Middle Grade Monday: A Place to Hang the Moon

Title: A Place to Hang the Moon
Author: Kate Albus. Read by Polly Lee
Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2021. Original Margaret Ferguson, 2021, 309 pages

Source: Library

Publisher’s Blurb:

It is 1940 and Anna, 9, Edmund, 11, and William, 12, have just lost their grandmother. Unfortunately, she left no provision for their guardianship in her will. Her solicitor comes up with a preposterous plan: he will arrange for the children to join a group of schoolchildren who are being evacuated to a village in the country, where they will live with families for the duration of the war. He also hopes that whoever takes the children on might end up willing to adopt them and become their new family--providing, of course, that the children can agree on the choice.

Moving from one family to another, the children suffer the cruel trickery of foster brothers, the cold realities of outdoor toilets, and the hollowness of empty tummies. They seek comfort in the village lending library, whose kind librarian, Nora Muller, seems an excellent candidate--except that she has a German husband whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Nevertheless, Nora's cottage is a place of bedtime stories and fireplaces, of vegetable gardens and hot, milky tea. Most important, it's a place where someone thinks they all three hung the moon. Which is really all you need in a mom, if you think about it.
 

My Review:

This is a totally easy feel-good read. There is nothing extraordinary about it: the plot progression is obvious, and the standard tropes are called forth as expected. That doesn't stop it from being a highly enjoyable orphan story, in the great tradition of books about abused orphans who find their forever home with someone who will care for them. 

The biggest issue I had with the book was actually not the predictability of the plot (which these days is kind of a bonus for me), but a slight tendency to anachronism. Some of the language and diction of the characters didn't quite ring true to 1940s England, though I think most of the big-picture story did (leaving aside the utter absurdity of the premise, which is... utterly unrealistic). I do tend to get hung up on that sort of thing! 

The audio book was well produced and the reader did a good job--the characters were voiced distinctively and different accents rendered  convincingly.

My Recommendation:

This is utter brain-candy, a fun read if you are feeling the need for something a bit simple and sentimental. It's probably not the best introduction to the period for children, though the depictions of the mixed conditions for evacuees and the general mess the war caused are pretty good, really.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of A Place to Hang the Moon from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”   

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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Audiobook Review: Beyond the Call, by Lee Trimble and Jeremy Dronfield

 

Title: Beyond the Call: The True Story of One World War II Pilot's Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front

Author: Lee Trimble with Jeremy Dronfield. Read by Donald Corren

Publication Info: Audible Audio, 2015. 11 hours. Hardcover 2015 by Berkley, 352 pages.

Source: Library digital resources

 

Publisher’s Blurb:
Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front, modern day Ukraine. With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men.

The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid. The Soviets viewed POWs as cowards, and regarded all refugees as potential spies or partisans.

The United States repeatedly offered to help recover their POWs, but were refused. With relations between the allies strained, a plan was conceived for an undercover rescue mission. In total secrecy, the OSS chose an obscure American air force detachment stationed at a Ukrainian airfield; it would provide the base and the cover for the operation. The man they picked to undertake it was veteran 8th Air Force bomber pilot Captain Robert Trimble.

With little covert training, already scarred by the trials of combat, Trimble took the mission. He would survive by wit, courage, and a determination to do some good in a terrible war. Alone he faced up to the terrifying Soviet secret police, saving hundreds of lives. At the same time he battled to come to terms with the trauma of war and find his own way home to his wife and child.

One ordinary man. One extraordinary mission. A thousand lives at stake.
This is the compelling, inspiring true story of an American hero who laid his life on the line to bring his fellow men home to safety and freedom.

My Review:
I enjoy finding books about bits of history I never heard about. This book delivered that in almost a larger dose than I wanted. It's mostly the story of one man's war--the part of the war he fought after he thought he was done, since Robert Trimble had completed his 35 bombing missions. But it's also about a much bigger issue, the question of how the US handled the USSR as the war wound down, and it's not always pretty.

