Great Reads in January from NYTimes Non-fiction Bestsellers

My personal reading challenge in January was to read from the NY Times Non-Fiction Bestsellers List. How lucky was I to find autobios/memoirs from two of my favorite musicians, Willie Nelson and Neil Young!

That was at the end of December, when I made up my list of three of the best sellers I wanted to read in January and put those books on hold at my library. Now, one month later, on the updated list, those two books are gone. Great serendipity here! I'm NOT a bestseller reader at all, and I would have missed these books, had I not set this great year-long reading challenge for myself.

On my public library's website, they have a list of LISTS. So I've chosen a different list for each month of the coming year and I'll concentrate my reading on those books. In February, I'll be reading a lot of children's books as I read from the Coretta Scott King Awards list in honor of Black History Month. I have alternated the adult and children's lists, and it looks like a year of very interesting reading --- as evidenced by the great books I started the New Year with. 

Happy New Year & Happy Reading to you!

WAGING HEAVY PEACE 

by Neil Young
©2012 (497 pages)

This five-star autobiography of one of my favorite rock musicians got off to a slow start for me. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Canadian superstar spent the first hundred pages going on and on about his hobby of model trains, his work toward developing better sound quality for users of modern electronic music-listening devices, and his collection of rare cars.

But he was only warming up with the many things that he’s passionate about: his family, his music, his friends, his inventions, his visions for the future. The book was full of interesting stories of the people and bands he made music with, as well as personal anecdotes about his family life, his work for the betterment of small farmers as co-founder of Farm Aid, his founding of the Bridge School for severely handicapped children, and his soon-to-be unveiled LincVolt car, a 1959 Lincoln Continental he’s converting to hybrid technology.

With a music career spanning 4 decades and 32 studio albums, he has a lot to talk about. If you don’t mind passages with technical stuff, he balances the technology (recording music, converting cars, always trying to find a better way to do something) with a personal memoir that seemed honest and tender, full of love and peace.

This book was especially nostalgic for me because I’ve loved Neil Young and his music since I was a teenager. I know his songs well. He was my favorite member of CSN&Y way back when, and I’m familiar with many of his L.A. haunts from when I lived there briefly in the 1970s.

If you’re a fan or a rockologist, you’ll want to grab this new book. If you just don’t know, check him out on Youtube, in a September interview with David Letterman, in which he explains his new high-definition, music-listening device, the Pono, and introduces his then just-released autobiography.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GrgTiqZCF0&list=FLSg-xvyNWB2Of7wbYVQEZRg&index=3



ROLL ME UP AND SMOKE ME WHEN I DIE
by Willie Nelson
©2012  (169 pages)

This was a quick, easy read because it was made up of small sections, so you could stop reading anywhere and pick it back up later without any problems. However, I read it straight through, laughing all the way.

Willie looks back on over 7 decades of making music with his friends and family, cracks dirty jokes and uses “bad language”, and discusses issues important to him. The gray-shaded blocks of text are where family and friends pay tribute to Willie and his music. Various song lyrics are interspersed throughout the book.

I enjoyed the book, even though I don’t think he’s the best singer-songwriter ever, and even though I didn’t necessarily agree with his politics or his ideas about things like reincarnation. I did agree with him on many of the social issues he raised, so the difference in our politics was a bit jarring and disappointing to me.

This is a happy-go-lucky, spontaneous memoir that almost felt like a goodbye, as he named the different people he’s worked with over the years, told a few funny stories about them, and then thanked them for being in his life. He did a lot of thanking in this book, and it always felt warm and sincere.

Willie turns 80 in April. I’m glad he wrote his memoir while he still has time. He’s always been a hard-working, but laid-back, country-western outlaw who surrounded himself with talented musicians and the love of his large, extended Texas family. He’s had a great life, and it shines through in a book that feels like you’re there, listening to him spin his yarns.


UNBROKEN
Laura Hillenbrand
©2010 (398)

By now, I’m sure most people know all about this book and its heartbreaking but inspiring WW2 POW survival story. I’m not kidding, if this book was fiction, it would be unbelievable. If they don’t make it into a movie, they’re missing real Oscar potential.

It’s a book that was both hard for me to read and yet hard to put down. At about halfway through the almost 400 pages, I didn’t think I could go on another page. But having read the word “survival” in the book’s subtitle, I knew the story’s main character was going to make it to the finish, so I was determined to hang in there, too.

