelling.

Understanding Power: The Indispensable ChomskyNoam Chomsky

Given the increasingly divisive political climate in recent years, I turned to Chomsky for his analysis. Published in 2002, Understanding Power collects together public talks and forums that Chomsky conducted from the late 1980s to the 1990s. While the events he covers are now more than twenty years past, he provides a useful template for understanding how politics, business, and media continue to mold and influence people’s daily lives. This is a harsh critique on the abuses of US power, but Chomsky has some broad advice on how grassroots movements are crucial for tackling systemic problems such as racism, sexism, and economic class. The further I got in the book, the more engrossing I found it.

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau Bill McKibben, ed.

According to editor Bill McKibben, environmental writing “takes as its subject the collision between people and the rest of the world, and asks searching questions about that collision: Is it necessary? What are its effects? Might there be a better way?” This anthology, spanning work from the 1840s to the mid-2000s, addresses issues of wilderness, climate change, and human interference in the natural world. The writing, always lively and engaging, reveals the deep passion of authors, such as Rachel Carson, Alice Walker, Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, and Henry David Thoreau. Very compelling.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal Christopher Moore

There should be a category of novels called “Irreverent Versions of the Gospels.” It would include Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Each of these novels skews the traditional view of the gospel story of Jesus, but none of them do it with the comedic flare as Christopher Moore’s Lamb. Yes, Jesus has a pal named Biff. Yes, you learn about the “lost years” of Jesus, in which (in Moore’s telling) he goes in search of the three magi and learns about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. You also learn why Jews eat Chinese on Christmas Day. It’s a fun book, playful and thoughtful at the same time. I was sad when it was over.

Map: Collected and Last PoemsWislawa Szymborska

Poetry doesn’t have to be intimidating. It can be weightless and profound; it can seem effortless and beautifully crafted. One of my favorite poets is Szymborska, for her ability to question our perspectives. She often asks the purpose of our day-to-day activities. Why is there such a thing as status quo? Why aren’t things different? Her poetry unveils the miraculous in the seemingly mundane, and she often inverts the expectation by poking fun at the seemingly miraculous as nothing special. She peeks into corners, under leaves, inside molecules, and into the sky. For all her whimsy, there is much to contemplate.

So You Want to Talk About RaceIjeoma Oluo

Each chapter of Oluo’s book asks a question about race, then addresses how individuals can discuss the topic without resorting to defensiveness. The challenge she raises is that people are fully capable of discussing a difficult topic, but they also must recognize their own biases and prejudices. Not an easy task, but her recommendations are solid. Definitely worth reading.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About RacismRobin DiAngelo

Systemic racism has become so normalized that white people won’t see it. It’s not that they don’t acknowledge that racism is evident, but rather they often divert the conversation away from meaningful resolutions. Defensiveness plays a key part in stopping crucial dialogue. DiAngelo recommends strategies for white people to look beyond their prejudices and to see the perspectives of BlPOC. It may not be easy, but systemic racism won’t be dismantled until whites acknowledge their limitations. An important book.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

I Am Not a Serial Killer, Dan Wells

John Wayne Cleaver, a fifteen-year-old high school student, recognizes that he has sociopathic tendencies, so he works very deliberately to suppress his tendency toward violence. However, his fascination for serial killers only puzzles his family and classmates. When a series of unexplained murders happen in town, Cleaver suspects it’s the work of a serial killer. And using all his research on the subject, he sets out to track the murderer down. There’s a unique twist to the killings that I had mixed feelings about, but overall it was an enjoyable book.

Dead Land, Sara Paretsky

Paretsky’s tough and resourceful VI Warshawski tackles a complex case of murder and white-collar crime. Ruthless land developers, a homeless singer-songwriter, and a sniper at an outdoor concert send VI from Chicago to Kansas in search of answers. Paretsky’s stories are always compelling, but this one particularly touched me with the sensitivity of the writing. The prose is lean and driven. And it’s always fun to read about Chicago locations that I’m familiar with.

Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup

Born a free person, Solomon Northup is kidnapped and sold into slavery, and as the title suggests, after twelve years he regains his freedom. The narrative, written in 1853, is compelling and disturbing. He does not shy from telling the truth about slave-owners and the brutality against enslaved people. Even after Northup has returned to the northern states, he is embroiled in a civil trial against his kidnappers, who try to lay the blame on everyone other than themselves. Written with dignity and honesty, this is an essential read.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Junior lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation but goes to school in a wealthy community. Straddling the pressures of living in two different worlds, Junior struggles with his sense of identity. When he is home, he is ostracized for leaving the reservation for a white school, and at school, he is treated as an outsider because he comes from the reservation. Throughout, the author explores adolescence with wit and pathos.