Perhaps that's why I never heard more about this part of WWII in my school history classes, since I grew up in the Cold War and you'd think there'd have been a rush to tell us anything bad about the Soviet Union. But I never knew about how the Soviets treated POWs, released prisoners of the Nazi death camps, or other war refugees. Let's just say it was an eye-opener, especially how the US just walked away from a lot of our own people. I know political necessity made that inevitable, but this book tells what it looked like on the ground.

The book is well written. Lee Trimble was smart to partner with an experienced writer to tell his father's story, and the research they put into confirming Robert Trimble's story shows. Any incident they could not confirm, they make clear is based only on the elder Trimble's memory. In general, the narrative flows clearly, though at times I got confused as we jumped from one narrative line to another. Part of that is the nature of audio books, where everything relies on the listener's memory and attention.

The narration itself doesn't stand out in my mind at all--which means it was well done. In a book like this, especially, I'm all in favor of narrators who stay out of the way of the text.

My Recommendation:

A fascinating story and well worth a read, or a listen, especially for history fans.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of Beyond the Call from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”   

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

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Audiobook review: All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

Title: All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
Author: Rebecca Traister

Publication Info: 2016, Simon and Schuster Audio. 11.5 hours. Hardcover, 2016, Simon and Schuster, 339 pages.

Source: Library digital services

 

Publisher’s Blurb:

In 2009, award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.

But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: The phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change—temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more. Today, only twenty percent of Americans are married by age twenty-nine, compared to nearly sixty percent in 1960. 

My Review:

I feel like I was sucked in by false advertising on this one. From the blurb, I expected something largely focused on history, and the things women have done, especially single women. And yeah, that stuff's in there. But in the end, Traister did what she originally set out to do: she wrote a book largely about being urban and single in 2009. Not surprisingly, I wasn't in the mood for a treatise on all that's wrong with marriage, still less one that focused on aspects of life among the single women that I never experienced during my 31 years of single life. I get it: some things have changed since I married in 1994. Some things, I suspect, have not.

 

Ultimately, the book felt to me like a paeon to the single life. What's more, it slid quickly over some of the drawbacks. While discussing the deep female friendships that Traister feels are more satisfying to women than spousal relations, she slid rather quickly over the many ways that these friendships can fail, vanish, or be distracted. It's not that I don't think female friendship is important. I rely heavily on my female friends, and long have. (And, for that matter, on my male friends.) It's just that the friends of your 20s may or may not be around for your 60s. That's not news--I just felt that presenting those friendships that in a sense substitute for marriage as something that any woman can have (but only as long as she doesn't marry?) was disingenuous at best.

Obviously, my life choices and experiences influenced how I felt about this book. I probably should have DNF'd it, since it wasn't what I expected. But I kept going, hoping for that book on women's history the subtitle and blurb led me to expect. What I got, instead, was a feeling that somehow I'd failed as a single, because the single life she described wasn't, for the most part, the one I experienced. Nor, I suspect, is it the experience of most working-class women, ones who single salary doesn't fund a glamorous lifestyle, or even a decent climb out of poverty.

My Recommendation:

If you are a fan of Sex and the City, and especially if you feel like that's your life, you'll probably like this. If your experience was more like mine, you're more apt to feel like it's a slap in the face. There are some good points, especially about women reaching that point where we build ourselves and adult life without waiting to be married first. They just got sort of buried in the author's rush to prove that being single was a good choice.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of All the Single Ladies from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”   

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

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Non-fiction audiobook review: The Ice at the End of the World

 I missed Friday's post entirely. I noticed it late in the day, but didn't really feel like rushing something together even for a "photo Saturday" post. Instead, I'm skipping ahead, and getting a start on this week's posts. The thing is--I'm writing!

Still, I have a review for today.

Title: The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future

Author: Jon Gertner; read by Fred Sanders

Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2019. 13 hrs. Original hardback published 2019, Random House. 418 pages.

Source: Library digital resources

Publisher’s Blurb:

Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland--at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland's ice doesn't just tell us where we've been. More urgently, it tells us where we're headed.

