ReadWorthy Books

Traces Remain

2012-01-29T11:46:00.000-08:00

Charles Nicholl’s latest book, Traces Remain, is written in his singularly intricate and orotund style. This is a collection of essays of mysterious and historical puzzlements including the death of Chaucer, Shakespeare authorship, and other scribblers and literary alchemists.

Of particular interest to Sherlockians is: “Joe the Ripper: a New Suspect.” Functioning like a palimpsest, this is a book review as well as an analytical discourse of Charles van Onselen’s 2007 The Fox and the Flies (“Fox” being the proposed Ripper suspect).

On the “New” Jack the Ripper suspect:

With Nicholls’ re-shuffling of Jack the Ripper suspects, one becomes further perplexed by the castoff Ripper graffiti which announced “The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed for nothing." That is, you cannot just continue to blame us! Or, in the alternative, if Jews must be blamed for something, here’s something that will really cause a Ripple.

The details are that five prostitutes, alcoholic and destitute, were murdered and their corpses mutilated with a bladed instrument. These unsolved murders occurred in the early hours, between Aug. 31 to Nov. 9, 1888, in the untypical quiet of an overcrowded immigrant district of Whitechapel where Jews and Irish swelled the squalid ranks (no fog-lapped windowpanes). The women died while working, on the street, except for the last one who died in her lodgings.

South African historian van Onselen identifies “Joe” the Ripper, aka Joe Fox/ Joe Silver as the sexually-motivated perpetrator. Fox lived in South Africa, having traveled there from New York and London in the late 1890s. He may have made a brief stop in Whitechapel in the 1890s but there was no recorded connection in 1888.

According to Hartley Nathan in Who Was Jack the Ripper, “The authorities and upper classes assumed that the perpetrator must be a foreigner or a low-class savage.” Numerous Ripperologists also profiled a suspect from the upper classes, wandering through this community unrecognized. Nicholl observes correctly that identification of the Ripper as Jewish may have been anti-Semitic scapegoating, but that it was more likely a possibility than not. A Jack the Ripper suspect was reported to have worn astrakhan. Symbolically, in literature and in journalistic reporting, “swarthy” men wore astrakhan, and so we find in Arthur Conan Doyle, T.S. Eliot, and in Evelyn Waugh. The Ripper was reported to have worn a hat, and in one sighting, it was described as a “deerstalker.” Jewish men always wore hats; a traditional habit. British workmen were not so obliged.

Van Onselen’s Joe Fox was a pornography entrepreneur (new on the Victorian horizon), brothel-keeping, criminal habitué…an immigrant trying to make a large living and unable to do so legitimately. Most of the Jewish suspects were excluded by dates, alibis, and other negations, but one persisted, and it wasn’t Joe Fox. It was Aaron Kosminski. He featured in the early police investigations upon witness identification. Robert House persuasively placed him as the killer in Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard’s Prime Suspect.

Aaron emigrated with his family from Russo-Poland about 1882, at age 17. In those little towns, Jews were familiar with blood libel accusations—knife-slaughter and mutilation of gentile children for Jewish rituals. Aaron would also have observed the common ritual slaughter of chickens for the weekly shabbos table.

Living alone in Whitechapel, behind his family in a backroom shelter, Aaron was variously reported as an infrequent hairdresser, tailor, and as a laborer in Butcher’s Row. All was not without serendipity in Whitechapel. In 1880, author Charles Fox had published a celebrated version of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Sweeney Todd was dedicated to slitting the throats of the upper class, and, inspired by utilitarian theories, converted the victims to tasty meat pies for the poor. He didn’t really exist but in Aaron Kosminski’s time, his bloody habits appeared again and again. In 1888, Benjamin Farjeon of Whitechapel published his version, Devlin the Barber, and the legend played on in musical ditties, penny dreadfuls and in serializations as shilling “shockers.”

The murders:

Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, discovered 3:40 a.m. Fri. Aug. 31.

Annie Chapman, last heard at 5:30 a.m., Sat. morning Sept. 8.

two on one day: Liz Stride 12:45 a.m. and, about 1:45 a.m., Catherine Eddowes, early morning Sun. Sept. 30.

Mary Jane Kelly, last seen or heard in her lodgings, 2:30 a.m., Fri. Nov. 9.

Two of the murders fell proximate to the Jewish High Holy Days, which in 1888 were: Thurs. Sept. 6 -- Rosh Hashanah 1; Fri. Sept. 7-- Rosh Hashanah 2; Sat. Sept. 15, Yom Kippur. Three died before or after the weekend shabbos (Fri. sundown through Sat. sundown).

None of the prostitutes was Jewish though there were Jewish prostitutes. Sadie was not always a lady. According to van Onselen, as well as Conan Doyle’s colleague and fellow spiritualist William T. Stead in his anti-white slavery campaigning, Jewish pimps controlled East End brothels and transported their women to American haunts. Joe Fox may have found his career in this manner.

Jewish prostitutes awaited their customers indoors. The Ripper sought vulnerable women who wouldn’t recognize him and wouldn’t have a pimp in the shadows. It may be that the Whitechapel streets were lighter in night traffic in a community observing, fasting, or breaking the fast within the home. One of the victims was killed in the vicinity of a church where they often stood. Catherine Eddowes was picked up around the corner from Rabbi Hermann Adler’s Great Synagogue and her customer was observed by two Jewish congregants.

All the victims were killed within a mile of the Spitalfields market and slaughterhouses. Annie Chapman may have met her customer in Spitalfields. The Ripper killed the women at their street assignations, except for one. With the victim subdued, he cut her throat, from left to right. He would have been blood-soaked but workers in their leather aprons were commonplace. They came through Whitechapel towards home, or to the public sinks, or the cesspools. The graffiti about “the Juwes” was inscribed after Eddowes’ murder, above a passage leading to Aaron Kosminski’s lodgings.

Then, the murders stopped. There may be more victims on this list, but the opinions about them remain mixed because of divergences in the manner of death or method. Ripperologist, Martin Fido, in The Crimes, Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper, searched through asylum records to explain the cessation of the murders. Aaron Kosminski had been certified a lunatic and committed permanently to a London asylum in 1891. His family may have sheltered him. A witness who may have identified him, perhaps in the asylum before he was permanently committed, refused to testify against a fellow Jew and see him hanged.

Nicholl was left unpersuaded by Patricia Cornwell’s accusation of the artist Walter Sickert in Portrait of a Killer. In his Ripper study, Hartley Nathan devotes a chapter to “My Favorites” none of whom is Jewish or Walter Sickert.

ISBN: 978-0713994940
Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, OCWW Board Member

2012-01-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz is unique on a number of grounds. It is a new Sherlock Holmes novel, and it is the first such repeat visit to the great consulting detective that has been authorized by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle. It is also unique in that it attempts to be a final victory lap for Sherlock gathering together most of his favorite characters and devices within a single story, perhaps with the idea that the Conan Doyle estate will not authorize a second such novel. Anthony Horowitz does an excellent job of recreating the atmosphere of Holmes' London and environs, and he also gives Dr. John Watson the appropriate voice and tone. At times I had to remind myself that I was not reading one of the original novels, even though I knew that this one was much longer than those written by Conan Doyle. (It took Agatha Christie to add modern novel length and twists to the older detective and mystery stories.) The length of The House of Silk allows Horowitz to include the Baker Street Irregulars, brother Mycroft, Professor Moriarty, undercover disguises, drug problems, and many other devices and references to the original characters and episodes within his single plot.

My overall reaction to The House of Silk is that I was much more favorably impressed with the first half of the saga than I was with the second. Horowitz does an excellent job of setting the scene and the environment as Holmes and Watson pursue what lies behind the strange story told by an art dealer about his international travels, art losses, and the strange man who appears to be stalking him. From the first mention of the House of Silk until Holmes' very slick escape from a nasty predicament, everything proceeds at a virtually perfect pace. However, once our heroes get close to identifying the mysterious evil group, the pace breaks into an all-out sprint, omitting many of the devious twists that are so entertaining and characteristic of the original Holmes. A puzzle that appears to be extremely complex ends up having a solution that is too simple. At least the ending of the story is rescued by a secondary climax more deftly handled than the matter of the House of Silk itself.
Taken as a whole, this book is well worth your attention, especially if you have a continuing thirst for additional sips of that Holmesian liqueur with the strange but sweet taste that you can never quite predict.

My final comment on this book is the general observation that this was the third book from a major publisher that I have recently read in which I have found the type of editing errors supposedly characteristic only of self-published works. With glitches like two different speakers quoted within a single paragraph and words omitted within a sentence, I have to conclude that the quality of editing at major publishing houses is not what it once was.

ISBN: 978-0316196994
Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life and The Lord's Prayer Mystery Series: Lead Us Not into Temptation, Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread, and Forgive Us Our Trespasses.

The future we get is the one we design

2012-01-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

The Future of Looking Back is a small book that delivers a big message on how to preserve personal values in today’s tech society.
Part 1, Stuff and Sentimentality, considers why we keep things and how to transfer them from physical to digital objects
Part 2, A Digital Life, where we take technology for granted
Part 3, New Sentimental Things, is about how to capture things and how to let them go.
We wouldn’t have seen a book on this topic even just ten years ago. Ours is a time of unprecedented change, in a world of rapid technological innovation, and we are in charge of preservation.

We are reminded that the future we get is the one we design. We should give as much thought to the legacy we will leave behind as we do to the one we inherit. How will we create and preserve digital history? This topic is of special interest to those who create and can influence the design of all things tech.

Take digital images: they might seem like permanent archives but they are as subject to obsolescence as cassette tapes and VHS family home movies. For all its advantages this is still an impediment to true permanence. Just as we trash MP3 players year after year, and upgrade devices that blend our personal, social, and work history, we confuse upgrading with sliding too far past recovery. We may find our stuff is too far gone to allow us to catalog, sort, and find the relevant bits we want to preserve, as we run out of physical space for objects.
The need to adopt digital means to preserve physical objects and memories makes us think about what we keep out of sentiment, obligation, or a desire to preserve the past.
Author Richard Banks works as a Microsoft researcher and has written this guide after giving a lot of thought to preserving archives from his father and grandfather. We learn through his personal experiences, as he puzzles over what media of today can possibly serve as a record he can leave behind for his baby daughter.
Many of us have experienced the problem of storing old family photo albums and small boxes of memorable items our parents carried with them, from house to house, city to city, through their long lives. What are we to do with those, other than repeat the pattern? If we add their stuff to our stuff, are we only deferring the decision and possible burden of disposing of a generations memories. Our grandparents likely left no digital history. In our own time, we long to preserve phases of life; key moments that matter in our lives, much as our parents did by keeping a record of a first tooth, first day of school, first bicycle. In our digital world, are we even capturing and saving anything of memorable value today? While our motives for preserving memories differ, Banks quotes five reasons to consider preserving our rapidly changing past:
Reminiscing, reflecting, recollecting, retrieving, and remembering.
Again, we are reminded that the future we get is the one we design.
The Future of Looking Back offers ideas and descriptions of new technology that can allow digital preservation of objects, even in three-dimensional models for artifact preservation.
And as for saving the masses of our digital life, have you ever wondered what would happen to all our online content? Consider our email, documents, music, photos, financial records, social media data streams, health records, for example. Do we even own those, or are we just renting space where they reside? In Chapter 8, “The Things We Put Online,” Banks suggests four sane approaches to data preservation, including content mobility with cloud services. For many, this will be the most important chapter in the book.
The Future of Looking Back includes a rich reference section and design challenges to consider at the end of each chapter.

ISBN: 978-0735658066
Original review posted: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-future-of-looking/page-2/#ixzz1k0NUmo4s

Reviewed by Helen Gallagher, Computer Clarity www.cclarity.com
SPAWN.org Membership Director

2012-01-27T14:59:00.000-08:00

"Lead Us Not into Temptation" is the first in a planned series of five Lord's Prayer Mysteries written by Richard Davidson. The protagonist, Arthur Blake, is the new pastor of a suburban Chicago Methodist Church, whose previous anti-social minister has died under mysterious circumstances. In addition to investigating his predecessor's death, Pastor Blake needs to re-engage his congregation and find ways to attract new members, especially young people.

The author has created a complex plot rich with intrigue and historical tidbits from the World War Two era. These include issues of possible bigamy, Nazi plundering of Jewish art treasures, ancestor DNA searches, two murders, a potential budding romance, and many other twists and turns before the mystery is solved.

The opening line pulled me in immediately: "The hymn straggled to its raggedy conclusion as Arthur Blake loosened his tie and took his first hesitant step toward the pulpit." From there I was gradually introduced to a cast of well-developed characters and a variety of issues that most readers will be able to relate to.

My slight concern that I might feel "preached to" was dispelled a few pages later as shirtless Arthur Blake, just back from a basketball game with a young parishioner, runs into the chair of the Finance Committee, who already has her sights set on the new pastor. When he declines her invitation to go jogging, she is disappointed, but "At least she knew that she had overestimated the amount of hair on his chest and back."

Author Dick Davidson, who has been creating a book a year since he started his mystery series, is the president of Off-Campus Writers' Workshop, the oldest - 65 years - continually running writers' group in the United States. He is a certified Methodist Lay Speaker and Leader, an entrepreneur and a retired Aeronautical Engineer.

Despite well-placed clues throughout, "Lead Us Not into Temptation" kept me in suspense and guessing until the very end of the book. I'm looking forward to joining the cast of characters again as I read the next three mysteries in the series.

ISBN: 978-1602644076
Reviewed by Candace George Thompson who is writing a biography of her parents' marriage and their life as a career Air Force family, 1941-2007.

2012-01-27T14:39:00.000-08:00

Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Z:

This was an engrossing book about adventurer Percy Fawcett, an acquaintance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s. Doyle based Professor Challenger’s Amazonian exploits in no small part on Fawcett. Like Conan Doyle, both Fawcett and his wife were mystics, inclined to séances and astrology. The trek was harrowing and fatal. What discipline and courage it took for this Englishman to brave an unfamiliar and unexplored jungle. You, Reader, should be grateful for the comfort and safety of your home.

In 1925, Fawcett set out on his ill-fated journey possibly to find a prosperous locale where the spiritually-inclined could resettle. He took along his son and his son’s boyhood friend. The dangers of the journey to a final foray with a cannibal tribe are learned from journal entries left by the explorers. David Grann, who disliked camping, forced himself into an exact undertaking of the Fawcett expedition to see what an amateur enthusiast could find. There are so many quirky paths, on the trail and in the book, that interest never wanes. Like a good pudding, you always find a treat. After Fawcett’s disappearance, German, French, and Russian search parties regularly struck out to find him. One of them, an Englishman and actor, was himself lost to the jivaros who found him “floating, naked and half-mad, in a canoe.” Do you suppose they warned him, a la the cruise captain off the coast of Giglio, “Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

ISBN-10: 1590204301

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, OCWW Board Member

2012-01-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

I don't often review books addressed to dummies or idiots, but made an exception for this one: I think you'll agree it is worthy of a look, by even the smartest writers:
Sheree Bykofsky, a name you’ll likely recognize as a literary agent and co-author Jennifer Basye Sander, have compiled the one-stop guide to sorting out the complex business of becoming an author.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published offers a fresh take on the basics: attracting an agent, becoming an expert and "acting like an author;" in which they remind you how to talk and think like one. No matter where you are in the publishing process, you can refine and update your knowledge of today's publishing process.