Longbourn, Jo Baker

I doubt I will ever be able to read Pride and Prejudice without thinking of Baker’s novel about the Bennett’s servants. The story is reminiscent of Downton Abbey, in that you get glimpses of the upstairs world of Elizabeth and Jane Bennett, but the focus is primarily on the lives of the maid Sarah, the housekeeper Mrs Hill, and James, the new footman. There is a lot of marvelous detail of the quantity of work that servants were required to perform. The fact that they have any personal life is a testament to human fortitude in the face of challenging day-to-day life. Poignantly written, though the ending feels a bit rushed.

The Complete List of Books

Watership Down, Richard Adams

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Proof, David Auburn

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Longbourn, Jo Baker

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

The Marvelous Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum

Hesitation Kills: A Female Marine Officer’s Combat Experience in Iraq, Jane Blair

The American Transcendentalists: Essential Writings, Laurence Buell, ed.

Wolf Almanac; A Celebration of Wolves and Their World, Robert H. Busch

Dawn, Octavia E. Butler

The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

Imaginary Friend, Stephen Chbosky

It’s Like This, Cat, Emily Cheney Neville

Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, Noam Chomsky

Ready Player One, Ernest Cline

The Giver: A Play, Eric Coble

Behind the Scenes, Judi Dench

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo

The Christmas Books, Charles Dickens

Romola, George Eliot

The Woman in the Window, A.J. Finn

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, Fannie Flag

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ian Fleming

Fight Like a Girl: The Truth Behind How Female Marines Are Trained, Kate Germano

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

Death Comes to Pemberley, P.D. James

The Grip of It, Jac Jemc

Codename Villanelle, Luke Jennings

The Shining, Stephen King

Under the Dome, Stephen King

King Javan’s Year, Katherine Kurtz

The Bastard Prince, Katherine Kurtz

Deryni Rising, Katherine Kurtz

Deryni Checkmate, Katherine Kurtz

High Deryni, Katherine Kurtz

The Couple Next Door, Shari Lapena

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, Bill McKibben, ed.

Corpus Christi, Terence McNally

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore

God Help the Child, Toni Morrison

Elements of Fiction, Walter Mosley

Little Fires Everywhere, Celest Ng

Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup

So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo

1984, George Orwell

1984 (play), George Orwell, Duncan Macmillan (Adaptor), Robert Icke (Adaptor)

Brush Back, Sara Paretsky

Dead Land, Sara Paretsky

The Murder House, James Patterson

Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls

The History of the Hobbit, John D. RateliffI’m Thinking of Ending Things, Iain Reid

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner and Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling

The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara

Fools, Neil Simon

The World’s Religions, Huston Smith

Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves and Ghosts: 25 Classic Stories of the Supernatural, Barbara H. Solomon, ed.

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, Les Standford

Map: Collected and Last Poems, Wislawa Szymborska

Flights, Olga Tokarczuk

The Father Christmas Letters, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Treason of Isengard: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part Two, J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.)

Cane, Jean Toomer

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton

I Am Not a Serial Killer, Dan Wells

Book Review: The History of The Hobbit

Exhaustive and exhausting: That is my take on John D. Rateliff’s The History of ‘The Hobbit’ – his scholarly examination of how J.R.R. Tolkien came to write the story of Bilbo Baggins.

Much like Christopher Tolkien’s monumental 12-volume History of Middle-Earth [HoME], this two-volume work explores the origins of the story, the various phases of composition, and the changes made in subsequent editions. In other words, if you want to know every last detail that Tolkien wrote, crossed out, revised, and considered when writing The Hobbit, then this is your book.

Rateliff breaks the process down into five phases. The first phase introduces Bilbo, the wizard, the dwarves, and the dragon. But don’t expect the familiar names you are used to. The wizard is named Bladorthin, the leader of the Dwarves is Gandalf, and the dragon is Pryftan.

The second phase (the longest section of Rateliff’s book) carries the story from Hobbiton to the Lonely Mountain. Here, Rateliff provides the actual first draft of the story, along with copious footnotes that offer alternate wording and deletions. The endnotes of each chapter examine the historical context of elves, dwarves, dragons, magic rings, and riddles.

The third phase has Tolkien reconsidering the ending, from Smaug's death to the Battle of the Five Armies. The fourth phase includes revisions to the 2nd edition of the book so that the story of Gollum and the Ring matches what is told in The Lord of the Rings. Phase Five is an aborted attempt to rewrite The Hobbit so that stylistically it is more in line with The Lord of the Rings. Thankfully, Tolkien gave up on this, because he was essentially buffing out all the charming aspects of Bilbo’s story and leaving a somewhat dour retelling in its place.