In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth's last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland's ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century--first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds--and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland's seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling--one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth's past, going back hundreds of thousands of years.

Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it's too late. As Greenland's ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns.

Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic's explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style--and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left. 

My Review:

In some ways, I don't think that blurb has left me much to say! I found the book solidly written, if not always gripping, and I appreciated the way it encompassed not only the adventurous-explorer era and the real and important science that has been and is being done on the ice sheet. 

 

My interest in the topic stems from several sources. Of course, I'm always up for a good story about explorers and adventures, and Gertner does a good job with this, picking up different explorers from some I've read about recently. More importantly, I consider climate change to be the biggest threat to just about everything we know and love. Gertner presents, in the final chapters, a clear accounting of how Earth's rising temperature is already deeply entrenched, and the speed with which it is melting the ice. If I may be forgiven the inappropriate metaphor, it's a chilling set of statistics.

Of course, I already knew this. A friend has been doing ice sheet research for quite a few years now, and he's been clear about the unprecedented extent of melting they find there. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out why, while the early explorers and scientists did much if not most of their work during the summer, scientists now are pretty much limited to the spring. By summer, the ice sheet is too wet, melting with enthusiasm.

There may be a certain irony, indeed, in the way the tale of the loss of the ice matches the progression of ever more advanced means of transportation to study it. The same motorized sleds and airplanes that make it possible to study in the middle of the ice without excessive risk to life and limb are part of the problem, as it were.

My Recommendation:

An interesting read for lovers of exploration and science, and an important book for the dispassionate presentation of the reality of the melting ice sheet.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of The Ice at the End of the World from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”   

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

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Non-fiction Audiobook Review: Raven's Witness

 

Title: Raven's Witness: The Alaska Life of Richard K. Nelson

Author: Hank Lentfer. Read by Basil Sands

Publication Info: 2020 Tantor Audio. 8:29. Original 2020 by Mountaineers Books. 256 pages.

Source: Library digital resources

Publisher’s Blurb:

Before his death in 2019, cultural anthropologist, author, and radio producer Richard K. Nelson's work focused primarily on the indigenous cultures of Alaska and, more generally, on the relationships between people and nature. Nelson lived for extended periods in Athabaskan and Alaskan Eskimo villages, experiences which inspired his earliest written works, including Hunters of the Northern Ice.  

 

In Raven's Witness, Lentfer tells Nelson's story--from his midwestern childhood to his first experiences with Native culture in Alaska through his own lifelong passion for the land where he so belonged. Nelson was the author of the bestselling The Island Within and Heart and Blood. The recipient of multiple honorary degrees and numerous literary awards, he regularly packed auditoriums when he spoke. His depth of experience allowed him to become an intermediary between worlds. This is his story. 

My Review:

I picked this book up from the library because it won kudos at the Banff Film festival, and it was at least an interesting read. First, the bad news: I hated the narrator. His delivery uses over-meaningful pauses and emphases that seem to imply significance and drama in every sentence, and it drove me nuts. I would have dumped the audiobook and gotten a text version, but the library only had the audio.

 

Once I got past the narration, however, the story is engaging and well-written. The narrator made me feel at first that it leaned toward purple prose, but in the end I decided that most of that was on Sands, and if read in a normal way it would be pretty decent. 

I came away with a feeling that though Nelson wasn't one of those people whose life you feel everyone ought to know about, he was worth learning about anyway. His work in his later years to help slow the logging in the Tongas National Forest is laudable, but I particularly liked his insights into the lives of the native people among whom he lived for several years, and appreciated his evolution away from anthropology--which always implies a certain superiority--to an openness to simply learn from them.

Lentfer became friends with Nelson in his final years, and the friendship and respect of a younger man for an elder informs the book all through. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but consider it a warning that there isn't a very strong critical thread in this presentation of Nelson's life.

