Updated May 20, 2009    URL is www.tentativetimes.net/books/2009.html

Book Commentary For 2009
often updated

I'm still reading but life overwhelmed me,  and I didn't review for the last 9 months.  I'll start again now, with brief references to the memorable books.  Seems we are moving to a 900 square foot apartment, when we sell our old Victorian house.  Most of my books had to be sold.  It was hard.  I couldn't adjust to losing my books,  no matter how much time passed, so I am buying more books.  We will just have to rent another U-Stor unit somewhere to house them.   I don't think that environment is healthy for books, being in an unheated U-Stor.

Some of the memorable books I discovered recently:

Star review of this season:
Bundles, A'Lelia, On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker
     A'Lelia Bundles,  Madam Walker's great-great-grandchild, has written a remarkable biography with NO downtime at all.  "Downtime" to me is the boring parts, the parts I have to skip over to force myself to keep reading.  I enjoyed and learned from every paragraph in On Her Own Ground.  I knew that Madam Walker had been well-known for her hair-restoring preparation, made in a factory in Indianapolis.  I knew she had become wealthy and that there is a building in Indianapolis named for her. 

    I didn't know anything!  A'Lelia Bundles taught me the entire history of sharecroppers moving out of the south, families and especially women moving north and facing the discrimination I hadn't known existed (to such an extent.)  I learned about the role of churches, social organizations, political banding and the press. The history of the fight to outlaw lynching, the unshakeable passivity of President Woodrow Wilson,  the political spying within the  social and political groups,  the rise of Harlem, the Millionaire's Row of Irvington-on-Hudson (where Madam Walker had Villa Lewaro built,)  the failure of all the other races to be included in the Peace Talks ending World War I, Negro (her term as used at that time) Military History, early fancy cars, the incredible grit it took to even begin to dare to try to rise above one's "place" in segregated society. 

  This is a breathtaking book and it goes down like honey, not like a history book written by a dry, dull, droning professor.   I know, old as I am, that my brain is vastly changed by reading this book.  I have the large-print edition from Thorndike Press, Waterville, Maine.  On Her Own Ground is copyright 2001 by A'Lelia Bundles, published 2001 by Scribner, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.  ISBN0-7862-3489-X.  I just bought my own copy to keep and lend.

FICTION

Garner, Helen The Spare Room, 2008, Henry Holt and Co. ISBN-13 978-0-8050-8888-5 hardcover

Extraordinary tale of taking in an old friend who comes to town for three weeks of alternative cancer treatments.  Think that wouldn't make a book?  Wrong.  Garner brings hidden emotions to life like no other writer.  Nicola claims she will be cured and well "by the middle of next week."  Helen, her hostess, the soul of politeness, finds her own breaking point closer than she had dreamed.  This comes as a surprise to the reader, but it's eye-opening and not to be missed.  For anyone who will lose a friend in this lifetime, The Spare Room will open your eyes to what not to say, ways to cope, surprising things you might learn about yourself, the importance of friends, the self-protecting refusal to face reality, and adjusting one's expectations of oneself.  Yet it isn't a preachy book at all.  You glide through it (until it becomes a canoe on the open ocean.)  I wouldn't have missed it for anything.  Garner is an accomplished writer with at least nine published books and two screenplays to her credit.   The Spare Room  won both a Victorian Premiere's and a Queensland Premiere's Award for this distinguished Australian lady. 

Maistros, Louis The Sound Of Building Coffins, 2009 ISBN 978 1 59264 255 7, hardcover.  The Toby Press L.L.C., New Milford, CT.

I didn't understand this book but I tried. I kept reading it. I never quite grasp supernatural goings-on, but if they are going to be anywhere, a book about New Orleans is the place! The blurbs convinced me that I am a ninny, for Donald Harington says "No novel since A Confederacy of Dunces has done such justice to New Orleans,"  and calls it "unlike anything in our literature."

Poppy Z. Brite, Publishers Weekly, Paul G. Tremblay and Raymond Buckland are equally congratulatory.  The book focuses on a family in New Orleans starting in 1891 and nothing good ever happens to anyone, but terrible things keep happening.  I guess I learned a lot about New Orleans at that time, but I wish I hadn't.  Do read this book if you don't tend toward depression.  On the dust jacket, Louis Maistro's child Booker has snapped a fine portrait of Louis, who lives in the City That Care Forgot with his wife and three children, working to get the city going again.  He didn't run.  He didn't hide.  And he did make time to write this acclaimed historical novel. 