At almost 400 pages, the book is an excellent value, as it can help you achieve breakout success; the long-term goal of most writers. A trend in publishing today is to invest in authors with staying power. If you truly see yourself as a career author, you'll find there are a variety of ways to make money through your writing.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published includes a comprehensive description of special book categories, going beyond fiction and non-fiction because today more than ever, it is important to focus on your specific niche markets. So you’ll learn about new sub-genres, including Manga, Shtick Lit, and Urban Fantasy.
While the realities of getting published aren’t sugar-coated, the authors share their optimism, helping you see how to be one who succeeds. Having a good idea for a book won’t guarantee your success, but you can find the success factor with careful research on the market you're aiming for.
Chapter Four is all about market testing techniques. Look at what is out there and more importantly what’s missing. Be honest and measure yourself by your rivals credentials, instead of merely hoping you’re good enough to compete.
The authors devote a full three chapters to the core success factors: your query letter and book proposal. They remain the critical factor that drives your success
Chapter 14 offers a unique view into what happens at behind closed doors at Agent and Editor meetings, and is worthwhile for all authors to read. Additional material that makes The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published stand out includes progressive ideas for repurposing prior writing, such as reprinting material in ebook formats, and book proposal samples, plus access to more bonus material online.
Whether you are starting out, just finished writing a book, or plan to reissue an older book, Chapter 25 answers all your publishing questions on self-publishing, print-on-demand, and ebook publishing.

ISBN: 978-1615641277

Reviewed by Helen Gallagher who is a long-term member of OCWW and author of Release Your Writing: Book Publishing Your Way
Review originally published: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-complete-idiots-guide5/#ixzz1k0MAighX

Dick Davidson Interviews Sharon Fiffer

2011-12-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

www.SharonFiffer.com

Q. Whether you are writing memoir or a Jane Wheel mystery, you draw stories out of physical objects and memories of real objects. Do you find this easier and more satisfying than conjuring up an object from your imagination to fit your story?

I simply find that using objects works for me—and I usually like to find something real. The hunt for the object helps me think out the story. That’s not to say I don’t make objects up. When I am writing about a “mystery” suitcase that Jane Wheel picks up at a sale, I might have her open it to find a Bakelite pin that I will describe in great detail. It isn’t necessarily a piece of jewelry I’ve seen—it might just be something I think should exist. As far as memoir, I think real objects can lead you into memory in a concrete way. They just help anchor your thoughts, help you focus. That’s been my experience.

Q. When you use fiction for creativity and filling in the blanks in memoir, how do you keep from slanting the story so that it is more entertaining or self-serving than is true to the actual events?

I do not use fiction to fill in the blanks—and I hope I don’t ever give that impression. Compressing time or using composite characters isn’t really fiction. Writing actual dialogue for someone that’s true to the person or event or true to your memory isn’t what I would call using fiction –although it might be using the tools of fiction writing. Also—if your memoir isn’t entertaining, why are you writing it? I think all writing should teach and please (badly paraphrasing Aristotle there) to a certain degree—and if your story doesn’t have a point of view or doesn’t increase someone’s understanding of the human condition, doesn’t expand the world in some way, it might be a very interesting personal diary, but it isn’t necessarily memoir to be shared. And as far as writing being self-serving? That’s what journals are for! To work out all those revenge fantasies! That is not what I think of as memoir.

3. Q. How does a memoir that uses fiction compare to a personal historical novel?

I think I have to repeat myself here—using the tools of fiction writing to craft your memoir is not using fiction. I’m not sure what a personal historical novel would be, but unless I had changed history in some way, I’m not sure I’d attempt it

4. Q. You take the unusual approach of using real family members and locations identified by their real names in your novels. Does this technique make you tend to put yourself as a character or raise questions from family and friends?

I use characters who were part of my life—like my mother and father—and their place of business, The EZ Way Inn. Because I have great affection for the people and the place I feel I can base characters on them without raising any negative questions from anyone who knew them. But make no mistake, even though my Don and Nellie are based on the real Don and Nellie, Jane Wheel’s parents are my fictional creations. I never feel bound by the real people—my wonderful characters are all troopers in that they live to tell the story. By the way, the only characters whose real names I use are my parents who have now passed away. Although I use some real place names and street names, I would never have something terrible happen in a real ongoing Kankakee business.

Q. Have you received encouragement or recognition from the city of Kankakee, Illinois for setting your stories there? Would your stories have more flexibility in a fictional town?

I think the people in Kankakee who read my books love them. That’s what they tell me when I go there to read and sign. And someone from Kankakee is presenting the key to the farmer’s market to me in June and naming a carrot after Jane Wheel—I’ll be there signing and they’ve asked me to hand out recipes for Nellie’s vegetable soup. And as far as flexibility? I can tell whatever story I want—just as Sara Paretsky can make Chicago home for V.I. but tell any story she wants. If I feel wanderlust at all, Jane visits someplace else. Book #3, The Wrong Stuff, takes place in Michigan and Hollywood Stuff, Book #5 takes place in LA. Having a real home base for the series is, I think, an advantage.

Q. You and your husband are both writers. How would you respond if he wanted to co-author a mystery with you? Do you think co-authoring works well?

We’ve written one non-fiction book together and edited three collections of memoirs together. Pure pleasure. Steve is a non-fiction guy—all plot and structure—and I am much more interested in dialogue and character so we make a good team. I think it would be a lot of fun to do a mystery together—we just have to find some time when we both aren’t swamped with separate projects.

Q. Do you have other types of writing that you would like to pursue? Would you feel obligated to keep the Jane Wheel series going while you wrote other things?

I’ve been lucky that my editor and and publisher have not required a strict book –a-year schedule. Between books #4 and #5 I took some extra time to work on some other projects. I still have a few other stand-alone novels I’d like to write—and I think I might even have another series in me. I just need a few extra hours in the day, a few extra days in the week.

Q. Would you please give a few examples of items you see at estate sales, and what you think they tell you about their former owners?

Photo albums are obvious storybooks—but I prefer handwritten items. I love old autograph books, old high school yearbooks that have been signed, even old notebooks from high school classes. Love to find other peoples’ doodles and notes and lists. I also like old kitchen items and recipe boxes with lots of hand-written recipes with notes on family dinners and adjustments made to recipes. I also love finding handmade things—crocheted potholders, knitted blankets—all that time and love and domestic art!

Q. I noticed that on your business card, you give Jane Wheel, PPI her own e-mail address. Does she receive a lot of e-mail, and how would you characterize it?

Jane gets a fair amount of fan mail. I use that email address on my website, www.sharonfiffer.com, so fans who visit the website can email directly. The idea of using one side of the card for Jane’s name and title, PPI (picker and private investigator) is a bit of whimsy that appeals to me. After seven books, Jane’s earned some professional swag.

Q. Did your parents ever read a Jane Wheel mystery, and if so, how did they react to being in it? If they didn’t read one, how do you think they would have reacted?

Sadly, my father died long before Jane Wheel was born. He became ill one year after he and my mother sold the EZ Way Inn and retired. I know he would have loved the books—he’d probably have plenty of ideas for scenes in the tavern—and would probably share lots of anecdotes that I never got to hear. My mother was not a reader—I always tell the story that I apologized that the Nellie character came off pretty rough in the first book (but has redeemed herself many times over—and Jane has begun to better understand where her mother’s gruffness comes from) and my mother told me not to worry about it. “Hell, honey, I won’t ever read it anyway,” is exactly what she said. I did read some parts of the book to her—and she enjoyed hearing me describe the tavern and some of the characters. She died at 92, and remained as feisty as the fictional Nellie until the end.

www.SharonFiffer.com

Churchill on Writing a Book

2011-12-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy, then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public."

—Winston Churchill, Grosvenor House, London, November 2, 1949. From Churchill By Himself, edited by Richard Langworth, p. 49.

- There is a sense of freedom when you finally decide to release the book because making any more revisions might actually make it worse...

2011-12-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

The Midwestern Native Garden: Native Alternatives to Nonnative Flowers and Plants-- an Illustrated Guide, by Charlotte Adelman and Bernard L. Schwartz

Go Native! that’s the theme of this bible for Midwestern gardeners. Local naturalists, Charlotte Adelman and Bernard Schwartz, offer glossy steps in the right gardening direction with excellent and plentiful quotations, photos and illustrations. The book is divided, like the sublime Vivaldi, into seasonal sections of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

Besides being beautiful, your garden should be ecologically and environmentally friendly. The book identifies native alternatives to the non-natives growing in this region and how to attract birds and bees that are native kin to the Midwest.

Just how much of the Midwest do we devote to gardens? Thousands of acres. Among the pleasures of gardening is the retreat to garden green and away from city concrete or the prefab context of landscaping and decking. Gardens, including rooftop retreats, planters, flower beds, or window boxes, should be a habitat for our once prolific butterflies, birds, bees and other flying creatures. They should be a welcoming place for them to flicker and buzz and to feed their young. In such a natural environment, experience the redemptive power of gardening you coveted since reading Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.

Midwest gardens are marked with species not native to the land. For our flying friends to thrive, they must find grounds with which they co-evolved over a millennia. As Adelman writes: they “interact with the beauty, fragrance, and reliability of these plants.”

How were invasive species introduced into our environs? They came with immigrant cultures, on ships, and from commercial distributors. Because non-natives have been transported from their normal habitat, they do not confront the checks of natural predators and competitors. They come to dominate habitats.

Dwindling habitats as well as the use of pesticides have contributed to the decline of the butterflies, birds and bees that once fluttered through our demesne. Second to the destruction of habitat by non-native plants is the threat to biodiversity. If they’re invasive, they shock the health of the plants native to the area. Native insect and flying species cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other wild life. The environment becomes sterile. Wildlife that naturally appear to make up the Midwestern garden’s color, movement and drama will exit. All you’re left with is a pristine dormant space.

Tidiness isn’t next to godliness in the natural garden. Rely on Darwin who pointed out that beauty can be obvious even on a small scale. If you look closely at the moss ground of a natural garden, or underneath the hedge, you’ll see a powerhouse of diversity-- with undaunted and various little species burrowing helpfully through your soil, enriching it and inviting the return of pollinating species.

Though the authors’ passion for gardening and wildlife does not escape the reader, neither does their scrupulous scholarliness. Contained in the book are two comprehensive references. The Appendix contains short histories of America’s naturalists. The color-coded Index lists the ease of native replacements for the nonnative and, indispensably, what wildlife the natives will attract.

I was much gratified to find reference in this book to nature-loving Lady Bird Johnson and her Wildlife Center (my mother, herself an inveterate gardener, always repeated this quote from LBJ: “Beautify yourself, Lady Bird!”--because the former First Lady was emblematic of nature and its beauties). She inspired the passage of the Beautification Act of 1965–a bill her husband called a gift to his wife and which fixed environmentalism as an American priority.

A gardener’s life is serenely separate from that of politicians, lobbyists, terrorists, and other characters who brim with drama in the press and in book lore. Here then is an alternative gardener’s challenge from The Midwestern Native Garden to OCWW’s aspiring novelists. Try another sort of protagonist--a detective who, on his (or her) day off, is locked in a life-and-death struggle with Japanese wild grasses. Miss Marple never failed in these environs.

This lovely and inspired book will turn your mind to the future, to gardening, and to creation, of whatever divine, authorial, or arboreal inspiration. Get your green fingers at the ready.

ISBN:978-0821419373

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, OCWW Board Member

2011-11-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

The Secret Life of Houdini, by William Kalush and Larry Sloman--the former a professional magician and the latter his writer.

One of the chapters is slyly entitled “Saul Among the Prophets” and wholly dedicated to Houdini’s brief friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle.

Why the title?

1 Samuel 19:24: “And he also stripped off his clothes, and he also prophesied before Samuel, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say: 'Is Saul also among the prophets?'”

Thus is Conan Doyle “stripped” by the authors and his credulous spiritualism laid bare. He did not engage in spiritualism simply in response to the many WWI deaths, including that of his son, Kingsley.

Conan Doyle began his trance in the 1880s, attending worldwide spiritualist conventions and promoting it relentlessly. His wife, Lady Jean Conan Doyle, fancied herself a medium and “automatic” writer.

They foisted seances and other phosphorescent gatherings upon Houdini and many others. Prior to one such seance, Lady Conan Doyle pumped Houdini’s wife, Bess, for information about his mother.

At the seance, Lady Doyle produced a 15-page tract of “automatic” writing, ostensibly sourced from his late mother.

Houdini was too kind to say that the letter, written in English, could not have been his mother’s, since she was a Jewish immigrant from Hungary and unschooled in the English language. No matter how tactfully Houdini objected, it made no mark on Doyle. Houdini arranged for Doyle’s attendance at a magicians’ convention, intending that Doyle observe how tricks were all in the practiced sleight of hand. To no effect. Doyle addressed the convention, saying he had a warm spot for magicians because they exposed the spiritualists’ real enemies...crooked mediums [as opposed to those who were legit, like Lady Conan Doyle]. Conan Doyle's support of spiritualism damaged his reputation. A New York mayor referred unflatteringly to “that man Doyle” and his spiritualist beliefs, raising Lady Doyle’s hackles. She then exposed them to the vituperative press when she published letters defending her husband’s dedication to the spirit world. Conan Doyle never wavered. Prior to his death, he wrote, "The reader will judge that I have had many adventures. The greatest and most glorious of all awaits me now."

ISBN: 978-0743272087
Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, OCWW Board Member

Mayor Culpa: Gone but not Forgiven, by Mark Weinberg

2011-10-07T08:49:00.000-07:00

You may have read recently a news feature about Mayor Ritchie Daley, his wife’s charity, and “TIFs”. “What dat?”, you might blink and ask. The acronym, for tax increment financing program, was a scheme to use tax dollars to subsidize rich Daley-friendly developers. TIF dollars were also used to subsidize Maggie Daley’s charity. Thus did the Chicago’s papers reveal this latest scandal in September. Their unacknowledged source must lie with Mayor Culpa for these revelations appeared in the book months prior. Mayor Culpa waxed aggressive: “the TIF allowed Daley to amass a $5 billion personal slush fund. ..it built the townhouse complex where the mayor and his daughter’s family reside (in Streeterville)...it was a little like a reverse Robin Hood--robbing from the needy to feed the greedy.”

This golden, profane, irreverent, and illustrated nutshell of Mayor Daley’s career was written by a University of Chicago law school alum--who for years represented plaintiffs in civil rights lawsuits against the City. He was joined in the book’s assemblage by fellow alums indignant with Daley’s recent appointment as distinguished senior fellow to the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Here was a man for whom Weinberg reserves this political button: “Sure, I flunked the bar exam twice...it was in English.” (reportedly, Daley’s attempts numbered between three to five). The picture of the Mayor’s rise is not a pretty one: the racial overtones of Eddy Vrdolyak and Ed Burke’s machinations against the election of Harold Washington, the bloody mark from the Jon Burge case of which Ritchie Daley apparently had ample knowledge from the outset as State’s Attorney, and the endless, pet projects and TIF recipients. The book closes with this tongue-in-cheek photo caption: “Always eager to reach out to ethnic communities, Mayor Richard M. Daley lunches with a young Muslim community organizer named ‘Barry’, offering him advice on the fine art of ‘Chicago-style’ politics.”

The point here is that Mayor Daley built Millenium Park (with TIF funds), but in his administration he discarded any politically moral advantage...whereof he should not be forgiven, still less appointed as eminence grise at the University of Chicago.

ISBN: 978-0578073583

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, Off Campus Writers' Workshop Board Member.

2011-09-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Pick up a copy of Roger Rosenblatt’s tribute to a particular writing class during a semester at Stony Brook University. Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing will remind you of why you’re a writer, and why we struggle with the words that reach our readers.

His teaching memoir turns outward to urge us to be better writers because, as Rosenblatt says: “Writing is the cure for the disease of living. Doing it may sometimes feel like an escape from the world, but at its best moments it is an act of rescue.”

Rosenblatt is the kind of writing teacher we all would want in college. His genuine interest in his students coaxes them to reveal themselves in many tender moments that don’t last long. He honors the efforts of his writing students, and the book helps us learn more about the power of story and about trying, despite obstacles, to reach success in our writing. Reading this book, you can’t help but try to make your own writing stretch wider and deeper, revealing more truth, in storytelling.

Unless It Moves the Human Heart is a touching and heart-felt view of the writing life… the life that exists on the page.