I went on-line and read about the author. I found out that this is only her second book. Her first, Seabiscuit (which I also loved), enjoyed a spot on the NYTimes bestseller list (2001-2002) for 30 weeks!

This 45-year-old writer spent seven years`on the research and writing of Unbroken. That the book is heavily annotated (50 pages of notes), along with 7 pages of acknowledgments by the author, attests to the fact that this was a well-researched book. The page-turner narrative style of the author was complimented by sensitive, well-done portrayals of the many characters in the book. It is definitely one of those books that make you feel "you are there."

Laura Hillenbrand contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when she was in college, which has left her pretty much home-bound since. She once spent 2 and a half years without leaving her house at all because of her debilitating health condition.
While writing this book, she interviewed Louie Zamperini (the protagonist POW survivor of whom Unbroken was written) over the phone 75 times, developing a friendship in absentia. When “the Zamp” finally learned about her illness after reading an interview she had done, he was so inspired he sent her one of his Purple Heart medals, saying she deserved it more than he did.

For the past year I’ve been struggling to learn how to live with my own debilitating health condition, fibromyalgia. I have to say, I’ve been doubly blessed and doubly inspired by reading how an American POW war hero and his biographer (for whom writing is “an escape”) have dealt with the incredible pain in their own lives.

If you haven’t read this book yet, you’re missing out on a wonderful WW2 story of courage and survival by a writer who says, "I'm looking for a way out of here [her disability]. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives - it's my way of living vicariously."

Here’s the fascinating web article where I got most of my info about the author:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/28/AR2010112803533_3.html

2012 End-of-the-Year Update

Wow!  I can't believe how badly I've neglected my book blog. My apologies. I didn't do much reading in November, when the weather really started giving me pain. 

A painful smile after hiking Starved Rock St. Park

I read voraciously on my good days, stealing precious moments that I should be tending the wood stove, doing the laundry, walking the dog (it's too cold outside!), running the vaccuum, mopping up muddy paw prints (canine, human, and sometimes sneaky feline).

Below are some reviews from a few of the books I read in November and December:

HALF BROKE HORSES - Jeannette Walls (273)

c. 2009  I’ve been meaning to read this book ever since I read Jeannette Walls autobiography, The Glass Castle over a year ago.  I enjoyed that rollicking book so much, I just had to read the story of the author’s grandmother.

Lily Casey was quite a character.  She grew up on a rustic homestead in gritty western Texas and was helping her father break horses at the age of six.  Without even an eighth-grade education, she got her first job, at age 15, as a teacher in remote northern Arizona.  It took her a whole month of riding alone on her favorite mustang, Patches, to cover the 500 miles it took to get there.

In a harsh country of droughts, sandstorms, tornadoes and flash floods, Lily grew up fast and resilient, married a good man, and had two children. The girl, Rosemary, grew up to be the author’s equally unusual mother, an important character her autobiography.

Although a true story, this book is called a “novel” by the author because it was based on family legends and second-hand anecdotes about her wild-West ancestor. Lily Casey died when her grand-daughter was a little girl, so Walls didn’t personally remember that much about her. Told in first-person, I thought the author really captured the “voice” of her grandmother, distinctly different from her own voice as the grand-daughter in The Glass Castle.

I was also interested in reading this book because my own grandmother, according to our family legends, was quite a horse trainer herself.  She moved west as a young bride and bore the first two sons of eleven children in a tiny sod cabin on the Kansas-Oklahoma border.  I could easily see in Lily Casey a lot of the pioneer spirit my own dear grandmother had.

Both books are quick, easy reads and immensely fascinating. 5 stars & highly recommended.

THE LACUNA - Barbara Kingsolver (507)

c. 2009  Barbara Kingsolver is a favorite author of mine. But I must admit, this wasn’t a favorite among the books I’ve read by her. Weighing in at a little over 500 pages, I thought it would never end.

Nine years separated Kingsolver’s fifth (The Poisonwood Bible) and this, her sixth, novel. Not having read The Poisonwood Bible, I don’t know if she was experimenting with something new in her writing, or if she was simply being overly-ambitious with such a large subject --- but this book fell a bit short of the epic it seems to try to be.

Told through the journals and letters of a (fictitious) famous author, who is half-Mexican, half-American and grew up in Mexico, this historical novel centers around cold-war politics after WW2, and its effect on individual “freedoms”. The author also adds in some real and imagined news clippings that help establish the setting: a time of fear and suspicion in our country.  Using this format for shaping her story, the author runs the risk of a choppy feel. And there were times when it did seem that way.  Also there were long stretches of boredom, when the book just failed to hold my attention.