Dorsey, Tim,  Nuclear Jellyfish, 2009, Wm Morrow, ISBN 978 0 06 143266-8 hardback
Here is a comedy/crime writer so unique that his closest parallel is Kinky Friedman.  Run away now if the Naughty Words and bad ends for dastardly crooks upset you.  Otherwise dive into Nuclear Jellyfish with my little hint of helpfulness.... i.e. the book starts in the middle, switches to the beginning and ends at the end.  Er, the beginning is in the middle.  Oh well, I tried.

 Dorsey has written at least ten books set in Florida, and he really, really knows his Florida (or was it all lies, pillow talk, come-ons to lure this impressionable reader further down his garden path?)  Serge and Coolman, his spaced-out sidekick, wreak vengeance on a psychopath whose glow-in-the-dark tattoo looks like a jellyfish.  So many men on the fringes of the economy are willing to be sucked into his con game involving transporting loose jewels to jewelers.... so many marks.... such fodder for Serge's hilarious commentary.   I agreed with his observation that the folks out there in bathtubs at the shore might not have had erectile dysfunction if the hadn't carried the bleeping bathtubs into the surf in the first place.   But I digress.  Try his Atomic Lobster next, or Hammerhead Ranch Hotel, or The Stingray Shuffle or Torpedo Juice, whatever your bookstore or library has at hand, then buy the rest on-line.  Collect the whole shebang and laugh until you ache. 

Chipman, Liz, The Lighthouse  If I remember, I think this fine story was about an orphaned girl who was sent to live with a blind lighthouse keeper.  He wasn't prone to conversation.  The girl learned to polish the light and the brass and keep house, fix some very meager meals and keep to herself.  As time passed the lighthouse keeper began to tell her stories and eventually, many years later, the lighthouse was to be closed.  The lighthouse keeper rowed away, the girl stayed behind, and eventually she was evicted.  The lighthouse keeper rowed back and picked her off the base of the lighthouse.  At this point we realize the book is an allegory, I think. 

Now I can't swear to this, because I read three lighthouse-setting books in a row and saw a TV movie about something very similar at the same time, and now it is all mixed up in my mind. But if this review is right, the book is well-written, will keep you awake at night, and you will be glad you took the time to read it. 

Dams, Jeanne H., Indigo Christmas, a Hilda Johansson series mystery.  Jeanne Dams of South Bend, Indiana knows her history! Her historic Hilda Johansson was a maid in the Studebaker mansion and in this book has married a fireman, against her family's wishes, and is a matron in society herself.  (Her husband is Roman Catholic, but Hilda is Swedish and Protestant.)  There is a murder and a falsely-accused friend must be exonerated.  Hilda never gives up and never gives in.  Back in high school, we learned a lot of history from books like these, and it's still painless and fun.  Dams is also the author of the British-based Aurora Teegarden mystery series.  She's not only a whiz of a writer, her hats are spectacular too.  Authentic to the core, Dams history from a woman's viewpoint is fun.

Andrews, Donna  Delete All Subjects, not one of her bird books, looked promising but I couldn't read the tiny print. What are publishers trying to do with hardbacks?  Many of the books out now have small print with the lines crammed together.  Donna, the publishers are not doing you a favor.  Anyone who can find Donna Andrews in a readable typeface will enjoy her witty non-offensive mysteries.

Harris, Charlaine, Sweet and Deadly. This is the wittiest mystery I've read by Charlaine.  I didn't take notes but I recommend her to all.  As I remember, she used to be very serious, but here she has gotten over that!

Stratton-Porter, Gene  A Girl of the Limberlost.  This year, 2009, is the 100th anniversary of the publication of this enduring book.  Governor Daniels has dedicated a month to Gene Stratton-Porter in her honor.  I mention this on this page because I make the website for her cabin at the Limberlost Swamp, an Indiana State Historic Site in Geneva, Indiana.  There is another of her homes at Sylvan Lake, Indiana also called Limberlost, but I don't write for that one. She was a pioneering naturalist, ecologist, novelist, photographer, movie-maker and more.  Please get to know her now!

HISTORICAL FICTION
Epstein, Jennifer Cody, The Painter from Shanghai
It wasn't until the book ended that I realized that Pan Yuliang (1895-1977) was an actual person, a woman famous in the world of art in her time, and an important influence on Chinese painting for a good while.  The story is one tragedy after another. You have to steel yourself to read through it, although of course it is wonderfully written and researched.  You aren't likely to forget any of this (fictionalized)  biography, from Yuliang's sale into a brothel at the age of 14 through her escape into concubinage and her nerve to demand an education in art and later, to travel abroad to study,  The politics of the times (the 1920s and 30s) impact her life so destructively that China comes more alive even than in the film The Last Emperor.    I hope Epstein wins honors for this masterpiece.  Published in 2008 in cooperation with W. W. Norton and Company, my copy is from Thorndike Press, 602 pages Hb Large Type, ISBN-13: 978-1-4104-1169-9  and ISBN 10: 1-4104-1169-9

NON-FICTION

Because our house is for sale in a slow market, I am reading all the books in our library, some twice, about staging our house and how to downsize.  "How to move" is much on my mind.  I apologize for not reading more books you would like to read about.  But don't miss these winners below!
The American Drive-In by Michael Karl Witzel,  1994 Motorbooks International, P.O. Box 2, 729 Prospect Avenue, Osceola, Wisconsin,  54020 USA.  192 pages, hardbound. 