ISBN: 978-0061965616

Reviewed by Helen Gallagher, is a long-term member of OCWW and author of Release Your Writing: Book Publishing Your Way

John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster

2011-08-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster, The True Story of the Lawyer Who Defended

One of the Most Evil Serial Killers in History by Sam L. Amirante and Danny Broderick

Although this non-fiction book may not be as worthy as other books reviewed on this website, the story of the state’s most notorious serial killer does provide some interesting insights into the law and the mind of a deranged killer. A co-author, Sam Amirante, now a retired judge, served as Gacy’s lawyer when he was tried and convicted more than 30 years ago. Danny Broderick is a defense lawyer in the northern suburbs.

Gacy’s evil spree occurred in the late 1970s – he buried victims under his house on the far northwest side of Chicago – and the minute the news media learned of the grotesque allegations Gacy became a household name and the poster boy for capital punishment.

After his conviction in 1980, it took 14 years of appeals before he was executed.

However, the authors focused on 1978 by detailing the day-to-day work of numerous police departments gathering evidence and the Assistant Cook County State’s Attorneys who prosecuted the alleged killer. Much of the dialogue in the book is based on transcripts of police interviews and transcripts of the 1980 trial. A healthy dose of Amirante’s insights and play-by-play commentary keeps the story moving forward.

The authors’ first book signing, at Barnes & Noble at Old Orchard in Skokie, attracted a large crowd estimated at 150, including family, ex cops and beefy younger guys either in law enforcement or another line of security. It was a most unusual event. Neither author read from the book.

So, I wasn’t expecting much when I opened the 392-page hardback. They must have had a good editor because the scenes were organized in such a way as to keep readers turning the page. Despite its lack of polish, there was insight, attention to detail and even humor.

For example, the evil killer also was a gregarious man, very active in Democratic Party politics while running his small construction business. When the Des Plaines Police Department was busy obtaining evidence they placed a tail on him with orders not to let him out of their site. Gacy didn’t flinch – he told them where he was going, and even dined with them and bought some of their meals! On a cold December night, Amirante and Gacy invited the officers to wait in the law office rather than in the freezing police car. While police were on the other side of the door thirty feet away, the lawyer was shocked beyond belief when Gacy started confessing to unthinkable crimes! Gacy’s photograph with First Lady Rosalyn Carter was widely circulated back in the day, but I didn’t know Republicans knew him, also. While walking through Chicago City Hall days before his arrest, Gacy was approached by the late Illinois Attorney General, William Scott, a Republican. The two exchanged greetings. However, at his trial about 17 months later, the defendant exploded when a prominent Republican walked into the courtroom. It was Cook County State’s Attorney Bernard Carey. Sheriff’s deputies ended the disturbance quickly. The trial judge said, “John, you will be the Democratic precinct captain till the end.”

On a more serious note, the authors explored the legal issues of mental illness, and they concluded that none of the 13 psychologists and psychiatrists diagnosed the defendant in exactly the same manner. They also used the trial as a setting to write about the victims.

Amirante writes about his transition from a public defender to a private practice lawyer with Gacy as his first client, and the subsequent death threats to him and his family while he was trying to balance the needs of his client with his family obligations. He also makes clear that the American system of justice was on trial, and in his opinion it passed with flying colors.

When executions resumed in Illinois in 1993 – after a period of inactivity while conforming to new U.S. Supreme Court rulings – Gacy was the second person to be executed. About 10 more people were executed before Gov. George Ryan in 2000 imposed a moratorium by executive order. The Illinois General Assembly tried to reform the capital punishment law over the years, but no other prisoner was executed. Earlier this year the General Assembly approved legislation to abolish the death penalty and the Governor signed it into law.

ISBN: 978-1616082482

Reviewed by Al Manning, a member of the Off Campus Writer’s Workshop, and a former Director of Communications for the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. He was inside Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet on the night of Gacy’s execution.

As the Brain Withers (A 2-Book Review)

2011-08-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

ISBN: 978-0307452429 & 978-0465022007

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker (Crown Publishers: NY, 2010).

The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, by Irving Kirsch (Basic Books: 2010).

Lithium, Wellbutrin, Xanax, Prozac, Risperdal, Paxil, Zoloft, Oxycontin, Zyprexa, Klonopin, Tegretol, Lamictal, Ritalin. Are these psychotropics familiar as pals to you, to members of your family, and to friends? Check the medicine cabinets.

Two new books about America’s fascination with prescription pills will leave you decidedly uneasy.

Side effects: flushed face, retention of fluid (particularly in wrists, fingers, ankles), green teeth, dry mouth and bad breath, your hair a ball of frizz and some male or female pattern baldness, brittle bones, babbling speech patterns, deep voice register, desiccated skin, roly-poly physique, bouts with pneumonia from the edema (fluid-buildup), fuzzy thinking, sexual dysfunction, cholesterol and blood sugar rate spikes, lethargy and sedation.

Habits: You become a doctor shopper, getting more and more prescriptions. You keep exquisite track of your pills. Some patients take six or more drugs a day. Cocktails of drugs ward off side effects. Users rationalize or imagine ailments such as anxiety, depression, the ubiquitous back or spinal pain, addiction, bipolar illness.

In the 1950s John Çheever and John O’Hara novels of Mad Men life, everyone drank or smoked to quell the demons. Whitaker’s book traces the history of America’s fixation on meds from the era of the JFK/Jackie and celebrity Hollywood’s B12 booster shots through the 80s and its black beauties, dexedrine and amphetamines of blessed memory-- which have since been adjudged as dangerously addictive. Yet, doctors continue to dispense new varieties of mind-numbing, addicting meds.

Can this country‘s addictions, obsessions, eating disorders, panic attacks and so forth be any more sad than famine- or war-caused starvation, suffering and trauma? Or, do our peculiar disorders-- which ostensibly require meds—have a biological and not environmental determinant? Is this plausible? Whitaker disputes the origination of chemical instability in the brain. The chemical effect of the meds is what causes the instability.

Depression was benign back in the 70s, a temporary psychological event, curable and treatable. Today, it has emerged as the pernicious indicator for an antidepressant prescription. It is the “Gateway to Bipolar.” Ten percent of Americans over the age of 6 take antidepressants. To what do we attribute this invidious prevalence in this country? Illegal and legal drugs greased the road to licit antidepressants. Our reliance arose out of the discovery of new toxic drugs. Psychiatric purposes were ambiguous alleges Irving Kirsch. He writes “Why Were the Drugs Approved? Voodoo Science.” Meds don’t really “work”…they won’t ease you from your depressive mood…they’ll only dull your senses and give you an unrealistic sense of well-being…which is what you, the patient and user, really want. Notwithstanding flawed clinical trials and data, positive studies were published in medical journals. Publicity followed and the psychiatric profession was transformed.

One of the treacherous nebulous diagnoses was childhood ADHD. Children were soon dosed with meds and Nyquil into alternate manic and medicated states. The child’s still-developing brain was then on the path to bipolarism, a lifetime of psychological issues, doctors and meds. “Even if the offending antidepressant is discontinued, that patient is likely to have recurrences of bipolar illness.” Seniors’ brains and bones, though less able to withstand chemical effects, are not exempted. Seniors are over-prescribed meds to treat sadness, grief, the stress of medical problems and other factors inherent in the aging process. We can’t dispute that medical providers are attracted to healthy private and Medicare health insurance.

For Kirsch, the use of meds has also evolved into a social connector—family and friends become part of a conforming “medicine”-taking group and there is no pressure to break the habit. His wry recourse is this natural somnambulant: “Brahms is the best antidepressant.”

The Cult of Pharmacology, by Richard DeGrandpre (Duke Univ. Press: 2006) preceded Whitaker and Kirsch on the “ongoing drug drama.” People who use prescription medicines feel they are discriminating. They intone that meds are “doctor-prescribed,” whereas, cocaine, heroin, meth and other stimulants are illicit and should be punished by the authorities. But the same addictive desires for euphoria swamp all drug use, licit or illicit. Neither Whitaker nor Kirsch ascribe to DeGrandpre’s hope-filled disclaimer that, like alcohol usage, pharmacological usage is marked by moderation.

When is your prescription pill use a drug habit? According to Whitaker, you will function abnormally once on a pattern of ingesting meds. The toxicity will expose users to more debilitating diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and brittle bones. Studies reveal a link between antidepressant use by pregnant women and autism and other disorders in their offspring, such as anorexia and bulimia. Some users go to extremes and undergo sundry surgeries to score more prescriptions. Some engage in self-inflicted injuries, like accidental kitchen-knife slicing. The user’s daily life tends towards the chaotic and holds a world view that is paranoid or conspiratorial. Many are unable to hold a job. Mental disabilities are so endemic in the U.S. that 1 in 76 Americans is qualified to collect disability benefits.

How easy is it to kick the habit? You may never be cured. Withdrawal symptoms can last for months and include sleeplessness, crying spells, dizziness, irritability, and anxiety. These are symptomatic as well of hard-drug withdrawal…addiction. Kirsch strongly advocates giving up the drug habit but with a doctor’s guidance and reference to Coming Off Antidepressants, by Joseph Glenmullen (Harvard Univ. Press: 2006). Physical exercise is far more reliable in alleviating depression…tough, full body regimens as well as determination and self-discipline.

For those content with their daily intake, a disquieting scenario is foretold in a medical journal (for which I was once an editor): “The use of antipsychotic drugs is associated with shrinkage of the brain…and, they cause the prefrontal cortex of the brain to slowly atrophy.” (Dr. Nancy Andreasen et al, “Long-term Antipsychotic Treatment and Brain Volumes,” Archives of General Psychiatry, AMA: Feb. 2011).

Thus, expect your brain to wither like a winter-dried nut.

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, OCWW Board Member

2011-07-10T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Quotable Hitchens, from Alcohol to Zionism, ed. Windsor Mann, foreword by Martin Amis

Whither Hitchens goeth, so go I. We’re fellow ex-Brits and fellow cancer-endurers. He, however, is the god of Rhetoric, Brilliance, and World Renown in Punditry, Philosophy and Pub Crawling.

Keep this book beside your computer-- a quotations compendium from the author of inter alia God is Not Good, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (a brief in support of a war crimes trial), Hitch-22, and numerous and sundry Vanity Fair articles. It’s HitchensThought in a Nutshell.

“On Writing: Good writing is in some degree dependent on good conversation, and solitary stupefaction isn’t any good for that purpose.” (“Why Genius Cries Out for a Drink,” Evening Standard, 4-02-92).”

“On Children’s books: There is a reason Twain and Kipling and Saki go on succeeding generation after generation, even more than the ghastly Brothers Grimm...children quite like the idea of a mysterious uncle, and given the choice, they will always pick the wicked one.” (“The Grimmest Tales,” Vanity Fair, Jan. 1994).

“On Books: “The great thing about writing a book is that it brings you into contact with people whose opinions you should have canvassed before you ever pressed pen to paper. They write to you. They telephone you. They come to your bookstore events and give you things to read that you should have read already. It’s this dialectical process that makes me glad I chose the profession I did: a free education that goes on for a lifetime.” (“Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens,” Science & Spirit, July/Aug. 2007).”

p.s. A word about Martin Amis, son of Kingsley (who wrote the laugh-out-loud Lucky Jim), and Hitchens’ lifelong friend. Back in 1983, I was possibly the only person at our criminal law firm familiar with Amis authors Kingsley and Martin. My boss, the foremost Julius Lucius Echeles, criminal defense attorney extraordinaire, trundled over to a few of us young people, and asked if we knew who Martin Amis was, as he was being interviewed that evening about Saul Bellow. Julius, who had grown up on the immigrant West Side (“my father was an illiterate blacksmith”) knew Bellow and figured as one of the criminal lawyers in Bellow’s novels. It had been a small Jewish world on the old West Side of Chicago, of the striving and the talented, gambling their way to success in goyishe America. Well, when Julius uttered the words “Martin Amis,” I swooned. Julius suddenly realized the interviewer was of some significance--by way of his father, I clarified-- and decided to give him a few minutes, at which I was present. Amis drew upon the interview not for his Bellow research, but caustically into his break-out novel, Money, with its hints of scandalous, greedy America.

ISBN 978-0306819582

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, Board Member, Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW)

2011-07-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Breach of Trust by David Ellis

Not many people have the skills to turn facts that they learned on their day job into timely and suspense-filled fiction, but David Ellis has done exactly that with his seventh book, Breach of Trust. Of course, very few state government lawyers have ever been called upon to prosecute the impeachment of their governor, like Ellis did in the case of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Ellis’ narrator, Jason Kolarich, is a former prosecutor turned defense lawyer who stumbles into state government after a horrific family tragedy. As he rises quickly through the ranks of a flawed political machine, Jason encounters numerous instances of public corruption, many of which are spin-offs from the Blagojevich impeachment and federal indictments.

Readers who have followed the sad yet entertaining saga of the ex-governor can have fun trying to link the names of fictional characters to real-life people associated with an impeached governor. And the author acknowledges several federal prosecutors with whom he collaborated during the impeachment process and he singles out the testimony of one former prosecutor who was an expert on wiretap and surveillance technologies. Ellis assures us, however, that the characters “are a composite of several different people plus a healthy dose of his imagination.”

But this book is much more than a fictional summary of a disgraced administration. It is a well-written mystery that keeps readers turning the pages to solve a murder. It explores a fatal shooting in a Latino neighborhood, including its impact on the victim’s family and a witness who would not speak to police, as well as insight into government contracting, high-level political fundraising and FBI wire tapping. Toss in a cast of memorable characters – an intense prosecutor, a gay legislator who has not come out of the closet plus an unqualified patronage worker – and you have an interesting mystery with broad appeal.

The first jury to try Blagojevich could not reach a unanimous verdict (except for a conviction on one count of lying to the FBI.) It took a second jury to convict the ex-governor on seventeen of the twenty counts of wrongdoing. Although it’s always possible a jury of twelve readers would not reach a unanimous verdict on Breach of Trust, it would certainly have an overwhelming majority of satisfied readers.

ISBN-10: 0399157107

Reviewed by Al Manning, a member of Off Campus Writer’s Workshop (OCWW) and a former political writer for the State Journal-Register in Springfield, IL

2011-07-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

Carol Fisher Saller’s young-adult novel Eddie’s War comprises 76 almost stand-alone short vignettes presented as journal entries of a southern Illinois farm boy from 1934-1944 as he grows from a child of 5 to a mature young man of 15. Parents and teachers will welcome Eddie’s wholesome qualities, and his interest in reading and arithmetic, while young readers will be drawn in by his adventures.

The format will hook active young boys like my great nephews who have a hard time sitting still for a long story. They will quickly become intrigued by tales of B-24 bombers, tree forts, gypsies, gophers and news of the war – there’s always something interesting going on in Eddie’s life.

And don’t be misled by the title: Girls, too, will love reading about Sarah, Eddie’s friend who consistently beats him in typing-speed contests. Furthermore, adults of any age will appreciate the tight stories, authentic dialogue, and descriptions of small town life during the WW II era as young men leave for war.

Eddie’s War presents many opportunities for rich discussions on a wide variety of subjects ranging from farm chores and death to justice, prejudice, war and community. I found it moving, tender, funny, entertaining, educational and beautifully written. It was like a high-protein energy bar – so much substance packed into each short entry. Now that I know how it all turned out, I want to go back and read it again just to savor the writing.

Carol Fisher Saller, known for her Subversive Copy Editor blog and book, is a senior manuscript editor at University Of Chicago Press and editor of The Chicago Manual of Style’s online presence. She is the author/co-author of six other books for younger children

Ms. Saller has created an excellent, supportive website that has materials for readers and teachers. There you will find discussion points and background info on the WW II era, ads and photos from a 1943 Life Magazine, and links to a variety of websites such as the history of the radio and how to get rid of gophers. (You’ll have to read the book to find out why!) Check it out at www.carolsaller.com. I’m betting you, too, will be hooked and ordering your own copy of Eddie’s War. Enjoy!