My Recommendation:

Worth reading for insights into Alaskan history and culture, and as a reminder of what has been lost to the "march of progress." But get the print book and spare yourself the audio.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of Raven's Witness from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”   

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

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Nonfiction Audiobook Review: The Pioneers

Title: The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

Author: David McCullough. Read by John Bedford Lloyd

Publication Info: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 10hrs 23 min.

Source: Library digital resources

 

Publisher’s Blurb:

As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River.

McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. “With clarity and incisiveness, [McCullough] details the experience of a brave and broad-minded band of people who crossed raging rivers, chopped down forests, plowed miles of land, suffered incalculable hardships, and braved a lonely frontier to forge a new American ideal” (The Providence Journal).

Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. “A tale of uplift” (The New York Times Book Review), this is a quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough’s signature narrative energy.

 

My Review:

To get the basics out of the way right off: this book is, as you would expect, well researched, well written, and well read. It is also an interesting look at a time and place I never thought much about--the first "westward expansion" following the Revolutionary War, into a part of the continent that I (west-coaster that I am) tend to think of as part of the East.

That said, the book's subtitle had me on guard from the start, on the watch for a kind of inherent racism that seems almost inevitable when writing about the "settlement" of places considered empty by Europeans, but which in fact are full of people. McCullough navigates that minefield reasonably well, though I think he could have been a little blunter about the ambiguity of the "American ideal." There is no doubt that the anti-slavery stance of the first settlers is laudable, along with the fierce determination and stamina with which they managed to get it written into law (as well as free public education, which is no small thing, though it's never clear to me if that education was extended to people of color). But.

 

While McCullough does delve into the ways that relations between the settlers and the Native Americans deteriorated--largely ruined by an idiot of a military man--he tends to gloss over the removal of the native inhabitants of the region to make room for that American ideal. While noting the irony that by the time the first settlers were dying of old age, the only thing left of the Indians was a fine collection of names for their former places, the author stops short of wondering how much that tarnished the nobility of the settlers. He mentions, but doesn't dwell on, the fact that the Indians were forcibly removed from their homelands. When we read of the slaughter of settlers and soldiers by Indians, the dead have names and histories. When the slaughter ran the other way, not much is said of the humanity of the dead.

My Recommendation:

The book is worth reading. The imbalance that I have pointed out is, I think, compensated by the glimpse into the changes that have rolled over this continent in the last 500 years. Still, I await the day when I don't have to go find a separate book to get the perspective of the non-whites in our history.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of The Pioneers from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

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Audio Non-fiction review: 1493, by Charles C. Mann

 

Title: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Author: Charles C. Mann. Narrated by Roberston Dean

Publication Info: Random House Audio 2011, 17:45 hours. Original Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, 557 pages.

Source: Library Digital Editions

Publisher’s Blurb:

From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs.

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. 

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet. 

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

My Review:

Several years ago I read Mann's 1491, which you might consider the prequel to this book. In some ways, I found that more interesting--or maybe just more to my taste? Because the impact of the Columbian Exchange is depressing--but it's also hard to imagine a world without it--I sometimes prefer just to think about the world that came before. 

While 1491 focused on what the "New World" (so-called; of course the inhabitants didn't see it that way) looked like before Europeans brought all the stuff they brought, 1493 looks at the world the Exchange created. That would be the world we live in, for better and for worse. Many of those changes are almost impossible to imagine away. Leaving aside the question of who and what I'd be if my ancestors hadn't moved to North America, thinking about the pre-Exchange diet of pretty much any part of the world is a bit depressing. In that respect, Mann's book has a positive feel--it reminds us of the good things the Columbian Exchange brought us.

In other areas, however, it's the old discouraging tale of extractive industries, exploitation of native peoples by conquerors (on a scale that far exceeds the pre-existing states of conquest and exploitation), and environmental degradation. Having recently finished listening to Isabel Wilkerson's Caste, it was interesting to read Mann's book, which is less interested in the lasting class/caste/racist impacts of that Columbian Exchange than with the ecological impacts. He rather dodges the issue, noting that slavery didn't begin as a racial construct, but without looking into how that changed. Mann's interest is more in what plantation agriculture did to the land, and how communities of escaped slaves (and indigenous peoples) managed their lands, not the impact on social structures.