Just fascinating, adorable, full of obscure facts and tidbits, a welcome overdose of nostalgia!  A perfect coffee-table book you wont want to put away shows Witzel has his heart in this work.  Did you know that the first drive-in restaurant at an airport was in Elwood, Indiana?  No lie, the carhop brought your food to your little plane. Did you know that the first widespread uniform style imitated service station workers, with a billed hat, white shirt, black tie, black pants and shoes? 

Who started the majorette uniform craze?  What drive-in had a dance number to showcase the hops at shift change?  Who had the best neon?  What went wrong with the drive-in culture?  Which drive-in stuck huge hoses through your window to air condition your car as you ate in the hot Texas sun, way back when?  When you check out the Dilley sextuplets at Arnolds in Decatur, Indiana, or your nearest drive-in next time, you will know more than you knew there was to learn!  I just bought my own copy on-line after I wrote this review.

Langewiesche, William, The Outlaw Sea, A World of Freedom, Chaos and Crime.  Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Inc. 2004.

If i had a ratings system, this ocean-going book would be all thumbs up! Langewidsche has four previous books out and writes for the Atlantic Monthly.

The Outlaw Sea  explains the complex history of shipping and why there is virtually no way to regulate it now.  You know all those different flags and countries of registry?  They serve to obfuscate the lack of enforceable rules for safety and environmental protection.  Smokescreens blind us to the real reasons control is impossible.  We learn why it is impossible to patrol the seas to prevent piracy, even with satellites. It's like the Navy Prayer, "the sea is so big and my boat is so small."  You can't get there on time to prevent the pirates' fast boats from taking over a freighter.  At least not every time.  Hardly ever, really.  Are you safe on a ferry?  What's in that container in the middle of the hold of a ship that just docked in your city? It's not for me to tell you.  Read this book.  Sleep less well at night.

 George Friedman, The Next 100 Years, A Forecast For the 21st Century.  I now sleep better at night, having unloaded all my worry thanks to George Friedman.  I liked what he predicts. I choose to go forward believing some of my huge fears are baseless, including my old fear that China would soon own every cent the U.S. Treasury ever printed and that North Korea was about to blow us to smithereens.  If I remember correctly, this fine book posits Turkey and Japan as the two powers that will be the greatest threat to our former way of life.  I am not trying to sound like a smart-aleck here.  I am glad to have new worries, worries I don't hear about on the news, worries I know almost nothing about.  I know Friedman is Smart with a capital S, an original mind, a scholar I can trust.  I have not had anyone of his caliber in my life.  I think the Japanese and Turks will be reasonable and happy to have the United States as a player in the world markets.  I don't want to be disabused unless Friedman himself changes his mind.  Fascinating cogitation. 

William Lobdell. Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion.  Lobdell grew up fundamentalist and became the religion reporter for a Los Angeles newspaper.  As he became disenchanted with the fraud and lies he uncovered, he began to question more and more of what he had believed so strongly in his youth.  Here is a reasoned inner look at a life well lived, not written to convince you to believe any one way.  An intelligent, exhausting struggle leaves Lobdell with a firm, grounded way of looking at life. Don't read it if you just want to disagree.  But in that case, you wouldn't be reading this page.

Bentley, Barbara, A Dance With The Devil.  Barbara fell for her Prince Charming, a retired U.S. Navy Admiral with many medals, an illustrious career and a family he seemed reluctant to introduce to his bride.  Ummm, we all know what that means, right? The only real Admiral in the family was her father-in-law.  The rest was created in her husband's imagination. Barbara didn't wake up and smell the coffee until it was too late, but she saved her own life and then tried to get a divorce.   

The kicker here is that Barbara lived  in California, a community property state.  After all she had gone through, she would still have to give up half of everything she had,  to get her divorce.  She went to work to change the laws, so that if a spouse was a convicted felon, (he served a short stint for trying to kill Barbara but was paroled quickly) the other divorcing party would have recourse. It was too late for Barbara in the end, but she was able to get such a law passed in California after her divorce was final. .  Other community property states should have this law too.  (My husband glommed on to this book and read it cover to cover in two days, and this review is a paraphrase of what he told me.  He couldn't stop talking about how this man pulled the wool over Barbara's eyes.  He is still  angry at the way her husband treated her.)