ISBN 978-1608981083

Reviewed by Candace George Thompson who is writing a biography of her parents’ marriage and their life as a career Air Force family, 1941-2007.

2011-07-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Bending the Willow: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, by David Stuart Davies

Here is a book to touch the soul of the Sherlockian as well as the Jeremy Brettian--a visual and verbal tribute to two (or three) men of note, filled with photos, anecdotes, trifles, and intelligence. It’s a new edition and will give much pleasure to many a reader.

Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes was in competition with the highly popular Inspector Morse, starring John Thaw. The Morse films were based on Colin Dexter's “tightly-plotted novels of 200 pages,” whereas the Arthur Conan Doyle tales averaged 20 pages, from which the Granada TV people had to wring a 2-hour plot. Yet, the cult of the world’s most famous detective sniffed at the challenge. The Granada TV series ran to great expense in recreating and illuminating the vanished past of Victorian and Edwardian England: the costumes and wigs (Edward Hardwicke called his Watson wig the “Roland Rat”), the broughams, derelicts, Mudlarkian Irregulars, formidable hounds, and so on--and all within the dark wet sky of London, the dark Satanic mills, damp and rumbling railways, and, of course, the green and pleasant land of England. These were acts of a Holmesian’s faith and love.

Among the most creditable was screenwriter, Jeremy Paul, who articulated Arthur Conan Doyle stories for the modern and international audience. Incidentally, both Jeremy Paul and Edward Hardwicke died within the year. No celebrities limited by tics and special effects were invited to the Granada party...positions were filled with durable British actors and assorted hams, capable of drawing out the flamboyance or idiosyncrasies of Doyle’s characters. Robert Hardy’s performance in the Master Blackmailer merited special praise. Sherlockian actors who were dissed: “...Stewart Granger’s Holmes was unintentionally hilarious.” (in "Hound of the Baskervilles"); or “Edward Woodward featured as a short, fat Holmes and John Hillerman was his dull, stiff and starchy Watson.” ("Hands of a Murderer").

Did Jeremy Brett’s Holmes wrest the crown from Basil Rathbone’s indelible film portrayal? Arguably so. Basil inspired us with the abiding spirit of wartime Holmes, whereas Jeremy Brett, a flickering Victorian light, captured us with his particularized monologues, often punctuated with a soulful gaze (or haze). His favorite delivery was “The Naval Treaty’s” rose reverie: “Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers...” In a caption to the accompanying photo, the author says as follows: “An exquisite moment by which to remember television’s definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.” Jeremy Brett excelled in the fullness of Doyle’s creation.

The charm turns serious, for the often eccentric but lovable Jeremy Brett was crippled by manic-depression. He was prescribed lithium, a mood stabilizer, and repeatedly confined to one of those little institutions where they take away your belt and shoelaces, and ultimately succumbed to the effects of the disorder and the meds.

What to make of the arbor vitae title? Initially, I thought it could have been a schoolboy’s discipline predilection. Not to fear. Read the book to find the reason therewith..

ISBN: 978-1553100355

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, Board Member, Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW)

2011-06-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson

You may have read Devil in the White City by this author. If you think he wouldn’t be able to recreate that immeasurable success, you would be wrong.

The title of this non-fiction book was a bit off-putting because it hinted of someone else’s best seller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In point of fact, the protagonists, William E. Dodd, Ambassador to wartime Berlin, and his family, were residing in the genteel-sounding Tiergartenstrasse square in Berlin, a city and country beset with the perfidious beasts of the title: Hitler and his pathological crew. When you read between the lines, the German populace was earnestly complicit and fellow beasts.

Larson writes: “I have always wondered what it would have been like for an outsider to have witnessed firsthand the gathering dark of Hitler’s rule.” It was militarism, which Dodd encountered, wrought with menace. Meanwhile, Dodd, and his flippant, flirtatious daughter, were writing their journals, and it was from these that Larson recreated Berlin 1933-1937.

Dodd had been an unremarkable professor at the University of Chicago, in idyllic Hyde Park, and unprepared for what he was to experience in Berlin. In a quixotic appointment by FDR, he soon found himself an international figure. There must be something in the U/C water--recall that the Devil in the White City also found itself in this same vicinity, as well as had our current president.

The Dodd family rented the first floor of a mansion formerly occupied in its entirety by a Jewish banker (now there’s a loaded phrase). The Jewish banker moved upstairs with his family, and with more relatives yet to come and hide---to Dodd’s dismay. Dodd believed these tenancies were not contemplated in his lease and periodically considered terminating it.

Hitler and his fellow fanatics appear at ominous parades, marched out in black leather and the blood red/black swastika banners, but they’re also at fanciful dinners and teas. Martha dined and partied right along with the Hitlerites, and even had her hand kissed by Hitler. She was carried along with the fervor and Heiled right along.

Opera aficionados will be astonished to see reference to possibly-forgotten Polish tenor Jan Kiepura. I was. Martha and friends (who had untrammeled access through German land while hundreds of thousands of civilians were restrained) met him, in a surreal setting, amiably talking and drinking tea at the Kaiserhof. Who should stroll in but Hitler, accompanied by his attaches. Jan Kiepura was introduced to Hitler and talked music to him. Strange that Jan had two strikes against him: he was both a Polish Slav and had a Jewish mother. He survived the encounter to sing on the international stage.

Larson pieces together many small but significant details of life under Hitler, among which was the public beating of the 18-year-old son of an American family (vacationing in wartime Berlin!). Whether tourist or diplomat, you had better not walk down a street or through a university and look askance at the “Heil” or the Hitler salute. Brown Shirt Storm Troopers, as well as civilian German passers by, would react with fury. Storm Troopers walked the streets and directed its street violence towards those in the public who did not comply with Nazi loyalties.

Dodd repeatedly warned FDR and the U.S. of Hitler’s violence and his intentions--not that either he or his daughter were initially sympathetic to the Jewish problem. As Martha said, “I was slightly anti-Semitic in this sense: I accepted the attitude that Jews were not as physically attractive as gentiles and were less socially desirable.” She wrote that “the Jews had their garbled ways”. She didn’t take seriously the “anti-Jude” signs and banners.

Though Dodd may have had his illusions when he arrived, and Martha ignored the signs, he began to warn the U.S. of Hitler’s intentions with regularity. While Dodd was Ambassador, there were sinister signals, bit by bit, frightening for the Jews:

1933--early concentration camps; widespread, official anti-Jewish boycotts; expulsion of all Jewish civil servants/employees; Jews banned from visiting or owning farms for fear of contamination (the Aryan wannabes saw themselves as Tacitus' blond Germanic warriors. From the likes of Hitler, Himmler, Goring, Streicher, or Goebbels, you have to wonder how they avoided being hunted down as degenerates, homosexuals, or Jewish-blooded);

1934-- Hitler et al began to come down hard. It was the year of the "Night of the Long Knives"--an execution purge of Nazi opponents. Employers were encouraged to replace Jewish workers with "honorable loyal" Germans. This experience was related in Hans Fallada's novel, Little Man, What Now? Martha Dodd met Fallada in Berlin, describing him as a fearful and haunted German.

1935--Nuremberg Laws: identification and registration of Jews and anyone with Jewish blood, and ban on intermarriage. Women's heads were shaved for consorting with Jews. Marriages were annulled. Dodd requested that FDR boycott German Nazi meetings, but was ignored.

1936--Himmler put in charge of Jewish "emigration." It was also the Olympic year, which appeared to bring peaceful respite. It was but a ruse. After closing ceremonies, virulent anti-Jewish signs, which had astounded Dodd, returned.

1937--German towns, and all their Hans', Fritzes and Ottos, willingly began to expel Jewish residents and to proclaim they were Judenrein--"Jew Free"; Hitler ordered Jews to identify their assets. Dachau concentration camp...minutes from the town, was executing Jews (by beheading).

Hitler chillingly said to Dodd: "...We shall make a complete end to all of them in this country." When Dodd reported these words and Hitler's actions, the response was backstabbing from fellow diplomats. And Hitler was no less rancorous. He spoke of Dodd as an "imbecile", and his daughter, Martha, as a woman of execrable quality.

In 1937, after FDR could no longer ignore recommendations for Dodd's dismissal, the family departed Berlin. Hitler's buzzing nemesis was packed off. Had Harry Truman been president, I doubt he would have ignored Dodd. He would have shown his mettle and responded militarily.

ISBN 978-0307408846

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, Board Member, Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW)

2011-06-20T07:21:00.000-07:00

Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm

Here is a riveting little trial of New York (Forest Hills) versus Russian Jewish murder defendants arising from a divorce/custody case gone bad. The crime cannot be forgiven, but the book promises a better understanding and the big picture.

There are bits of the classics thrown in for your edification--the Iphigenia of the title: Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s sacrificed daughter. The defendant here is also defined as a Cordelia, Lear’s self-sacrificing daughter. Was the defendant, Mazoltuv Borukhova, deceived and sacrificed as were those two feminine immortals? Perhaps. The author divines that the tragedy was not directly attributable to disputatious parents. Instead, it arose in a court system just as squalid.

The author is Janet Malcolm, peripatetic New York Times journalist with intellect, writing skill, and pointed unsubtleties wielded at the legal system: The criminal court judge: a man with "the faux-genial manner that American petty tyrants cultivate" .... “The absolute power they enjoy eats away at the self-doubt that the rest of us depend on to keep ourselves more or less in line.” Where Borukhova lies with the stars and the classics, the judicial system that disserved her is all of Dickens--a mean and corrupt community.

The divorce judge does not escape her reproach. Malcolm eviscerates that court’s guardian ad litem-- a conspiratorially-deranged lawyer who is nonetheless charged with the responsibility of making recommendations about child custody. In Borukhova’s divorce case, he recommended to the divorce judge that the parties’ little daughter be removed from her mother and placed permanently with the father with whom she had an emotionally-skewed relationship. The father, newly single, hadn’t wanted the obligation.

The scalding commentary occasions compassion for an abused, eccentric, yet possibly guilty defendant. To Janet Malcolm’s mind’s eye, the scales of justice were hardly inviolable. Even in detention---for as an investigative journalist, there is no fixture of the justice system she won’t assail to support her outrage-- the presumption of innocence, for those not yet convicted, is belied by the sordid condition of the jail cells. (For similar and local terrain of fearless judicial criticism by a journalist, I refer you to Carol Marin’s June 10, 2011 opinion, in the Chicago SunTimes, “Smartest guys not always right in Blagojevich retrial.” )

Alan Dershowitz has the Borukhova appeal.

ISBN 978-0300167467

Reviewed by Brenda Rossini, Board Member, Off Campus Writers' Workshop (OCWW)

2011-05-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

MAESTRO: Unveiling Karma and Reincarnation is a book for believers in unconventional healing practices or for those willing to explore mystical views of the nature of the world and the human soul. The publisher's note says: This is a work of nonfiction based on the author's personal experiences, case studies, and interviews with people concerning experiences of healing. The book establishes a foundation for its outlook by extracting nuggets of wisdom and speculation about reincarnation from such sources as Jewish mysticism, Eastern religions, and statements by some well-known historical figures. Then it blends belief in reincarnation with the concept of Karma, your positive or negative path through life, as influencing your string of future incarnations. Healing case studies are presented that blame current physical and other problems on past destructive incarnations, but I was not able to follow the deductions that led to the identification of those past incarnations, except for comments made by the patients that suggested a somewhat circular reasoning element to the process. Karma is identified as the "cause and effect law of the universe", and the metaphysical healing process is combined with emphasis on mental control of the function of of bodily structures such as the thymus gland. A large part of the book is devoted to feedback from patients as they responded to Rachel's healing techniques. For most readers this book will be a venture into previously unexplored territory. There is no doubt that Rachel Madorsky is a true believer in her healing techniques. Alternative medicine practices are receiving more attention than they did in the past.

ISBN 978-0-9705349-6-5

Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of: DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life, and The Lord's Prayer Mystery Series: Lead Us Not into Temptation (Volume I of V) and Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread (Volume II of V)

Into the Ebook World #1

2011-05-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

I've finally started my journey into the ebook world with the publication of Lead Us Not into Temptation, Volume I of the Lord's Prayer Mystery Series as a paperless book. All formats of ebook are available at the links shown below:

Richard Davidson's Smashwords Author Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mysteryimp
Book page to sample or purchase Lead Us Not into Temptation: http://smashwords.com/b/59509

I've also just skimmed this book in both the widely distributed epub and mobi (Kindle) versions, and I found the ebook reading experience reasonably satisfying (although I still feel nothing can match the printed book experience). I will soon have my other books available as ebooks also.

2011-03-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

For most of us, mysteries tempt us into reading far into the night. They tease us with a plot full of twists and turns and dark intrigue. Give us this Day Our Daily Bread, Richard Davidson’s second book in the Lord’s Prayer Mystery Series, does just that. There is no way the reader could put down the book without discovering the cause of the mysterious attack that takes place during a communion service at Parkville United Methodist Church. The event described on page one grips the imagination and holds it in a spellbinding vise through the much larger sinister plot that unfolds from chapter to chapter.

The story systematically weaves in characters and references from the author’s previous novel, Lead Us Not into Temptation. At the center of the crime solving team is Pastor Arthur Blake and Irma, the County Medical Examiner, who continue their romantic involvement as they work to solve the latest mystery that grows from a local tragedy to a national threat.

The pursuit of the fleeing criminal becomes an absorbing task for the couple and the townspeople, who are as kind as the villain is evil. Amid the chaos caused by the dark character, the heroism of human nature depicted in the WWII heroes and the compassion of the church members achieves a realistic balance.

As a captive reader, my attention to the list of personalities with their quirks reminded me of the cross-section of humanity present in my own community. Keeping track of the many characters in the novel and their place in the problem solving team was challenging but manageable.

As the investigative team zeroed in on the location of the criminal, suspense escalated, but did the end come too easily for the perpetrator who caused pain in so many lives? I’ll let you be the judge. As for me, I will be waiting for the next novel that adds yet another layer of mystery to the lives of the people in Parkville.

ISBN 978-0-9829160-0-1
Reviewed by Mary Dunn, Freelance Writer, Web site: http://www.marydunnbooks.com/ Blog: http://gardengirlrose.wordpress.com/ .

2011-02-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

When I read Traveling Mercies, I had to rethink my outlook about the author. I remembered the upbeat person who gave me extremely useful writing advice in Bird by Bird (reviewed in 2009 in the ReadWorthy Books Blog) and the clever and entertaining subject of an interview on National Public Radio. The Anne Lamott we meet in this book is an insecure pilgrim who emerged from a flower child family life to find hardship and trauma in all of her adventures and relationships. How could this be the same efficient, insightful teacher who guided my early writing? The common denominators to these two books are the influence her father had upon her and her utter fascination with her son, Sam. In Bird by Bird, Lamott parenthetically apologized to Sam for writing personal anecdotes about him. In Traveling Mercies, she just lets it all hang out, and drapes personal revelations over everyone. She leaves absolutely nothing hidden of her own difficulties, machinations, and bodily functions, as though she were constantly wearing the Emperor's New Clothes, with nary a shred of inhibition. Anne's hesitant introduction to Christian belief through the influence of the members and pastor of a primarily black urban church is the one anchor in the haphazard drifting of her life. This drifting is emphasized by the apparent origin of the various chapters of this book as occasional essays and journal entries rather than sections of a concentrated coherent writing project. The episodic nature of Traveling Mercies gives it a whimsicality and offbeat charm, but it sometimes makes the reader struggle to identify the timeline of the memoir.
All in all, this book is a valuable lesson in realization that we see only selected aspects of people in our normal interactions with them. We all have underlying continuous personal struggles and thought processes that most of us reveal only briefly. Anne Lamott hides nothing in this book. The reader experiences her travails with her. In fact, her experiences suggest that the book might equally well be called "Travailing Mercies."
ISBN 0-385-49609-5
Reviewed by Richard (Dick) Davidson, author of Lead Us Not into Temptation and Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread. (Volumes I and II of the Lord's Prayer Mystery Series) and DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life.