I enjoyed the “Frida” part of the book and that, in itself, would have been enough for me. I could have used a little more of it. It was a colorful and lively beginning to what turned into a dark and gloomy tale. But this wasn’t just a story of camaraderie with the Riveras, who young Shepherd had worked for back in Mexico. In having Shepherd’s life continue on in the U.S. as he matures into a successful author, Kingsolver demonstrates that a pleasurable, passionate time early in a person’s life can have unforeseen consequences later on down the road.

Several times in the book, it is remarked that the average American doesn’t have a clue what a Communist is or looks like. I’d also add that there aren’t many people left who are old enough to remember McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s. Even if they did, what would they remember of it?  Did they even understand what was happening? Were they aware of how public opinion was being swayed and shaped by the media (primarily newspapers and magazines back then)? Could history repeat itself?

I rate this book 3.5 stars, better than average. If you read it for no other reason than to familiarize yourself with the Cold War and the era of McCarthyism, it will have been time well spent. I was impressed by Kingsolver’s historical reference list --- more good reading there.

 

THE END OF OIL - Paul Roberts (332)

c.2004  The big, oily teardrop on the book’s cover tells the whole story: The world will soon run out of oil. Then what? If you think the scientists, geologists, and governments have this all planned out and under control, you’d better read this book.

“Americans are, in general, the least energy-conscious people in the world. We are not only profoundly ignorant about what energy is, and the critical role it has played and continues to play in economics and politics, but most of us simply don’t care about energy,” explains the author.

This sometimes wordy, but comprehensive. guide to the energy economy was slow reading, but I learned so much from it. There were times when I thought the author was being repetitious. The book seemed like it would never come to an end. It had so many facts and figures, and yet it was never boring. Just slow going for me.

There’s also the problem of the material being dated (2004).  I would like to find another book, like this one, that shows what’s going on now, in 2012.

I probably liked this one so much because it mirrors my own opinions on the subject.  You could probably read the prologue and the last two chapters and still get the gist of this doomsday scenario. Five stars and highly  recommended.

That's enough for today. 

I'll see what I can scrape up for tomorrow.

 

 

Great Books Week

Poster courtesy: http://greatbooks.naiwe.com/

GREAT BOOKS WEEK (Oct. 7-13) begins today. This year they are celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES.  I’ve never read it, but I’ll try to pick up a copy at the library next time I go.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with reviews of some of the "Great Books" I have read recently:




BLACK ELK SPEAKS: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux by Black Elk (as told through John G. Neihardt) (244)
©1932   Black Elk, a young cousin of Crazy Horse, had a great vision when he was only nine years old, which led him to become a medicine man before he was 20. He was illiterate and unable to understand English, so the stories he tells are through an interpreter and written down by the author in 1931. The book tells of his early life during the time of the big change, when white settlers were moving across the plains in vast numbers, and the U.S. Cavalry was in charge of keeping them and the miners seeking the gold of the Black Hills safe. So many broken treaties by the U.S. government led to the bitter Indian Wars.

This book was both beautiful in its Native American mysticism and heartbreaking in it’s violence and despair. There was one uproariously funny story about an Indian brave of the tribe trying to win the heart and hand of a beautiful young maiden. Black Elk also related stories of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the betrayal, arrest and killing Crazy Horse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

Black Elk was a truly wise old man who said: “You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round…The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. …Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. …Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and they were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
But the Wasichus [white men] have put us in these square boxes [cabins and shacks]. Our power is gone and we are dying, for the power is not in us anymore. You can look at our boys and see how it was with us. When we were living by the power of the circle in the way we should, boys were men at twelve or thirteen years of age. But now it takes them very much longer to mature.”

This book should be required reading in high school history classes, so future generations will always remember how disgracefully the Native Americans were treated by land- and resource-hungry whites and the U.S. government. It, like slavery, is a bloody blot on our nation’s history that I’m sure many people would rather forget.


RAMONA - Helen Hunt Jackson (424)
©1884 A very old story about the early history of California and the injustices that Mexicans and Indians alike suffered when the U.S. came to own the region and ruthlessly kicked them off their land, as our government opened it up to white settlers.