I found the book a bit unwieldy for audio reading--it takes a long time to go through nearly 18 hours of narration, and there are a lot of names and places to keep track of--but the narrator does a good job, and I was okay with letting some of the details go. Certainly what Mann has done is important: we need to understand how we got where we are. Maps, diagrams, and pictures that are no doubt present in the print edition might be helpful.

My Recommendation:

A good book if you want to really understand what happened when globalization started in the 15th Century. The audio book is good, but it may be easier to keep track with the print edition.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of 1493 from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

Audiobook Review: This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing

 

Title: This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir
Author: Jacqueline Winspear. Read by the author.
Publication Info: Audible Audio, 2020; 10 hours.   Hardcover Soho Press, 2020. 303 pages.

Source: Library Digital Resources

Publisher’s Blurb:

After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline’s own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception.

An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is the story of a childhood in the English countryside, of working class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory. 

My Review:

Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, a series that began in the period right after WWI and has continued on into the Second World War. It is probably the best historical mystery series I've found. Now I know why. In addition to being a meticulous researcher, Winspear developed a real sense of what the war times were like through her own family and the stories they told. 

Not exactly the story I expected for the author's life, the tale she gives us here is gripping, compelling, and (no surprise) very well written. Her reading of the memoir is also fantastic, so that I felt rather as though I had her in my living room telling me the story of her childhood. And, as with a conversation, the book twists and doubles back in places, picking up a thread as though she just remembered another thing. Nonetheless, the overall arc is from the beginning to her departure to the US as a young woman ready to start a career as a writer, and the progression is spot on.

Winspear is only a few years older than I am. I often feel like I grew up in an earlier era than I did (thanks to some formative years in a place that wasn't really in step with the times), but her childhood feels like something from a much earlier period still, in ways that are fascinating to this child of the American West.

My Recommendation:

I can recommend this not only for fans of Ms. Winspear's novels, but also for anyone interested in a well-written memoir of an unusual childhood. I have to recommend the audio book, because while there may be pictures and things in the print book (I don't know. Are there?), her reading of the book is not to be missed.

 

Non-Fiction Review: Destiny of the Republic

 

Title: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President

Author: Candice Millard. Read by Paul Michael

Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2011; 9 hours 47 minutes. Original by Doubleday, 2011, 339 pages

Source: Library digital resources

Goodreads Blurb:

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history. 

My Review:

The biggest problem with this story is that it's fact, not fiction, so the narrative arc just doesn't work as well as we'd like. The set-up is perfect: Bell's genius, Lister's new understanding of germs and infection, all coming together just in time to save the president's life, right? Only, as we know, it didn't end that way. That simple fact forced the author to work extra hard to give the story a point, in my opinion. She doesn't do too bad a job.

With or without a greater significance, and even though Garfield was assassinated before he could do much as a president (though Millard argues that Chester Arthur, after Garfield's death, worked hard to carry out Garfield's agenda), his life is impressive. The early part of the book, recounting his early years, is inspiring. The account of the world's fair where Bell introduced his telephone is likewise interesting. It came so close to being ignored. Had no one noticed it, how much longer would it have taken for the technology to take hold? I'm sure it was inevitable that it would be picked up sooner or later, but it's fun to speculate.

In our times, maybe the most important message of this book is the clear depiction of the consequences of a refusal to recognize science. Lister had already proven his theory and found acceptance in Europe. Had Garfield been shot in England, he might well not have died (it was sepsis, not the bullet, that killed him). But for whatever reason, the American medical community clung to their old beliefs and continued to spread death and disease. I don't think I need to elaborate. It was also enlightening to see how devious the politicians were, and how willing to subvert democracy for personal gain. Plus ça change...

Finally, one caveat: the descriptions of the wound and Garfield's infections are pretty graphic. I had to take it in small doses, and definitely no listening at dinner time.