2011-01-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World

by Gordon Hempton and John Grossman.

For Gordon Hempton, listening is his practice and silence his therapy. Unlike a monk in silent retreat, Hempton goes forth to take full measure of his adversary—noise pollution. And he does it while crossing the country, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., in a 1964 Volkswagen van he calls “Vee Dub,” a car that is a character in its own right.
Hempton’s other constant companion is his sound-level meter with which he takes a noise profile of the United States from one end to the other, with many side trips to places recommended to him as quiet. The results are not good. Rarely can Hempton find the peace of nature (with its diversity of sounds) for more than a few minutes without the intrusion of man-made noise. Those pervasive noises from airplanes, cars, and oil rigs can grate on us in ways we don’t even realize, adding an undertone of stress to an already stressed-out country. As Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden, noticed, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” The racket those tools are making is drowning out our opportunities to pause, appreciate, regroup, and reflect.
Gordon Hempton is an Emmy award-winning acoustic ecologist who records sounds for everything from movies to video games. He even includes a CD of nature sounds with his book, which, sadly, was missing in my library copy. His listeners have let him know that they find joy, solace, and healing in the music of birds, water, and trees that he records—soundscapes where humans felt at home for thousands of years. Soundscapes now almost impossible to find.
Part memoir and part manifesto, the writing in this book can be a bit rambling at times, just like his trip. Yet there is something compelling about the story and his efforts to inform—and ultimately confront—federal officials who, on paper anyway, are mandated to protect citizens from unmitigated noise. His main pleas are to the park service and the Federal Aviation Authority. If we could restrict airplane travel over the national parks, that would help preserve the very peace and quiet that visitors seek there. Hempton is not hopeful about winning that battle because it is too late. Both commercial flights and sightseeing flights go over the Grand Canyon, for instance.
But Hempton has staked a small claim to silence and that is the one square inch of the book title, a red stone he placed on a log in the Olympic National Park in Washington state. That area of the northwestern United States has very few planes flying over it and he would like to keep it that way. He invites anyone at the Park to hike to the stone and leave him a message in a jar he put there. He likes to know that he has allies in his often lonely fight to be conscious about protecting natural silence, the silence that we don’t even know we’re missing till we get under the rumbling threshold of noise that has become the norm.
ISBN 978-1416559085
Reviewed by Barbara Wolf Terao who is an ecopsychologist who finds inspiration in listening to trees. Her "Of the Earth" blog is at bwterao.wordpress.com and she can be found on Facebook.

2011-01-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a total immersion experience into the lives of a group of African American housekeepers in Jackson, Mississippi in the 60’s and their relationships with the white women who employ them. If a book can be both charming and powerful, this is the one. You feel the insidious racism that defines their world as it is woven into their every day lives and told in every day voices.
The follow ad is in the Junior League newsletter, placed by the most influential socialite in town:

Hilly Holbrook introduces the Home Help Sanitation Initiative. A disease preventative measure. Low cost bathroom installation in your garage or shed, for homes without such an important fixture.
Ladies, did you know that:
*99% of all colored diseases are carried in the urine
*Whites can become permanently disabled by nearly all of these diseases because we lack immunities coloreds carry in their darker pigmentation
*Some germs carried by whites can also be harmful to coloreds too
Protect yourself. Protect your children. Protect your help.
From the Holbrooks we say you’re welcome!

Read the struggle of Aibileen who has been charged with toilet training her beloved young white charge, two year old Mae Mobley. Her considerable experience toilet training children involves a live demonstration. As she sits in her separate toilet in an unheated garage, she ponders the pros and cons of training Mae Mobley in the white bathroom where she is sure to catch hell, versus training Mae Mobley in her garage bathroom where there is also surely hell to pay. This is just a day in the life of the help.
The maids with the help of Skeeter a young white woman grieving the disappearance of the beloved homemaker from her childhood covertly ban to tell their stories risking everything. This book is their story. The beautiful writing – voice, characters and setting - swallow you up and transport you to their lives in Jackson circa 1964.
ISBN 978-0399155345
Reviewed by Linda Hoff Irvin, keeper and author of the blog A Basket Full of Grace
http://basketfullofgrace.tumblr.com/ for Reba Place Church, author of a children's picture book (still close to her heart and yet to be published) and lots of middle-aged lady essays about her divorce journey and the unexpected joy of being a 59 year old bride.

2011-01-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

Fiction: Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell, Crown Publications, 2010.
The compelling story of Claude Monet, the artist, comes to life in this skillfully written novel by Stephanie Cowell. Beginning with a prelude that places readers at the side of an elderly Monet in 1908, we get a glimpse of him in his studio at Giverny, admiring portraits of Camille, his lost love.
The story of young Monet unfolds revealing his struggles because of a lack of financial and emotional support from his family. However, he found solace in the camaraderie of other artists of the time, Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne, but mostly in the devotion of Camille Doncieux, the beautiful young woman who modeled for him and chose to leave her life of wealth and privilege in Paris to help Monet realize his dream. Even that relationship was not without problems. It fluctuated between passionate devotion and bleak isolation.
Although much of the factual material may be familiar to the reader who is an art lover, the artistry of Cowell’s prose serves as a model for writers who can study the novel to internalize the elusive craft of interweaving physical description with emotional reaction and blending natural dialogue to enrich the scenes. Monet’s works will come alive in a new perspective for those who savor the author’s descriptions. As Cowell explains in the notes at the end of her work, the book is based on history with some alterations “for dramatic strength and continuity”.
The structure of the novel is divided into seven “Parts” which trace Monet’s career from 1857-1879, bringing to light the complexity of navigating the workings of the Parisian art world of that time. These historical sections are interrupted by “Interludes”, which the author uses as a way of putting the reader in the mind of an elderly Monet, looking back on and evaluating his life and work. Some serve as a way of explaining Monet’s complex relationships with Camille’s family and his feelings of guilt for exposing her to poverty and an insecure way of life. I found the “Interludes a bit distracting, interrupting the flow of the chronology, but that was a minor point, considering the overall excellence of the writing.
Cowell’s strength lies in her ability to blend factual material with descriptions of authentic emotion, bringing to life a remarkable historical figure. After experiencing Cowell’s work, the reader will never look at Monet’s paintings without having a new appreciation for his sensitivity and the price of human suffering he paid to produce these works.

ISBN 978-0-307-46321-0
Reviewed by Mary Dunn
http://www.marydunnbooks.com/

2011-01-21T11:12:00.000-08:00

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Genocide is a powerful memoir written by Immaculee Ilibagiza who survived the slaughter of her family and village while hidden in a bathroom with seven other women for three months. Her profound connection with God endures and deepens during her time in hiding, even as from her hiding place she overhears unspeakable atrocities being committed against the surviving Tutsis in her village.

God supernaturally intervenes on numerous occasions to save the lives of these women. When first in hiding, God inspires Immaculee through a vision to place a wardrobe in front of the bathroom door, concealing the bathroom. Implementing this enables the women to survive multiple searches of the home where they are concealed. While starving and ill, God reveals to Immaculee that she has been spared so she can tell this story. She persuades the pastor who has hidden them to smuggle in two English books to her and she teaches herself English.
Before reading this memoir, the Rwandan genocide was a newspaper article about facts that I did not understand or a story told in the third person. This first person account opened my heart to the reality of this horrific genocide and the powerful face of God. It is reminiscent of both The Hiding Place and the visions of the 10th Century Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich.
It also jump started my faith. Before reading this book, my faith had steadily been deteriorating into a chronic condition. Like the electric paddles used to revive a cardiac patient in cardiac arrest, this book has been a jolting wake-up call to the reality God’s presence in the midst of a cruel and brutal world. Don’t read this book, unless you want that kind of experience.
ISBN 978-1401908973

Reviewed by Linda Hoff Irvin, keeper and author of the blog A Basket Full of Grace,
http://basketfullofgrace.tumblr.com/ for Reba Place Church, author of a children's picture book (still close to her heart and yet to be published) and lots of middle-aged lady essays about her divorce journey and the unexpected joy of being a 59 year old bride.

2011-01-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

MEMOIR: A History by Ben Yagoda, Riverhead Books, 2009

This fascinating read covers the history of the memoir, its subjects and authors over the centuries, from Roman generals and Catholic saints to present-day “misery” and fraudulent memoirs. Ben Yagoda, the book’s author, is a literary critic, professor of journalism at University of Delaware and author of several books including a biography of Will Rogers and When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It.

The terms “autobiography” and “memoirs” are often used interchangeably to describe a factual account usually covering the full span of the author’s life. While many contemporary writers, teachers and literary critics use “memoir” in the singular to describe some portion or theme of the author’s life, Yagoda explains that the singular term had historically been used for reminiscence about others. This changed, he asserts, with the 1989 publication of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life: A Memoir. Until then, the only use of “memoir” in the singular that focused on the writer’s life and memories was by the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in 1957.

Memoir subgenres make a lengthy list, including those of dogs, dads, addiction, abuse, cats and captivity. Best-sellers in Colonial America, captivity narratives were written by people who lived part of their lives as prisoners of certain American Indian tribes.

Mid-20th Century American memoirs’ main appeal “was the contrast offered to grim world events … the shared sense that the United States was the best place on earth, capable of overcoming any setbacks … [Americans] united in their determination to look at the bright side of nearly everything.” Among them was Clarence Day’s 1935 Life of Father, “a massive bestseller” which “… set a pattern for memoirs by ordinary Americans … for the next three decades.”

Although Yagoda’s witty history covers a lot of ground, his assertion that there are few noteworthy World War II memoirs, particularly by Americans, is arguable. He lists three by British writers, citing only one American, Marine Eugene B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed (1981).

American WWII memoirs have been part of my background reading for the book I’m writing about my career Air Force father’s experience in WWII, and the family’s subsequent posting in war-scarred Okinawa. Both John Keegan, dean of military historians, and Paul Fussell, literary critic and social historian, would add to Yagoda’s list memoirs by Samuel Hynes (Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator, 1988), Alvin Kernan (Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket’s World War II Odyssey, 1994), and Robert Kotlowitz (Before Their Time: A Memoir, 1997).

Aside from that small fault, I highly recommend the edifying and entertaining Memoir: A History for those who love reading memoirs and those who would like to write one of their own.

ISBN 978-1-59448-886-3
Reviewed by Candace George Thompson who is writing a biography of her parents’ marriage and life as a career Air Force family, 1941-2007. Visit her on facebook as “Candace George Thompson”.

2010-10-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

In the opening hours of October 19^th, twenty-five-year-old Lark Chadwick finds her aunt Annie Chadwick dead in the home they share. While death by carbon monoxide suggests a classic suicide, Lark is suspicious. As she reflects: "Suicide. The word stuck in my throat. I couldn’t believe that Annie would even consider the ultimate rejection of life and hope. The ultimate rejection of family and friends. The irrevocable rejection of me."

To distract Lark from her grief and what might be developing paranoia, a friend suggests she explore some puzzles from her own history. Orphaned as an infant, she has only the sketchiest information about how her parents were killed. In the 13 days between October 19^th and October 31^st, our heroine learns lessons that will last a life-time, discovers strengths she didn’t know she had and sets a course for her future.

In his first novel, Fast Track, long-time newsman John DeDakis takes the reader on a rapid-fire, exciting, twisting tale full of mystery, red herrings and split-second action. Once you pick the book up, you won’t want to put it down until you have all the answers.

Writing in the first person voice of a young woman, child-of-the-sixties DeDakis has set himself an interesting craft challenge. As a woman, I found Lark’s voice convincingly feminine – and I mean that as a completely sincere compliment. On the other hand, being of his own generation, I was less convinced that the author understands how women a generation younger than ours experience relationships – but I’ll leave the verdict on that to people who grew up in the eighties and nineties. (I’m hoping I’ll get some direct feedback, which, of course, means I hope many of my younger friends – as well as my age peers -- will read the book!)

Whether you read for the engagement of the read or for craft as well as pleasure, I suggest John DeDakis’ Fast Track is a perfect choice for an October weekend (or any other time, of course)!

And John’s publisher is up on all the latest and greatest, so you can order the book in the traditional hard-back format or in a soft binding that has a magazine feel or, for the digital avant garde, it’s available on Kindle. You in the latter group could be reading just moments from now!

ISBN: 1-59507-095-8

Review by Janet Hale Tabin, http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/

2010-08-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour is a fascinating exploration of the behind-the-headlines machinations that enabled (forced?) the United States to enter World War II in support of the struggling British, who were the last obstacle in Hitler's way as he tried to conquer all of Europe. The book reveals new facts, faces, and situations to many of us who thought we knew quite a bit about this period. Consider the disturbing news that Ambassador Joseph Kennedy thought that Britain was already lost and left his post to go back to other ventures at home. The book centers on his successor as Ambassador, John Gilbert Winant, Edward R. Murrow, and other key Americans and their roles as go-betweens in the interface of Churchill's Britain and Roosevelt's America. The reader learns that FDR tended to follow public opinion rather than guide it during the run-up to the war, and that only the triggering event of Pearl Harbor pushed him into the final war declaration.

Lynne Olson pursues the human relationships underlying the facts of this tense period in ways that keep the reader's interest from flagging. She also goes beyond the entry of the U.S. into the war to chronicle the misunderstandings, stereotypes, and competing priorities that complicated the dealings among the various military and civilian leaders throughout World War II. The book effectively communicates the various factors that contributed to the birth of the Special Relationship that governs the interface between the governments of the U.S.A. and Britain to this day.

Historians tend to oversimplify the history of World War II into a factual documentation of battles and their outcomes. This is one of those books that adds flesh to that skeletal view of history.

ISBN 978-1-4000-6758-9

Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of Lead Us Not into Temptation and Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread Volumes I and II of the Lord's Prayer Mystery Series, and DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life. www.davidsonbooks.com www.mysteryimps.com http://betterlifedecisions.blogspot.com

2010-07-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan of Dan Brown's books for quite a while, and I look forward to each new novel. The Lost Symbol had taken a long time being nurtured through the research, writing, and publication processes, so I was somewhat disturbed to find several editing and logic errors in the first few chapters. I stopped looking for such things as I continued to read the novel, but I was left with the feeling that due to the long gap between books, this volume had been rushed to the market in a final push. The Lost Symbol is entertaining as are all Dan Brown's books, but it suffers from too great a similarity to the plot layout of The Da Vinci Code, while not having as much conceptual significance. The puzzles that are solved during the course of this novel are quite similar to those in his previous books, but the American reader with a knowledge of the monuments, memorials, and government buildings of Washington, DC, may find them less mysterious than those of his novels that were set against the backgrounds of France, England, Scotland, and Italy.

Many authors have stated that there is nothing wrong with using a good story more than once. If the situation, the characters, and the setting are changed sufficiently, a cloned story can work well. It should, however, be separated by a few intervening works from the original novel. I'll never forget the time my sister-in-law came for a visit and left me two Mary Higgins Clark novels. The first one turned out to be quite entertaining. The second was the same story with a few cosmetic changes. If I had read them with a separation of several years, I might not have noticed the similarities, but when read sequentially, the sameness could not be missed. There has to be great creativity in the variations, as is the case with some outstanding classical music, for an author to succeed with novels that are very similar to his or her earlier works.

ISBN 978-0-385-50422-5
Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of Lead Us Not into Temptation, and Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread, Volumes I and II of the Lord's Prayer Mystery Series, and DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life. http://www.davidsonbooks.com/, http://www.mysteryimps.com/, http://betterlifedecisions.blogspot.com/

2010-04-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Joseph G. Peterson has written a unique stream of consciousness novel set in the searing heat of the Chicago summer that killed hundreds of lonely people stranded in tiny apartments. Peterson uses a style of continuous, swirling, repetitious thoughts and memories in the mind of his protagonist to chronicle the aftermath of a casual incident that opened the door to a dangerous love affair. There are only a half dozen primary human characters in the story, but they are augmented by a series of tattoos and a Glock 10 Beautiful Piece.