This is the moving, though sometimes sentimental, love story of the beautiful, young, half-Indian/half-white orphan Ramona, who was raised as a foster child on a rich Mexican estate, and an Indian shepherd named Alessandro, who wins her heart when he and his people go there to shear the hacienda’s sheep.

The novel was written to call attention to the plight of Native Americans, much as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for slaves. This book from the late 19th century has never been out of print, with over 300 reissues. If you like history and romance, Ramona has plenty of both.

[sidenote] My family lived in Ramona, California (named after the book’s heroine) when I was in kindergarten and first grade. I have also visited Helen Hunt Falls in Colorado Springs, Colorado twice --- it’s named after the successful author, who moved to Colorado Springs in 1873 for health reasons. 


GIANTS IN THE EARTH - O. E. Rolvaag (453)
©1927 An epic novel of Norwegian immigrants settling the Great Plains at the end of the 19th century. I don’t know of any book that has captured the harsh, unforgiving environment or the sturdy determination of the settlers better than this one. I especially felt for the wife/mother in this story, who suffered miserable depression from the utter silence, expansiveness and loneliness of the prairie. If you like stories of perserverence in the face of hardship and neighbor helping neighbor to survive, I recommend this one for your reading pleasure.

Look What I Found

I'm sorting and boxing up books that are scattered about the house today. Boxes are labeled My Library (books I've read and want to keep), TBR, and Giveaway (I'll probably drop them off at the Goodwill store). Some of these books I haven't even seen for about 20 years! And then I came across a stack of booklets I bought when I was a kid. 

I must have been about 12, because that's when an older teenage friend of the family got drafted and sent to Vietnam. Before he left, he gave his old horse to me and my sister. Big mistake! Queenie had been rode hard by a teenage boy who knew how to handle her. For two little girls with almost no riding experience, she was downright mean and dangerous. :o( A real disappointment!

To learn more about horses, we answered an ad we'd read in Western Horseman magazine for a course in Horse Training from the Beery School of Horsemanship, of Pleasant Hill, Ohio. When they sent back info, the course cost a lot of money --- something like $25, a lot of money for two kids in the '60s who only made $1 an hour babysitting and $1 a week allowance.

We had to really badger our mom to loan us the money, but we did get the booklets. Along with the basic horse training set, they included three other sets of booklets: Saddle Horse Instructions (about English-style riding), How to Ride and Train the Western Horse, and Home Course in Animal Breeding. I really loved these booklets and learned alot about riding from them. Oh, and the course in animal breeding was my introduction to the topic of sex, with its crudely drawn pictures of the reproductive organs of horses, cows and pigs and it's descriptions of animals breeding, with forbidden words like vag*** and pen** (we CAN say those words now, right?) LOL! 

Professor Jesse Beery (1861-1945)  was a true pioneer in the field of horse training.  For 16 years he toured the country, demonstrating his training skills at county fairs and expositions. Then in 1905, when he realized he was becoming overwhelmed with demands for his performances, he went back home to Pleasant Hill, Ohio and began a very successful mail-order course in horsemanship. 

His first edition of the booklets came out around 1908-1909, with reprintings in the 1940s, 1960s (mine), and 1970s. I searched on-line and discovered that these books are indeed rare and collectible.  The 8 book basic  set I have is selling for $125 in excellent condition.  The Saddle Horse set is worth $65 and the breeding course is $50. The complete 30 book set  is worth $300 in excellent condition. Mine is in very good, used condition with a few stains, and two books missing from the Western set. But I can sell the ones I do have, individually, for from $10-$25 each

It's really good to find this "blast from the past." Now I need to decide if I want to sell them or not…

A Famous Wager

Photo courtesy of NASA

Today is Phileas Fogg’s Wager Day. In Jules Verne’s adventure novel AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, Fogg bets 20,000 pounds that he can make a tour of the world in eighty days or less. When asked when he would leave on his journey: "This very evening," returned Phileas Fogg. He took out and consulted a pocket almanac, and added, "As today is Wednesday, the 2nd of October [1872], I shall be due in London in this very room of the Reform Club, on Saturday, the 21st of December, at a quarter before nine p.m.; or else the twenty thousand pounds… will belong to you…”


This classic can be read, for free, on-line at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/103/103-h/103-h.htm

A Few Selections from John Steinbeck

Modern Day Monterey, photo courtesy http://pdphoto.org/   Thanks, Jon!