Simon, Lizzie, Detour, My Bi-Polar Road Trip in 4-D
     This catchy title roped me in for a whiz of a ride,  as Simon tours the United States looking for people like her.  She had noted that bi-polar disorder is under-diagnosed and greatly misunderstood, even by the people who have it.  Yet oddly enough, some of the bi-polar sufferers can be enormously successful. She wanted to meet those people: young, superachieving, bi-polar Americans. 

Simon's book is insightful, compelling and breathtaking; her journey, however, was forty kinds of frustrating.  She survived, she grew, and she went home to come to terms with her family and her future.  If there was ever a woman who should cut herself some slack, Lizzie is that woman.  I hope she has rested up and set out on a career that will not eat up 120% of her time. I hope she will like,  even love what she does in her career, and I hope she continues to educate the rest of us who had no idea what she went through. Lizzie rocks, and I hope everyone she knows keeps telling her that! 

Yeager, Jeff  The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map To True Riches
My husband chose this at the library and couldn't stop reading passages aloud to me.  He enjoyed hearing that we are doing things right!  See Yeagler's website, www.UltimateCheapskate.com 

Kantar, Edwin B., Bridge for Dummies
I came, I saw, I read, I don't want to learn to play bridge.  I have too few friends to risk losing any because of a card game.  If I could learn with all beginners, it would be fun, but I don't want to be the only  newbie.  This book was all about contract bridge, I think, where each table has the same hands.  Then they start bidding and playing.  I love Euchre and Canasta, and I devoted part of my life to  playing Magic, The Gathering.  I was good at that! I like to whoop and shout when I play cards. I just can't see me in a sedate bridge crowd.  If anyone has any advice, email me at secop@parlorcity.com

Marcus, Leonard S., Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts
Who knew there could be so much intrigue and treachery, competition and skullduggery in the world of small paper books for children?  What a fascinating tale of a publishing miracle, designed to get books into every child's home at a tiny price.  We all have our beloved illustrators and favorite stories from childhood.  Now learn what went on behind the scenes. 
    
Salesmen fought the concept of low priced books.  Booksellers didn't want the competition. Imagine, books in dime stores and supermarkets!  They were scandalized.  But Little Golden Books survived and thrived.  I expect The Pokey Little Puppy taught kindness to animals and how to be the youngest child; Mike Milligan and His Steam Shovel inspired a lot of careers and taught perseverance, We Help Mommy and We Help Daddy perpetuated stereotypes unknowingly, (they are politically corrected now) and each favorite lingers in the minds of children, parents and grandparents.  Rare Little Goldens command a good price, since children's books seldom last long.  Go get this huge, unwieldy hunk of a book and bring back memories and smiles.

FOR CHILDREN

Aiken, Joan, Dangerous Games.  This must have been a follow-up to Bad Hearts at Battersea, for here I found Dido Twite (from the Willoughby Chase series) reunited with Simon, aboard a sailing ship headed for her home. Needless to say she doesn't arrive there in this book.  No, no, no breaks for Dido.  It seems the King in England has been  feeling fretful and has sent a friend abroad to find new games to amuse his Royal self. 

The friend has disappeared on a mysterious island, and Dido, Simon and another ship's Captain are sent to find him and send him back to the King post haste.  Joan Aiken is the daughter of Conrad Aiken, and a better writer would be quite hard to find.  She throws the supernatural hooks in this tome, confounding us on every page.  Far be it from me to tell you more.  If you have a child to read with, or a grandchild, or your inner child is still awake, grab Dangerous Games from your bookseller or your library and go for a tense, delightfully terrifying romp with vartlets, fairies, witches, monkeys, downpours and a vanished baby.  Justice is served, hearts are broken, Dido saves the day and all's well that end's well.  Joan Aiken: you can't read just one.

Since I can't keep up with what I read, I'm going to report on what stands out in my mind. 

Too many of my books come from the library and get returned promptly.  I can't find time to write about them, but I have a few brief notes.  I also had to sell a great many books this year which I won't be able to write about.  If I have forgotten a book after reading it, I won't say anything about it.

Here's a link to the beginnings of my tiny book "reviews" now in about ten long sections

Here's a link back to www.tentativetimes.net my e-zine magazines

I think I will concentrate on travel books written by women, as far as collecting goes.  Also books by writers from Tippecanoe County, Indiana (includes Lafayette and West Lafayette.)  If you want to suggest a good one to me, I'm Sandra Weinhardt at secop@parlorcity.com