Peterson's writing style emphasizes the feelings of purposelessness and danger in his narrator/lead character, Robert. It also conveys the atmosphere of extreme life-threatening heat. The novel contrasts the musical tastes of two of the characters, but the story is itself a seemingly endless stream of variations on a few basic themes. Peterson manages to keep the reader hooked by randomly introducing nuggets of fresh information into this stream of variations on the opening scenario. At times one is forced to read very carefully to discern which aspects of Robert's story are real and which are hallucination.

I came away from this book knowing that I had met a master who can manipulate a minimal story line into a symphony of interplayed relationship nuances. I have the feeling that I will again reach for this book when I next face a blazing heat wave.

ISBN 978-0-87580-629-7

Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of Lead Us Not into Temptation, Volume I of the Lord's Prayer Mystery Series, and DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life. www.davidsonbooks.com, www.mysteryimps.com, http://betterlifedecisions.blogspot.com

2010-04-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time begins with what appears to be chapter “2”. After “2” comes “3,” but after “3” comes “5.” By the time the reader reaches “5,” he or she knows there is more than one intriguing mystery afoot.

Told from the viewpoint of Christopher John Francis Boone, the novel takes the reader into the interior life of a developmentally challenged youngster. Fifteen-year-old Christopher is a high functioning autistic.

Chris tells us that mysteries are the only kind of novel he likes or understands, so when he decides to write a novel, he looks for a mystery to solve. The only mystery in his life, as far as Chris knows, involves the death of Wellington, a neighbor’s dog. But before Chris can solve the Wellington mystery, he will discover that his own life involves an unexpected mystery or two as well.

A worthwhile novel must engage and should entertain, but an outstanding novel lets a reader experience something of life otherwise unavailable from direct experience. Mark Haddon has created the perfect balance between the unusual perceptions of his central character and the ordinary modern world we occupy together. Thus, the reader comes to understand a great deal about Chris and how life works for Chris while also appreciating the strains and challenges faced by families touched by autism.

Christopher doesn’t like surprises; he recognizes that good things and bad things can happen, but, for Chris, “it is worst if you don’t know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.” If you read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, you are in for some surprises, but I can assure you that a good thing is going to happen. Touching and insight-filled, Haddon’s novel is, above all, a delight to read.

ISBN 0-385-50945-6

Review by Janet Hale Tabin, http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/

2010-02-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

Early this past December, a member of my family suffered a stroke. In discussing how family members could help with his recovery, my brother reminded me of a book several of us read a year or two ago. Although I remembered reading the book and being impressed, I couldn’t recall the relevant recommendations in any detail, so I quickly got my hands on a copy to refresh my memory. (Actually, I downloaded a copy to my Kindle for a modest price.)

On the morning of December 10, 1996, 37-year-old neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had a massive stroke. In the hours, days, months and years following the event, Jill's brain and body became her laboratory, a theater where she learned more about human capacities and potentials than any school or classroom had offered to teach her.

In her book My Stroke of Insight, Taylor details her experience. She includes an appendix of 40 specific notes about the things she needed from the people around her in order to recover.

Without question, if you care about someone who has had a stroke, Taylor’s book is a must read.

But the book works on so many levels that – even reading it a second time – I couldn’t stop thinking of all the loved ones, friends and even acquaintances I wanted to share it with.

Whether you face a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual challenge, whether the challenge is yours directly or concerns the recovery or growth of someone you care about, Jill Bolte Taylor’s book offers something you need to know.

For example, Taylor's experiences and her conclusions tell us not to make limiting assumptions about how much a victim can recover or grow. Eight years after her stroke, Taylor was still regaining skills.

Taylor's left-brain stroke introduced her to her right-brain capacity to experience herself as merged and peacefully at one with the universe. As she recovered, she wanted to regain her sense of herself as a separate and whole individual. But she hoped to recover that sense without also regaining her "egotism, intense desire to be argumentative, need to be right, or fear of separation and death..”. (Taylor, My Stroke of Insight, digital edition location 1778-1780.)

She also explains how externally triggered emotions can take control of a person – or, alternatively, how the person can wait out the initial emotional-biochemical rush and gain purposeful control.

Taylor has followed the success of her book with many appearances, U-Tube posts and interviews, further expanding on the book. In the following excerpt from an interview published on-line, she discusses how she now uses what she learned to keep her life more in balance today.

Can you describe that feeling of bliss that your stroke brought on, and how you're able to hook into it now?

I know that I have a choice in how I look at any situation, and I can create tools that help me recognize when something is stimulating my stressful circuitry. I feel my anxiety and my body pumping up, and it doesn't feel good physically. What do I need to do to step to the right of that? For me, it's coming to the present moment by getting back into my body -- going for a walk, changing my visual scene, and thinking about what I'm looking at. Often I'll sing a song, a very soft melody that's slow and simple, because for me it's an issue of escalation.

My anxiety and stress circuitry runs fast and I can feel that, so I'll consciously choose to shift into something slower. And when I consciously shift into a slower thought pattern, there's just this incredible absence of urgency, of stress, of thinking about all the things in my life that give me stress. A deep inner peace pervades me. There's a celebration of life -- a joyfulness. It's a beautiful experience.

from an interview with Jill Bolte Taylor reported at http://www.caring.com/interviews/jill-bolte-taylor

I've put Jill Bolte Taylor’s book on my shortlist of works I go back to over and over. I hope you will, too.

ISBN 978-0-670-02074-4

Review by Janet Hale Tabin http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/

2009-12-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Irene Stemler has taken a creative concept and carried it through to fruition during the course of more than forty interviews with civilian and military nurses and nursing educators. This study accomplishes the three tasks of encouraging nurses to emphasize their professionalism, demonstrating to nurses and others the many variations of style and substance in the nursing profession, and opening the eyes of the rest of us to the stature and value of those who serve us as nurses. Ms. Stemler uses the unique device of illustrating each interview with an appropriate pair of shoes or boots for the person we are meeting. The obvious implication is that as we learn about all of these nurses, we are learning what it is like to be in their shoes.

This book is primarily aimed at the audience of nurses and other health care professionals, but if you have had friends or relatives in nursing, you will find that this work will help you to understand and appreciate them. The format is a little repetitive, but lends itself to being used as a reference source of anecdotal case studies. It would also be useful as a reference for writers who are contemplating the use of a fictional character who is a nurse.

ISBN: 978-1-55642-904-0
Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of Lead Us Not into Temptation (Volume I of The Lord's Prayer Mystery Series) and DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life.
http://www.davidsonbooks.com

2009-10-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

I believe there are many, different reasons to read and some books prove worthwhile for unexpected reasons. Sometimes I read for specific information. Sometimes I read to share the experience of people like myself. On the other hand, sometimes I read specifically for the experiences and perspectives of people who are very different from me. And occasionally I read just because someone I know has something to share.
Initially, Aram Calhoun’s recently released novel, The Child and The Fury, got my attention for the last reason, but the novel is an interesting experiment along several lines.
Calhoun begins his novel by introducing a series of characters, each the focus of a chapter. These vignettes are often charming in a classic, straightforward way. Together they introduce two contemporary American families, one black and one white, loosely connected by an interracial marriage.
Ultimately he also introduces villains worthy of a melodrama.
Then he pulls all the threads together in a narrative cable clamp, creating an interesting story structure.
Calhoun plays with elements of science fiction as he introduces a “Black Light Gun” believed capable of singling out victims based on race. He reprises a piece of bleak ethnic history, the early 20th century fraud of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. And he experiments with an unexpected, entertaining proscenium drop late in the novel when he allows two characters to discuss some of the author’s storytelling decisions.
In this cross between a fable and a morality play, Calhoun also experiments with graphic treatment, using unusual spacing, underlining and italics to achieve various effects.
While not suggesting this novel belongs at the top of your reading list, I think readers who write will enjoy spending a few hours exploring the experiments of Aram Calhoun in The Child and The Fury.

ISBN 978-1-60264-410-6
Review by Janet Hale Tabin http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/

Dick Davidson Interviews Marshall J. Cook, Part 2

2009-09-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

Q: Given the violent world we live in, what should a mystery writer do to keep the reader's attention when he/she sees murders every day on the news, and the writer is creating a whole novel about "only" one or two murders?
A: You can't outdo life for gore, violence, and inhumanity. I don't even try; that's one reason why I write so-called cozy mysteries. No matter what you write, though, I think you earn and keep the reader's attention by creating credible characters and giving the reader a reason to care about them. Shockingly, some of my favorite [mystery] novels don't have any murders at all!!!!
Q: When I write a novel, I try to add significance by framing it around events that might have "national news impact" and bring in the historical background behind what is happening now. This is my style, and it gives me confidence that the reader will learn something from my novel. What do you think about the importance of style and voice to an author?
A: I think they're important, and I'd add "attitude" and "way of looking at the world" to the list. That said, I think the writer should absolutely forget all about such things and just try to tell a story as truly and sincerely as he or she can. Your style and voice will emerge naturally out of who you are, your experiences, your passions, your convictions.
Q: Catherine Wallace has said that there are many more reasons to write than there are to publish. Given this point of view and the hundreds of thousands of books that are published each year in the U.S. alone, would you ever suggest to your students that they write novels or nonfiction and never even try to publish them?
A: My job is to encourage, nurture, and help them do what they want to do. I do stress, though, that the act of writing itself, for oneself, is inherently valuable and needs no further justification, including publication. Writing is communication, sure, but it's also therapy, self-discovery, exploration, mastery of skills and forms -- all very good things.
Q: I've always been fascinated by authors like Isaac Asimov, J. R. R. Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling, who created their own worlds. Then they determined the natural laws and relationships that controlled those worlds. Have you ever thought about creating your own version of reality in a book? Would you like to play God in that sense?
A: I've never felt called to write science fiction, in that sense, but I think every fiction writer creates his/her own version of reality, a whole world. You are in that sense the God of your own little universe.
Q: It has to be very frustrating to authors to see that anyone with a bit of celebrity or notoriety can get bigger contracts and sell more books than most professional writers. What do you think about "star power" in publishing, and what do you think about the quality of most celebrity books?
A: Two Different questions.
Celebrity "books": Most of them aren't books at all. They're a little scrap of the celebrity, like a signed picture, something of that person that we can have for our very own. In terms of the quality of the book: Aw, you know they generally aren't very good. You don't need me to say so. But the 'star power' writers -- Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Patterson, Clancy, all the rest -- I say more power to them, and thank God for them. If we didn't have superstar fiction writers, only the courageous small press publishers would publish any fiction at all. And the stars get folks reading novels, which they might not otherwise do at all. And finally -- some of those 'stars' write really good stuff. Lonesome Dove was a blockbuster; it's also a great American novel.
Q: You pointed out earlier that in the U.S. only about ten percent of the books that are published each year are fiction. With a nonfiction book, it is fairly easy to determine your (somewhat specialized) market and your platform for promoting it. I know people who have written novels that have appeal to a specific geographic or historical interest market. How do you feel about writing a novel to suit a marketing plan?
A: GOOD LUCK.
Q: What do you think about writing contests? Do they work better when everyone writes to meet a specific assignment, or are they best for assessing the value of already-published works?
A: That's not really an either/or, is it? They certainly both have value. (I think the ones with a specific assignment are more interesting and fun.) I've never been much for entering contests. (For me the 'contest' is "Do you want to publish this?") But I think they're great if they encourage writers.
Q: I know that you teach some writing courses online. Do you think that writers get more out of a short in-person course or a longer self-study online course?
A: Depends on the learner and the learning style, I'm sure. I love classroom/face-to-face teaching and had my doubts initially about online teaching. I've been amazed at how wonderful it is. You really can teach writing this way, and you develop relationships with your students that are in many ways deeper and more authentic than face-to-face ones. It's great!
Q: I think that the best way to learn how to write is to write. @@@Amen, Brother!@@@ While you are in the process, and when you are revising, you can apply skills and information you have picked up along the way. As an educator, do you think there are skills that should be honed before one tackles creative writing? Should a novice writer feel self-conscious about writing down his or her thoughts?
A: Should you learn your scales first and jump right in and try to play a song, right? I'm definitely of the second school of thought. Get in there and tell stories. You start figuring out right away what you don't know and what you need to know. It's organic.
Q: I was fortunate to have a great Creative Writing teacher back in high school. He said that the secret to any written work could be found in two words: unity and coherence. (HMMM. Nobody told William Faulkner, I guess.) Do you have any similar succinct keys that are favorites?
A: They aren't similar, but over 40+ years of teaching, I've got it honed down to seven words:
Pay attention.
Try stuff.
Don't give up.

2009-09-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

According to the jacket notes on her newest collection, Alice Munro contemplated retiring with the 2006 publication of View of Castle Rock. Then 75 years old with a lifetime of accomplishment and well-earned recognition, she could hardly be faulted for taking her leisure. But for both fans of the writer herself and students of narrative craft, Munro's alternate decision brings Too Much Happiness.
Having built her reputation in short fiction, mostly set in the Canadian twentieth century, Munro took a significant departure in her 2006 collection: introducing elements of genealogy and memoir into her storytelling, she offered narratives that were almost but not quite biographical and autobiographical, several set outside Canada and in earlier times. The critical response was generally but not uniformly positive; some reviewers clearly judged these works below Munro’s usual standards.
With Too Much Happiness, Munro moves her work in two contrasting directions. The title story is actually a novella. Set in Europe primarily in 1891, it recounts history – the life of mathematician and novelist Sophia Kovalevsky. But Munro employs the language, devices and style of fiction or narrative to engage the reader well beyond any routine recitation of facts. The story begins on New Year’s Day with two lovers strolling in a graveyard, reflecting on a relevant superstition. The death of one or the other of this peripatetic pair is thus foreshadowed, leading the reader to seek the ‘who’ and the ‘how.’
The other nine stories comprising the collection return to the familiar territory of Munro’s earlier stories. With her still startling skill, she takes us through ranging tales of wondrous coincidences, troubling fears and impulses, love and shame.
Make time for Too Much Happiness!
ISBN 978-0-7710-6529-3
Reviewed by Janet Hale Tabin,
Blog: Tiddlywinks and Pick-up Sticks

Dick Davidson Interviews Marshall J. Cook, Part 1

2009-08-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

Interview conducted by Dick Davidson, OCWW and www.davidsonbooks.com.

1. Q: In your many years of teaching at University of Wisconsin, Madison, you have influenced many fledgling writers. Have you seen variations and trends over time suggesting differences in the kinds of people who write and their levels of proficiency?

A: More and more people are writing—and publishing—fiction now, which I of course think is wonderful. Proficiency is and always has been all over the place, but pretty much every student I interact with is scared and doesn’t think he/she is any good at it.

2. Q: The last figures I saw showed you as the author of 21 nonfiction books and 6 novels. I believe that your mystery series contains your most recent works. You were once quoted as saying, “I love writing. Fiction, nonfiction, grocery lists, doesn’t matter.” Do you currently consider yourself more of a novelist, and do you plan on more mystery novels in the future?

A: You’re missing the most recent, Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story, my seventh published novel. (And by the way, I never stop being amazed and thrilled every time a new book comes out.) I’m definitely focused on the novel now; it was always my first love. I’m hoping for a fifth book in the Monona Quinn Mystery Series, and I have a couple of other things rattling around inside.

3. Q: I have read that Murder Over Easy was based on the real-life murder of a diner owner. Do you recommend basing a mystery novel on an actual event, or do you think authors do better when they use their imaginations without being restrained by headlines? (One television series deliberately characterizes its plots as being “ripped from the headlines”.)

A: We do better when we aren’t restrained by anything in terms of material to write about. The first two novels in the Monona series were based on real events. Three and four are not. All four are total works of fiction, meaning I made the stuff up.