TORTILLA FLAT - John Steinbeck (207)
©1935 This is an early novel of Steinbeck’s, and the one that put him on the road to literary success. The author based his characters on actual people he knew and liked, but the book is still being criticized as a stereotypical view of Hispanics as drunk and lazy.

The dialog of the characters is also strange. They use words like “thee,” “thou” and “thine,” which threw me off a little, because Mexican-Americans don’t speak like that.  In the author’s biography I read recently, it said that this book was based on the Arthurian legends that Steinbeck read and enjoyed so much as a boy.

That said, the story is not much of a story, but more of a character sketch: in this case, the character is Tortilla Flat, a shabby village on the outskirts of Monterey, California where the jobless and homeless and poor paisanos live a hand-to-mouth existence. The reader gets to know the parish priest, shady ladies, local business people, and a band of drunken, petty thieves quite well.

Danny is a young man who returns from service in WW1 to find that he has inherited two houses in Tortilla Flat from his grandfather. He invites a friend to rent one of his houses, and the friend invites a friend, and the house gets sublet a number of times, but nobody pays any rent. When the house accidentally burns to the ground, its occupants move in with Danny. At any one time there could be 6 men and 5 dogs living in Danny’s house. Only Danny has a bed. Everyone else sleeps on the floor.
This set-up reminds me of the hippie communes of the late 60s. Somebody would rent a house, then invite a friend to share the rent, who invites a friend, and pretty soon you have one crowded house where nobody is working or paying rent. Instead they’re partying all day and night.

Steinbeck’s little round-table group spend much of their time drinking wine, chasing women, and gossiping about their Tortilla Flat neighbors. Except for occasional work cutting squid for Chin Kee, all these friends are unemployed. They cheat, borrow, beg or steal whatever they need from their neighbors. Their principal activity is getting drunk together.

As I was reading this book, I kept thinking, “Come on, somebody do something!” But by the time I got to the end I realized that I was only reading it superficially, for a plot. So much more is being said here about friendship, loyalty, love, hard times, alcoholism, etc. The characters are well-drawn, lovable bums and the story is lightened with comedy, sharpened with drama, and sweetened with romance. The ending was a surprise to me. I think this is a book I might like to read again someday. I’d also like to see the old 1942 Spencer Tracy movie of it.


CANNERY ROW - John Steinbeck (196)
©1945 This book reminded me a lot of Steinbeck’s earlier novel, Tortilla Flat, except that it is a bit longer and the plot is more involved. Both books were set in the same area (Monterey, California), different neighborhoods, different people. They both featured the lives of the Depression-era poor. Tortilla Flats had a group of six homeless, shiftless vagabonds and five dogs living in one house. Cannery Row had five men and one dog sharing an abandoned warehouse they fixed up and named the Palace Flophouse and Grill. The theme of both books seems to be “Let’s Party!” and even though the characters couldn’t afford to, they found ways to have fun despite the bad times they were going through.

I think the reason Steinbeck was such a brilliant writer is because he wrote about what he knew. He was born in nearby Salinas and lived much of his life in the Monterey area. He got to know the people. One of the main characters in this book, a marine biologist named Doc, is based on his good friend Ed Ricketts who collected and sold marine specimens. Steinbeck often helped him on his collecting trips to tide pools, so he was able to write about such a life convincingly. All of the characters in this book, from Mack and the Boys to shopkeeper Lee Chong to Dora, the outrageous madame of the Bear Flag “restaurant,” are so finely rendered, as is the landscape of the Monterey area and the waterfront district called Cannery Row.

Tortilla Flat was a simple, comedic sketch of a neighborhood and some of its residents. Cannery Row was more like a string of short stories that came together as a heart-warming novel of a poor neighborhood, filled with interesting people, plenty of humor, and friendship. Of the two, I recommend Cannery Row as an introduction to Steinbeck’s literary brilliance.

THE MOON IS DOWN - John Steinbeck (188)

©1942  This minor novel by Steinbeck is a war novel in which the townspeople of an occupied village in Northern Europe resent being taken over by a foreign army. Although he doesn’t name the country, it’s presumed to be Norway, and the town is a strategic coastal shipping center for the coal region. It is also assumed that the invaders are the Nazis.

In 1945, Steinbeck received the Haakon Vll Cross of Freedom for his literary contributions to the Norwegian resistance movement. While not my favorite of his many works, it was still good reading.

 

My Reading Place

Perfect day, a cool-breeze 75 degree afternoon...

I think I'll read a book.