Having read 7 of the 12 volumes of HoME, I’m used to Tolkien’s working things out as he writes. He often tries different character names to see what fits. In the first draft of The Hobbit, he called the wizard Bladorthin and the leader of the dwarves Gandalf. I confess it took some getting used to seeing Gandalf’s name applied to any other character than the wizard. About three-quarters of the way through this first phase of composition, he finally decided to make the switch, and Bladorthin became Gandalf, and Gandalf became Thorin Oakenshield. It was almost like listening to someone play a familiar piece of music who keeps getting the notes wrong. Once the characters became Gandalf and Thorin respectively, the story seems in tune.

The funny thing is that, for all Tolkien’s meticulous efforts to get things right, he did make mistakes. Rateliff’s book details, ad nauseum, the effort to rectify a naming error. Thorin’s father and grandfather are Thror and Thrain. On the map to the Lonely Mountain, Thrain is the father and Thror the grandfather, while in the text, it’s the other way around (or maybe Thrain is the grandfather and Thror the father. I confess I can no longer keep it straight). Rather than fixing the runes on the map, Tolkien twisted the issue into a veritable Gordian’s knot to make both the text in the novel and the writing on the map both be correct. After all that rigmarole, I no longer cared which was right; it just didn't matter anymore.

"Pick a name already! Thrain's the father and Thror's the grandfather! Just do it!"

That is where Rateliff’s efforts are exhausting. The naming mistake crops up repeatedly throughout his book – both in footnotes and endnotes. If it could have been addressed once then left alone, I would have been a much more grateful reader.

There are similar examples throughout the course of Rateliff’s work. He does conduct exhaustive research into the origins of the Dwarves’ names, their literary precursors, and the references to Beowulf and other Germanic legends. He ties The Hobbit to earlier children’s works as well as Tolkien’s own legendarium of Middle-Earth. It’s a tremendous amount of research, and I’m certain this book is a boon to all Tolkien scholars. But I confess I got burned out. About two-thirds of the way through the book, I started skimming -- something I never do -- because the minutiae of information was no longer going in.

Typically, I am not exhausted by lengthy books. And I do appreciate the care that Rateliff gives to his scholarship. Maybe if I had read each of the two-volumes separately, spacing them out as I am doing with HoME, I would not have been so fatigued.

Exhaustive research? Most definitely. Exhausting read? Yep.

Book Review: The Treason of Isengard

Tolkien didn't always know what was going to happen.

There are few imaginary worlds as fully realized as Middle-Earth. Across a lifetime of crafting, J.R.R. Tolkien fashioned numerous histories, romances, languages, and cultures for Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men [sic]. It almost seems as though Tolkien uncovered a treasure trove of stories that had already existed, and he was merely the curator of them.

But if you take a peek into The History of Middle-Earth, a compendium of Tolkien’s writings, you immediately witness how very much he labored to give shape to his creative vision.

In the late 1970s, Tolkien’s son, Christopher, compiled The Silmarillion from his father’s writings. It was never meant to be a definitive edition, given the many variations of the core stories. As a follow-up, he edited a massive 12-volume series, The History of Middle-Earth, which covers the origin stories of Middle-Earth, the creation of the Elves, the story of the Silmarils, and continues through the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

Over the last few years, I have worked my way through the first seven volumes, and just recently completed The Treason of Isengard, the second book to address the writing of The Lord of the Rings. To be honest, I’m not quite sure who the target audience is for The History. Is it scholars who specialize in Tolkien’s linguistic craft? Is it for die-hard fans of all-things Hobbits who want more information? The books, while they have narrative elements, are often bogged down in footnotes and extensive examinations of the different nomenclature of the Elvish languages.

While a fan of Middle-Earth, I find that what draws me to these books is Tolkien’s creative process. As a writer, I am fascinated by how other writers work. Where are the moments of inspiration? Why were certain choices made? How did the characters get named?

As shown in The Return of the Shadow and The Treason of Isengard (the first two books about The Lord of the Rings), Tolkien didn’t have a clue where the story was heading when he sat down to write it. Initially, it was meant as a pleasant follow-up to The Hobbit, but once he started including the Middle-Earth legendarium, the story took on a more dramatic tone.