4. Q: You once recommended that a query letter sent to an agent or publisher should pitch a single novel except for the situation where you are writing a series. How would you handle the situation where you are pitching the second novel in a series to a different publisher than the one who issued the first volume?

A: Same process, but you of course mention the existence of the first book (which should help rather than hurt your chances with the second).

5. Q: What do you think about some of the new technical trends in publishing? Will economic trends, better editing, and quantities of titles guaranty eventual parity of POD books with traditionally published titles? Will the numbers game of E-book publishing make it very difficult for any one title to stand out?

A: I LOVE the new technology (and that from one who reveres the book as a holy object). POD and e-books have opened up publishing incredibly and made book publishing much more economical and less wasteful.

That said, it has made it tremendously difficult for any one title to receive any attention and find its readers. (The problem has shifted from getting published to getting noticed.) When I first started teaching, there were 65,000 books published that year in America (about a tenth of them fiction). The number is now 10 times that! (with the same ratio of fiction to non-fiction). Average sale of a POD self-published book is 147—but millions of people are selling them, so the so-called tail of the marketing dragon has become huge.

6. Q: As online book sales become increasingly important, do you think that publishers will do away with the free return policy for bookstores? If they do, what will bookstores of the future look like?

A: Great question.

I think in the not-too-distant future bookstores will have display copies only. When you buy a book, someone pushes a button, and a computer publishes a single copy of the book, your copy, at a regional distribution center. You get your book within a day or so, and there are no returned/remaindered books.

7. Q: What makes British mysteries so special? Is it history, environment, humor?

A: I think every country has lots of “special” mysteries and tons of not-so-special ones. To the extent that there’s a national outlook and a collective consciousness, the mysteries reflect this.

The Brits gave the world the cozy. America and the French gave it noir. Nobody does hard-boiled better than America.

8. Q: The new technologies of publishing make it relatively easy to create a new publishing firm. Would the emergence of many new small, specialized publishers be a good trend? How do you see publishing developing in the future?

A: We already touched on this a bit. Len Fulton (Dustbooks) has been tracking (and nurturing) small press publishers for four decades (God bless him). I join him in thinking that the little indies have been and remain the source of incredible vitality and experimentation in our literature. I love the fact that publishing is becoming cheap enough for many more to do it. This really parallels the advent of the computer in terms of making publishing more accessible.

9. Q: There are genre mysteries, and there are mainstream novels that have mystery aspects to them. Do you think most mystery readers are specialists, or do you see a wider market for mystery writing in one form or another?

A: I think we pigeonhole novels and novelists, primarily because it’s a lot easier to market them that way. But there are and always have been writers who defy categorization and transcend genre. From Raymond Chandler to Elmore Leonard and James Lee Burke, we have mystery/thriller/crime novelists writing great literature.

And tell me Ernest Gaines’ Long Day in November is ‘just’ a kids’ book and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is “just” a young adult novel.

10. Q: Are the better mystery and mainstream novel authors formally taught techniques, self-taught through trial and error, or just born to the art?

A: I think folks are born with the inclination, desire, and even need to write stories. It may even be that the stories pick the writers instead of the other way around. And certainly, just as some folks are born with greater natural athletic ability, some are born with more natural facility with language than others. But I’d never try to discourage anyone anywhere from writing.

Some writers are products of creative writing classes and MFA programs. Many are not. Take Louis L’Amour, who jumped a freight and hoboed around the country at age 15 and taught himself by stopping at the public library everywhere he went. He became our foremost writer of westerns and a true expert on the west.

If I had to choose whether to close down the writing schools or the libraries, I would without hesitation choose the former.

Julia Child's Memoir and "Julie & Julia" New Movie

2009-08-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

Only Julia Child could remember a restaurant visit 50 years ago and get the details right. In her memoir My Life in France, she recalls a visit to The Artistes restaurant in France, noting that it had "ten tables and 50,000 bottles of wine in the cellar." That's pure Julia.

The new movie Julie & Julia hits the theaters today. Before you see it, take time to learn the backstory by indulging in My Life in France, a memoir written by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme. As if a movie tie-in wasn't enough, this is also the 40th anniversary of Julia's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was that book that got young Julie Powell obsessed with cooking her way through Julia's repertoire, blogging about it, and landing an agent for a book deal and the new movie.

We foodies can't wait to see the film, starring Meryl Streep as Julia, but I promise you'll treasure it all the more if you slow down and start at the beginning. Here in My Life in France, Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme, her husband's grand-nephew, put together the extraordinary life of Julia Child, who learned to cook as a new bride in France, and never looked back. Alex, already an author, helped Julia, at age 91, write this memoir. Julia died August 13, 2004, when she was nearly 92.

Go back to 1948, when Julia's husband Paul worked for the U.S. Information Service at the American Embassy in Paris. Newly married, she joined him for the long journey to France aboard the SS America. French culture slowly won her over, leading her to explore its cuisine and take classes at the famed Cordon Bleu as she settled into a life of her own, far from her family and friends.

Before marrying Paul Child, Julia's early experiences with cooking closely parallel Julie Powell's early efforts to replicate Julia's work, as Julia says:
I would approach the stove armed with lofty intentions, The Joy of Cooking or Gourmet Magazine tucked under my arm, and little kitchen sense. My meals were satisfactory but they took hours of laborious effort to produce. I'd usually plop something on the table by 10 p.m., have a few bites, and then collapse into bed. Paul was unfailingly patient. But years later he'd admit to an interviewer, "Her first attempts were not altogether successful... I was brave because I wanted to marry Julia."

Peeking into Julia's life, I enjoyed learning of her daily pleasures, and reading the list of all the material she gathered to sum up a life's measure.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961, was Julia Child's first book, and much of her recollections about writing and publishing will be of great interest to fellow writers. We all know the work that goes into our fine prose, but recipes, measurements, translation, graphics, and co-authors all make for quite a stew. On the final selection of the book's title, Julia's co-author declared she did not care for the title. "It's too late to change it," said Julia. "Knopf knew a lot more about books than we did. And they were the ones who had to sell it. So, in effect, tant pis." (So much the worse.)

My Life in France is a true delight, but it is also a study in marriage. Julia and Paul Child were an amazing team. You'll observe how they both adapted for each other through travel, relocation, jobs, and her booming career, and how much he helped and supported her efforts, even doing photos and sketches for the first cookbook. What resonates most for me in My Life in France are the great relationships Julia Child had over her lifetime, how much she hurt if a friendship faltered, her love of food, and her true love of France as her spiritual homeland.

ISBN 978-0-30747-485-8

Reviewed by Helen Gallagher, http://www.computerclarity.com/, http://www.releaseyourwriting.com/

An Eldercare Resource

2009-08-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Hammond's Ride Guide is a useful reference for those who are facing the need to give up their driving privileges because of their age or medical condition. It is equally suitable for those who are looking to support elderly relatives who are facing the live-without-driving situation. The book offers listings and notes about organizations dedicated to assisting the non-driver as well as suggestions for how to seek and interface with volunteer drivers who may be friends, relatives, or helpers from a religious institution. This slim spiral bound volume is the personal effort of Everett Hammond, an octogenarian with a background in a transportation company. The specific resource data will be valuable for someone facing the need to live without driving, but I found the cheerleading aspect of the book equally useful. Mr. Hammond emphasizes the need for a positive outlook and quotes a variety of people who have successfully faced this ordeal. This is a specialized book for a specialized situation, but it makes a positive contribution to eldercare.

ISBN 978-0-615-25735-8 http://www.hammondsrideguide.com/

Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of Lead Us Not into Temptation (Volume I of The Lord's Prayer Mystery Series) and DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life. http://www.davidsonbooks.com/

2009-07-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

When a reader buys a book or magazine, he or she is usually motivated by an interest in the content of the work. The buyers think of themselves as purchasing the work of a writer or writers.
The price of a book or magazine, however, includes the costs of paper, ink, binding, transportation and so on. Payment to writers is a very small part of total cost.
Book and magazine buyers, though motivated by the content, pay mostly for the delivery of the content, though they arguably care more about the content than the delivery method. You could reasonably say book buyers agree to pay for the delivery of content in order to get the content they want. No problem.
But as readers and other audiences moved to the Internet for content, an odd thing happened. While most Internet users pay to use the Internet, they do not expect to pay for content. Whether ‘content’ is an article to read, a video to watch, a game to play or social network to tap, users do not expect to pay.
This is one, but only one, of the puzzles and paradoxes Chris Anderson (Editor in Chief, Wired magazine) explores in his recently released book, Free, subtitled The Future of a Radical Price.
Interestingly enough, Anderson notes, it turns out there are plenty of potential creators who are only too happy to provide free content in return for the simple pleasure of attracting an audience – in return for other people’s time and attention. This leaves content creators who want or need to make a living with the challenge of discovering or inventing ways to convert ‘free’ into ‘funds.’
Anderson explores a large number of business models for doing just that – for converting a free offer into a revenue stream.
Of course, the Internet is not the first technology to challenge the economics of content delivery. Anderson reviews the history of radio and television, both in the U.S. and elsewhere.
He also explores a wide swatch of other economic history and some economic theory.
Taking the reader for a quick spin through Price Theory, Anderson reminds us that, in a competitive market, the price of a product or service approaches its marginal cost. If you took the class, you'll remember more about rising marginal costs (reflecting scarcity) than falling marginal costs (the economics of abundance). But don't worry: Anderson is focused on the latter and gets us all up to speed pretty painlessly on the dynamics of abundance.
Free is entertaining, challenging, thought-provoking and informative.
It is also available ‘free’ as an abridged audio book at www.hyperionbooks.com/free. Your price? Your email address and the time and attention you will spend downloading and listening to chapter after chapter. For my time and money, I’d rather buy the book!
ISBN 978-1-4013-2290-8
Reviewed by Janet Hale Tabin,
http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/

2009-07-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

Trapped on the Wheel by John Glavin is a throwback to earlier times, both in the subject matter and in the graphics that decorate the book with the goal of making you want to give the book a permanent place on your library shelves. The reader faces the book's competing goals of historical re-creation of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, presentation of the social and ethical mores of the period, and engagement in the plot. The overall experience of reading this novel is a pleasant one, but the reader should plan on concentrating on the many details that are required to paint the historical panorama that is the backdrop for the story.
The plot is a coming of age story for two fraternal twins, Alessandra and Karla Aultman, who have just turned eighteen years of age. They have German/Irish background, and they live beyond their means in a row house with lots of servants. Their father, a real estate speculator, aspires to be in the top social echelon, but he is constantly on the brink of economic disaster. The story is a first person narrative from Alessandra's viewpoint, and she spends most of the book feeling insecure with regard to her relationships with her sister, her father, the servants, and her expected fiance.
John Glavin does a good job of capturing the slower pace of life among the elite during the 1890's. This contrasts well with the concurrent frenetic efforts to complete the structures and exhibits of the Columbian Exposition by any time close to the original schedule. As the story evolves, the action accelerates, evoking increased concern on the part of the reader for the heroine.
The first person narrative form allows the author to selectively reveal differences between what Alessandra perceives and what is actually happening around her. It suits this novel's plot.

ISBN 978-0-9822694-4-2

Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life (self-help), author of Lead Us Not into Temptation (mystery novel). www.davidsonbooks.com

The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House

2009-07-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

Most writers lust after the opportunity to attend a workshop and meet our heroes. Here in one book, The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, is a taste of the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, held in Portland, OR since 2003. This intimate guide includes discussion of writing techniques, and includes a CD with two of the workshop panels, "Using Rel Life in Fiction" and "A Conversation on Crafting Characters." Seventeen authors are represented here, including Dorothy Allison, Kate Bernheimer, Matthea Harvey, Anna Keesey, Margot Livesey, and those mentioned below.
With these writers, we explore the love/hate relationship a writer has with the mind, the words, the pen, and the reader.
From Aimee Bender, we learn that she too puzzles over the psychology of characters and what they want. We learn that writing is a process of discovering exactly that.
In "When to Keep It Simple," Rick Bass, author of 24 works of fiction, advises "Ornate sentences and thoughts are harder to sustain and nurture than simple ones. When you get into trouble, prune back, simplify. Hide the complex or ambitious thought, for now, and live to write another day."
Bass urges us, at every stage, to reside at the edge of our comfort zone, and shows how, even after a long literary career, he still struggles with words and sentences. It's both humbling and empowering to realize this is the way it is with words on the page.
Read "There Will Be No Stories in Heaven," by Tom Grimes, where he teaches us that our stories are amorphous until we discover how time controls them. "Every great story contains a 'clock,' an intrinsic timekeeper. Lacking this, a story could go on forever. Yet, no matter how great a story is, we long for it to end. Endings offer us solace, and time, not infinity delivers it. Time organizes, advances, and limits a story, thereby satisfying the reader's craving for narrative coherence and closure." Grimes then does a beautiful job of using The Great Gatsby to illustrate its perfect use of time. This essay is a workshop in itself.
One of the freshest pieces is "material" by Lucy Corin, who helps us understand the physical aspects of our writing. She views the physical layout of the words on the page, and the shapes and forms and patterns of our prose [dialog, narrative] in ways I've never seen. By looking for keys to a story's core message, Corin cleverly finds patterns that rise and fall into the story, things we know but don't really see when we read. To deal with this, you have to read your drafts in a very dynamic and playfully analytic way, just as you would read a great piece of writing you're trying to learn from.

ISBN 978-0-97941-981-2
Reviewed by Helen Gallagher, Computer Clarity
http://www.computerclarity.com/
http://www.releaseyourwriting.com/
A longer version of this review appears on Helen's blog at Salon.com and includes reference to one additional rather vulgar essay.

2009-07-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

"The hymn straggled to its raggedy conclusion..." leads us into this complex and satisfying tale. Arthur Blake is preaching to a tough audience at his new assignment, Parkville United Methodist Church. Lead Us Not into Temptation by Richard Davidson is an intricate tangle of genealogy, murder and morality. From Parkville, Illinois to war torn Germany the story moves with twists and turns that keep you turning the page.
Davidson uses Arthur's expertise as a former NASA engineer, his formidable logic, and his fascination with history to unravel the mystery of the skeletons in the closet of his new church. As the story unfolds, we meet a diverse cast of carefully drawn characters. How their decisions have impacted their lives and those of others hints at the consequences of succumbing to temptation. The novel touches on a number of moral and ethical dilemmas, from wartime romance to basic human greed.
The wealth of historical information provides a rich backdrop for this captivating tale. Thorough research is evident as the lives of a seemingly disparate cast of characters are artfully intertwined into a series of mysteries. Hats off to Mr. Davidson for a splendid first novel. I am looking forward to reading more of Pastor Blake's adventures in the future!

ISBN 978-1-60264-407-6
Reviewed by Carol Henderson, freelance writer.

2009-06-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

Sherman Alexie's newest book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is creating quite a stir. It is his first venture into the realm of Young Adult fiction, a genre which is often, and erroneously, believed to be suitable for middle-grade readers. So far, the book has won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and has garnered accolades from both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. The positive recognition is deserved: it is a well-written, poignant story filled with memorable characters. In an attempt to escape the poverty and alcohol-induced lethargy surrounding him, Arnold, a 14-year-old Native American, decides to attend a "white" school instead of the school on his Spokane reservation. By the end of the story, he has overcome a great many obstacles, including his own fears. It is a classic tale of triumph over adversity.

In recent days, however, the book has been the subject of some controversy because it has been on the required summer reading list in at least two Chicago-area school districts. The controversy stems from the fact that the book is rife with foul language and deals fairly graphically with the problems of racism, alcohol, violence, sex and abusive behaviors that the protagonist faces. Two articles in the Chicago Tribune last week highlight the opposing points of view of some parents and administrators. While the book is indeed a "valuable read" and we all know today's kids are aware of the issues as well as the foul language, does that make it acceptable to require kids to read the book? And if so, is there an age limit? If it's okay for 16-year-olds, is it still okay for 12-year-olds? Where do we as a society draw the line - or do we draw a line at all? While Alexie has put a much-needed spotlight on the plight of young Native Americans in our culture, he has also - perhaps inadvertently - raised some important questions for all of us.

ISBN 978-0-31601-368-0

Reviewed by Mary Driver, http://www.liminalesque.blogspot.com/.

Revisiting a Classic for Writers

2009-06-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

A recent conversation about the writing process inspired a revisit to Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Penning her classic about fifteen years ago, Lamott explained that most who aspire to write for a living will not succeed - not succeed in making a living from writing, in any case.
But she advocates writing anyway - for the sake of the writing and the writer, for the process rather than for the product.
Why write if you cannot make a living doing it? Lamott provides many reasons.
For one, writing teaches you to pay attention. And, according to Lamott, "There is ecstasy in paying attention." For another, putting your thoughts and experiences into words makes your experience of life bigger, richer, more real and meaningful.
Lamott charms the reader with her quirky, funny insecurities. She uses those to make the aspiring writer more comfortable with the inevitable fears writers face.
Many things about publishing have changed since 1994. On the one hand, there are probably more opportunities for a writer to gain exposure; on the other, the competition is getting even fiercer, and the likelihood of earning a living is no better.
But one thing has not changed: Lamott's advice to writers is as fresh today as when it was first published in 1994.

ISBN 978-0-38548-001-7
Reviewed by Janet Hale Tabin, http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/

2009-06-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Fence My Father Built by Linda S. Clare is more than a story about finding your way home. It is a story about how broken lives can be pieced together again, and how secrets can be unearthed, even after the characters have departed from the scene.

Linda S. Clare weaves a narrative that resembles a colorful native American blanket, rough in texture and bold in design. The main character, Muri, after a disappointing life elsewhere, drags her teenage daughter and son to the desolate landscape of the Oregon desert to settle her father's business after his death and, hopefully, to go "home". Muri soon finds that her father, who is native American and whom she left when she was only five, was secretive and hence universally misunderstood, a paradox of spirituality and fallibility. "Home," much to the chagrin of her teenage daughter, consists of a weather-beaten trailer surrounded by a fence decorated with oven doors, populated by odd family members and pet pigs. Add to the background a manipulative neighbor with imaginary rights to Muri's family creek, a veterinarian who shoots trespassing cows, and a native American burial mound -- all this just in the immediate vicinity of Muri's property.

The crux of the narrative is driven by the dishonorable intentions of Linc, their neighbor, who unfortunately owns most of the town. His past actions resulted from contested property rights involving Muri's father, and this conflict escalates. As Muri tries to unravel this knot many other things go awry. Muri's daughter disappears. Muri, her uncle, and the pet pig sustain various injuries, some life-threatening. Her ex-husband continues to be a pain. Through it all, Muri seeks the truth not only of her father's property but also of his character. Was he nothing more than a drunken dreamer, a high-spirited Holy Roller, a failed father?

Clare tackles alcoholism, prejudice, and religion with both honesty and sensitivity and does not hesitate to use language or describe actions that depict the deeper nature of those issues. All the characters are portrayed well, with actions and voices that sound true. While the first person voice of Muri sounds like a younger person than she actually is, this does not affect credibility; in some places the younger voice lends the dialogue more authenticity, especially where Muri was shocked, perplexed, or dismayed. Clare's writing is loaded with details about character's appearances, motions, surroundings, which add texture to the narrative.

In the end, some things are resolved; others are not. Muri still only has fragments of her father's life, but that is sufficient for the life she intends to build. It is a satisfying answer to the question of what one does with broken pieces; it all depends on what you've got. This story tells us that uncovering even an unpleasant truth can be liberating because discovery is more than mere exposure; it is revelation and prophecy.

ISBN 978-1-4267-0073-6

Reviewed by Almira Astudillo Gilles, author of Willie Wins, and Old Man Walking.

2009-06-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Animal Investigators by Laurel A. Neme, Ph.D.

Animal parts are a billion dollar global trade, and animal trafficking ranks among the top three in international crime.

Author Laurel A. Neme, Princeton educated Ph.D. and environmental journalist opens the eyes of the world with this book. This real tale of the relatively little known murder and slaughter of wildlife for the sake of gigantic profit can break your heart and shake you to the core. It is incredible crime that requires incredible scientific methods of solution.

So the WFL, the world's first Wildlife Forensic Lab, was born as an aid to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. This small staff of dedicated scientists and investigators, together with the USFWS, try to combat he overwhelming crime, brutality and greed to save millions of animals, including some of the endangered species. The underground industry feeds and supports the activities of worldwide terrorists, and now the suspicion of organized crime has loomed.

For the reader, Animal Investigators is at once exotic, exciting, educational and gut wrenching.

Neme cites three cases that come under focus, and we are privileged to watch this CSI of the animal world at work: bloated walrus torsos wash up on beaches, their tusked heads missing; black bear torsos are found with their gallbladders and front paws gone; Amazon feather art threatens many protected tropical animals and birds.

Untold numbers of animals are threatened by the poachers, smugglers, and murderers that make up this vast industry of death and brutality, and they just keep coming. It won't take a village to stem this tide; it will take a world.

Kudos to Laurel A. Neme for raising awareness to this horrendous problem.

ISBN 978-1-41655-056-3

Reviewed by Janis Guggenheim, freelance writer.

2009-06-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax
Here's a funny novel that fellow writers will especially love. The Accidental Bestseller is an inside look at the publishing industry from a group of struggling mid-list authors. A book about writers working to meet a deadline. Or, is it a book about the book you're reading?
The rungs of the publishing ladder are a slippery slope, but the warmth and loyalty these women share is so captivating, you root for their success all along.
The author, Wendy Wax, has written ten books. One of her novels, Hostile Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine. Her writing is so natural, I think you will wonder if it is as much autobiography as fiction.
Among the four females in The Accidental Bestseller, we see the struggles of being a writer without a husband's support or the troubles of an author who's a single mom, living with her children and her mother in a double-wide trailer. And a happily married author who finds out she isn't after all.
The boiling anger of a mid-list author is accurately portrayed, when one waits for a publishing contract, then worries that her sales won't keep her on the publisher's A-list. And that she may have to return the advance money. We know the pain of every author: Take the deal, hoping you'll leave them someday for a bigger publisher, when the reality is your numbers aren't good enough, and you're about to be dropped.
You'll pick up the pace of your reading when tension grows. You learn one author has to deliver a book or return the $30,000 advance, her three friends pitch in to get the book done.
"The thing is, Mallory, even in a tiny bookstore like this, there are thousands of titles vying for a reader's attention. And I have to ask myself, what are the chances that someone wandering in off the street is going to choose one of mine?"
But that's when the plot changes from a cute story about writers, to the revelations and realities of modern life. Wax does a terrific job creating true characters, believable stories, and fast-moving dialog.
Our cast of characters:
1. Kendall is the one we root for, when her publisher gives up on her and she just can't write the book that's due under contract
2. Mallory who always writes 20 pages a day to stay on top,
3. Faye surprised by her success with inspirational books, and
4. Tanya in the double-wide trailer who is sometimes the gutsy, brave and smartest of the four novelists.
Their loyalty and talent leave you assured they'll pull off at least a modest success. But the book holds plenty of surprises along the way. And Wax's dialog is so natural, it feels like a movie. Their covert collaboration takes the book in a whole new direction, and then another.
Fiction readers will appreciate Wax's ability to synthesize the mundane lives of people, yet make each person's story so compelling and different.
Few writers, even those who love their critique group, probably enjoy the loyalty and support these four women share. This is a great summer read.

ISBN 978-0-42522-767-1
Reviewed by Helen Gallagher, Computer Clarity. http://www.computerclarity.com/ http://www.releaseyourwriting.com/

2009-05-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

An Apple A Day by Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D.

Would a pesticide-free world be better? Can we still eat fish? Should we stay away from MSG? And what about artificial sweeteners? Dr. Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D, award winning Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society in Montreal, answers those questions and more in An Apple a Day.

Drawing from his expertise as a food chemist, Dr. Schwarcz blows a fresh breeze of truth over the contradictions, misconceptions, and myths about food that confuse us all. His conclusions and statements are supported by scientists and their research that he freely cites throughout. What's more, he writes about it with a modicum of humor and in language that even I can understand. That makes An Apple a Day not only eye opening and entertaining, but easy to digest (pardon the pun).

The considerable knowledge and food for thought (sorry) that Dr. Schwarcz covers includes the real deal about the natural substances in our food supply and what we've done to it (good and bad), the contaminants that get into it, and the nonsense we're often fed and expected to believe.

The final thought that Dr. Schwarcz leaves with us is a quote from Mark Twain: "The worst kind of ignorance is the things we know for sure that just ain't so;" and the doctor's confession that he eats an apple a day.

ISBN 978-1-59051-311-8

Reviewed by Janis Guggenheim, freelance writer.

2009-05-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

According to a well-accepted theory, everyone in the world is connected by no more than six acquaintanceship links, and everyone in the U.S. is connected by no more than two. It would hardly be surprising if everyone in the small town of Cosby, Maine is connected to Olive Kitteridge, whose family has been in the area for generations. A life-long resident of Cosby, Olive taught math in the local junior high school for 32 years.

Olive Kitteridge is Elizabeth Strout's collection of stories selected for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The character appears in each of the thirteen gems comprising this collection - sometimes at the center of a tale, sometimes quoted in passing, but always a presence.

The first story finds retired Henry Kitteridge recalling a particularly happy year in his career, not the result of his relationship with his acerbic and unpredictable wife Olive or his then prepubescent son Christopher. The final story leaves the widowed Olive at 74, settling into a new love.

In between, the reader meets a cross-section of the Cosby community, including a bar pianist fighting a tendency toward alcoholism, a sweet high school guidance counselor carrying secrets, an endearing young out-of-towner suffering from anorexia and many others, each encountering and facing down his or her own demons - or not.

While each of the stories is complete unto itself, Strout's remarkable skill as a storyteller acts like the taste of a pistachio - each one leaving you craving another.

ISBN 978-0-81297-183-3

Reviewed by Janet Hale Tabin

http://janetsweblog.blogspot.com/, http://clcpages.clcillinois.edu/home/bdvabi/

2009-04-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

Water for Elephants is Sara Gruen's coming of age novel about Jacob Jankowski's flight from veterinary school after the accidental death of his parents to the surrealistic world of a traveling circus during the time of the Great Depression. Hitching a ride on a circus train that meanders along unpredictable routes between rural performances leads him into a strange world with even stranger characters, some of whom turn out to be his guardian angels while others are revealed to be evil incarnate. The story is told as a flashback from Jacob's old-age desperation as a resident of a nursing home of questionable quality. The pace of the novel is frenetic as Jacob faces conflicts, temptations, and dangers from both human and animal denizens of a world of competition among third-rate circus organizations. This book is a definite page-turner based upon actual circus history but full of experiences that most of us can only visualize in dreams and nightmares.

ISBN 978-1-56512-560-5

Reviewed by Dick Davidson, author of DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life. www.davidsonbooks.com

DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life

2009-04-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

In his book, DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life, Richard Davidson outlines for us what goes into making a decision, the types of situations in which decisions are made and how we can weight our choices to make decision making easier and much more.
Who knew that what we do without much thought each and every day could be quantified in a thoughtful, logical way, to come to a good decision for that moment in time? As the author points out, even using his "Davidson's Doctrine" principles we sometimes make errors, make no decision or make a decision on whatever issue later, still being cognizant of the skills we used to eventually make a decision.
One of the principles of "Davidson's Doctrine" is to write down what you are trying to decide. He says: "Whenever you have to decide between two alternatives or among several alternatives, select one choice, and assume that you have already made that decision. Then look at your situation from the viewpoint of having already made the decision, and see whether you are comfortable with it and its probable resulting implications..."
I think this book is helpful in allowing us humans to find a better way to make decisions. Somehow, Richard Davidson makes decisions simpler. This is a way to figure out simple and knotty problems, allowing us to come to decisions from a comfortable I-have-looked-at-all-the-possibilities, assumed each one to be true, felt the weight of consequences and benefits shift as I examined each, and then decided to make a decision. We, at Off Campus Writers Workshop are lucky to have this interesting work from an author who knows the territory well. Reading it has opened my eyes to decision making. After you read it, you will wish you knew all of these techniques sooner - it makes life easier - and decisions we make better.

ISBN 978-1-60264-063-4
Reviewed by Sue Roupp, Vice President, Off Campus Writers Workshop.

Other Colors: Essays and a Story, by Orhan Pamuk

2009-04-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

Other Colors: Essays and a Story, provides a generous look into the life of a writer, from Nobel prizewinning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

The book's compelling narrative offers "images and fragments of life that still have not found their way into one of my novels," says Pamuk, proving how close his fiction is to truth, and how much good storytelling is based on reality.

In Other Colors, Pamuk opens his heart to his fond readers in such a remarkable way. How can this be? One of the best things I've ever read was his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, yet he wouldn't have won that prize for literature on the basis of the speech he was about to give. No, it is fiction that is his love. It is the thing, he says that "binds him to life." His gentle essays provide much comfort to fellow writers as he speaks with longing of his beloved second world - that of a writer in pre-dawn hours, alone in the quiet.

The autobiographical writings in Other Colors are stirring and honest. It provides an interior monologue of his career as a writer, a father, a son. Many of these lyrical essays offer a portrait of life in Turkey in the late 1990's, the political strife and difficulties experienced by most of Istanbul's ten million inhabitants. Pamuk's late-night ruminations reveal the sacrifices made by dedicated writers, even in a troubled country. "Because, as you can see, writing - if you are happy with it - undoes all sorrows."

The book includes some of the most thoughtful commentary and interpretation of great writers' work. Reviews of familiar names, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Victor Hugo, Albert Camus, and Mario Vargas Llosa, read as easily as Pamuk's more playful essay "Nine Note on Book Covers."

In this diverse collection of writings Pamuk contemplates both writer and reader. "There is no such thing as an ideal novelist. But - be he national or international - it is the ideal reader for whom all novelists write, first by imagining him into being, and then by writing books with him in mind."

For fiction writers, reading these essays, observing the great care and passion Pamuk puts into his storytelling, helps us understand what it means to be a writer.

"As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding words to empty pages, I feel as if I were bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way that one might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. As we hold our words in our hands, like stones, sensing the ways in which each is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes from very close, caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds."

When this 400 page book of essays reaches the end, we are not disappointed. Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Other Colors concludes with the text of his Nobel Lecture delivered in Stockholm. How fitting to mark the end of this collection with his speech, entitled: "My Father's Suitcase." In it, Pamuk reflects on what it means to be a writer and he works his craft to an impeccable level of skill, captivating us with the mysteries encased in his father's lifetime of notebooks left at his feet. "I am now going to speak of the meaning of that weight: that weight is what a person creates when he shuts himself up in a room and sits down at a table or retires to a corner to express his thoughts - that is, the weight of literature."

ISBN 978-0-30738-623-6

Reviewed by Helen Gallagher, author of Computer Ease and Release Your Writing.

Release Your Writing, by Helen Gallagher

2009-03-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Release Your Writing is Helen Gallagher's invitation to writers who have completed a book project to move it quickly to publication. She discusses various methods of publishing but advocates the Print On Demand (POD) process as being the trend for the future. She devotes a major section of the book to writing techniques and tools, including computer software applications. Her book includes a wealth of marketing approaches and connections for publicizing your book after publication. The marketing and publicity suggestions would be valuable to any author, regardless of the way his or her book was published. Release Your Writing offers the promise of successful publication to a writer who is weak on business aspects of his or her craft. The book's detailed information on all parts of the publishing/marketing process would be quite useful to someone who is just beginning a book project. This book would be a worthwhile addition to the writer's shelf of handy references.

ISBN 978-1-60264-060-3

Reviewed by Richard Davidson, author of DECISION TIME! Better Decisions for a Better Life. www.davidsonbooks.com