As a result, marginal notes on a manuscript become the catalyst for radical changes in the story. For example, in The Fellowship of the Ring, as the Hobbits are leaving the Shire, on a wooded road they encounter … Gandalf. At least, it was meant to be Gandalf. But in the margin, Tolkien wrote “Black Rider?” He had no idea who or what a Black Rider was. Was it a friend or foe? Was it the wizard? Was it Aragorn? Or was it a servant of Sauron?

When interviewed, Tolkien said that he initially got the Fellowship to Moria, where they got trapped by goblins. He could see no way out for them, so he abandoned the story for almost a year (in The Treason of Isengard, Christopher Tolkien suggests that it may have been as much as two years). Then he went back to the beginning and reworked the episodes again, until he ultimately found a way out.

But if anything is clear, it’s that nothing is clear. Tolkien did not even have a fully designed map of Middle-Earth when he started writing. He created it in the process and often tried different names for different locations. Even the location of key rivers or cities changed as he figured out the chronology of events. For example, did it take the Fellowship 9, 10, or 11 days to travel down the River Anduin?

In The Return of the Shadow, the reader is presented with all the different names for Hobbits that Tokien considered. Not only surnames, but first names as well. Frodo was initially Bingo, and Pippin was variously called Odo, Folco, and Frodo. Pippin also had a brief existence as Trotter, the precursor to Strider/Aragon.

As described in The Treason of Isengard, Aragorn undergoes the same naming process. He was initially called Trotter, and when his real name was revealed, it was variously Elfstone, Ingold, and Tarkil. Tolkien wasn’t always consistent in his initial drafts, sometimes forgetting that he was supposed to be using Ingold when suddenly Elfstone pops into the text.

"I don't think Professor Tolkien has any idea where we're headed."

Even with its shortcomings, The Lord of the Rings is a beautifully crafted work. The story seems almost predetermined, as though it could unfold in no other fashion. Maybe that is a testament to Tolkien’s commitment to getting the story right. But speaking as a writer, I think he could have gone down other paths and still ended up with a remarkable story. That’s the amazing thing about the creative process. Ideas come to you, and sometimes they make perfect sense, and other times they peter out into nothingness. For example, here are some of the elements that Tolkien considered:

Aragorn marries Eówyn, not Arwen. Boromir and Aragorn go to Minas Tirith together, and Aragorn is selected as king. A jealous Boromir goes to Saruman for aid. Merry and Pippin return to Rivendell, rather than encounter Treebeard. Frodo uses the ring to control the Nazgûl.

Theoretically, any of these scenarios could have worked. But you never know if they will unless you give them a try.

Book Review: American Earth

Some books you don’t measure by the page count but by the pound. Typically, I am not daunted by a long book, but I confess to being a bit intimidated by the 1000+ pages of American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. That is, until I read the introduction by editor Bill McKibben.

McKibben explains the difference between nature writing and environmental writing. Nature writing focuses on wilderness as a setting, whereas environment writing “takes as its subject the collision between people and the rest of the world, and asks searching questions about that collision: Is it necessary? What are its effects? Might there be a better way?”

The anthology pulls from work spanning the 1840s to the mid-2000s – essays, journalism, literature, and poetry. The authors are an eclectic assortment: Thoreau, Whitman, P.T. Barnum, Frederick Law Olmsted, Rachel Carson, Alice Walker, Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, and Julia Butterfly Hill.

McKibben selects pieces that focus on the intersection of human activity and the wilderness. This can include personal reflections about the transformative effects of nature on the human soul. Others are straight-forward journalism about the impact of capitalism and industry on the landscape. In every case, there is the tension between human interference and the natural world itself. Several authors raise the question of whether wilderness should be left untouched, not as a pristine refuge, but as an ecosystem that has a right to its own existence, regardless of the resources it could provide to people.

Wilderness is variously defined throughout the collection. It can mean Yosemite or Walden Pond, the California redwoods or the Arizona desert. It can also refer to the cityscape of a low-income or Black neighborhood where the water and air have been poisoned by industrialization.

Of course, the majority of the selections address issues of conservation, but it’s never a one-sided issue. There is nuance in the way the authors perceive the purpose of wilderness. John Muir, proponent for the National Park system and founder of the Sierra Club, saw wilderness as something to be preserved – a radically different view than that of Gifford Pinchot, who had a more utilitarian approach to the use of the American landscape. But both are arguing that wilderness and the environment are crucial to the welfare of our country.

In fact, every author in the book addresses in one form or another that human welfare is intricately linked to the state of the environment. We are healthy as the world is healthy, and to try to separate ourselves out of the environmental web is literally impossible, no matter how much people may think that the world is here for our use and abuse.

No doubt that Bill McKibben had a wealth of writers to choose from, but he did an excellent job of gathering a wide range of talent. All the authors write with passion and commitment; these are issues at the core of who we are as a nation. When we preserve the resources that we have, when we respect the landscape we live on, when we acknowledge errors of the past and try to do better for the future, that is where our hope lies for the future.

So, at a thousand pages, American Earth is, pound-for-pound, a fascinating read.

Book Review: Romola

Victorian meets Renaissance

I’ve said it before: You don’t curl up with a George Eliot novel. You sit in your seat and pay attention.

Typically, Eliot wrote about provincial life in the Victorian era, but her one excursion into the historical novel is Romola (1862-63). Set in 15th Century Renaissance Italy, the novel unfolds against the backdrop of the French-Italian War of 1494. The French king invades Florence, driving out the ruling family, the Medicis. In the midst of the turmoil is the monk Savonarola, whose spiritual visions claim that God is scourging the city of its avarice and politics and is asserting that Pope Alexander VI should be deposed. Savonarola gathers quite a following, culminating in the original Bonfire of the Vanities, yet his fame is short lived. As the French king retreats and the Medicis finagle their way back into power, the monk’s own authority wanes. He is excommunicated, humiliated, and finally executed.

The central character of the novel is Romola, a beautiful and intelligent daughter of a blind scholar. She falls in love with Tito Melema, a Greek refugee who literally washes up on shore in Florence. Tito is all charm and good-nature, and it isn’t long before he and Romola are married. But Tito’s sights are set on Florentine politics. He too finagles his way into the inner circles, proving his adroit skills at playing both sides against each other.

Tito’s predominant trait, and ultimately his greatest failing, is an aversion to anything unpleasant. He simply doesn’t want to experience the ugly side of life. He will postpone addressing conflict in the hope that it will simply resolve itself. Even his effort to find his missing foster father, Baldassare, peters out because it proves all too onerous an undertaking.

Baldassare arrives in the city, where he is chained to other prisoners. He escapes, only to encounter his foster son. Tito finds it an inconvenient time for Baldassare’s return and so denies knowing him.

Driven mad by his foster son’s denial, Baldassare plots how to assassinate Tito. A few failed attempts, and the poor old man is shattered.

Romola and Tito’s marriage is also suffering. They have drifted apart because of Tito’s selfish actions. Romola proves remarkably perceptive, picking up clues here and there about the identity of Baldassare and his relation to Tito. Also, she discovers that her husband has a common-law wife, Tessa, and two children.

George Eliot famously said of Romola that “every sentence [has] been written with my best blood, such as it is, and with the most ardent care for veracity of which my nature is capable.”

You can feel it: There is an earnestness to the prose. All of Eliot’s novels examine the repressed passions of its characters. They feel things deeply, yet in a world as emotionally repressed as the Victorian era, it is often difficult to give vent to it.

That said, Eliot does utilize excessive rational thought to expose what is at the core of every emotion and individual action. You can practically see her with a microscope peering down into the souls of her characters. She keeps scraping away at minutia, as though there is a purer truth underneath it all.

At times, such an approach becomes exhausting. I lost count of the number of times that the action is called to a halt so that the author can peer through her magic lens. What is different about Romola is that the author utilizes dialogue in a more descriptive fashion than in her other novels. Dialogue periodically lends energy to the story, but after a while, the plot simply bogs down. The last quarter of the book, which focuses on Savonarola’s trial and judgment -- which should be thrilling -- is dragged down by the heavy chains of excessive analysis.

This is my third go-round for Romola. The last time I read it was nearly 25 years ago. Admittedly, I didn’t remember much of the plot, other than Tito’s betrayal. The political aspects of the story went over my head at that time, but this time Wikipedia offered me some basic background to understand who Savonarola was and what happened during the Italian War, so I was able to follow the plot more readily.

When I was in my early twenties, I went through quite a George Eliot phase. I was fascinated by all things Victorian – chowing down on Dickens, Trollope, Bronte, and Eliot. More than any of the others, George Eliot fascinated me with her characters’ repressed passion and the author’s critical thinking. But now that I am returning to her work, I am trying to figure out what actually appealed to me. Thirty years ago, I think I was simply too young to comprehend the subtlety of her themes, at least in terms of how the stories fit together. This time, though, I have a greater appreciation for her perceptivity into the human condition, but I am not all that enamored by the density of her writing.

Last year, I tackled Daniel Deronda, and this year it is Romola. Up next is The Mill on the Floss, certainly not one of my favorite of George Eliot’s novels, mostly because of the horrendous abuse that Maggie Tulliver undergoes at the hands of her judgmental brother. But I am hoping that I will comprehend the themes better this time around.