My Recommendation:

The book is well-written and well read. Perfect for those, like me, who like to pick up stray bits of history for no good reason. 

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of Destiny of the Republic from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."   

Nonfiction Review: Mobituaries, by Mo Rocca (audiobook)

 

Title: Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

Author: Mo Rocca (read by the author)

Publication Info: Simon and Schuster Audio, 2019. Hardback, Simon and Schuster, 2019, 384 pages. 

Source: Library digital resources 

Publisher's Blurb: 

Mo Rocca has always loved obituaries—reading about the remarkable lives of global leaders, Hollywood heavyweights, and innovators who changed the world. But not every notable life has gotten the send-off it deserves. His quest to right that wrong inspired Mobituaries, his #1 hit podcast. Now with Mobituaries, the book, he has gone much further, with all new essays on artists, entertainers, sports stars, political pioneers, founding fathers, and more. Even if you know the names, you’ve never understood why they matter...until now.

Take Herbert Hoover: before he was president, he was the “Great Humanitarian,” the man who saved tens of millions from starvation. But after less than a year in the White House, the stock market crashed, and all the good he had done seemed to be forgotten. Then there’s Marlene Dietrich, well remembered as a screen goddess, less remembered as a great patriot. Alongside American servicemen on the front lines during World War II, she risked her life to help defeat the Nazis of her native Germany. And what about Billy Carter and history’s unruly presidential brothers? Were they ne’er-do-well liabilities…or secret weapons? Plus, Mobits for dead sports teams, dead countries, the dearly departed station wagon, and dragons. Yes, dragons.

Rocca is an expert researcher and storyteller. He draws on these skills here. With his dogged reporting and trademark wit, Rocca brings these men and women back to life like no one else can. Mobituaries is an insightful and unconventional account of the people who made life worth living for the rest of us, one that asks us to think about who gets remembered, and why. 

My Review:

By the time you get through that blurb, I'm not sure how much there is left for me to say, except that the last paragraph of the blurb is pretty much spot on. I found the stories interesting and his delivery excellent (as you'd expect from a performer). I learned a bunch of things (I didn't know that about Herbert Hoover, who went on to be the president who got the blame for the Great Depression--remember "Hoovervilles"?), and enjoyed doing it.

Pretty much the only thing I found to complain about were some sections where he follows a well-developed story about one person or entity with a series of basically one-line similar cases. I wanted to know more about most of those!

My Recommendation:

This was great listening while driving, and the relatively short segments would also work well for times when you don't want to commit to a whole book at once. Check it out for some enjoyable, not too ponderous, bits of biography and history!

FTC Disclosure: I checked Mobituaries out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Non-fiction double-review

This isn't really a proper review post, because my mind just doesn't seem to be working that way. But I've recently finished a couple of works of non-fiction, one audio, one on the Kindle, and at least have a few thoughts. 

First, the books. Both were fairly random selections from the library's Overdrive collection, nabbed in something of a hurry for my road trips. As a result, the print book was read in snatches, the audio book with whatever attention was left after driving.

In general, for me the mark of a good work of history is that it makes me care about something I may not have known I was interested in. Both of these books managed that.

In print we have:

        

Title: Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II

Author: Adam Makos

Publication info: Ballantine Books, 2019. 395 pages 

From the author of the international bestseller A Higher Call comes the riveting World War II story of an American tank gunner’s journey into the heart of the Third Reich, where he will meet destiny in an iconic armor duel—and forge an enduring bond with his enemy.

When Clarence Smoyer is assigned to the gunner’s seat of his Sherman tank, his crewmates discover that the gentle giant from Pennsylvania has a hidden talent: He’s a natural-born shooter.

At first, Clarence and his fellow crews in the legendary 3rd Armored Division—“Spearhead”—thought their tanks were invincible. Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit.

After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater.

But with it comes a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany.

Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans.

As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence to the modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time.

 My thoughts: (Note I'm not claiming "review" status for this). 

With reference to my above comment on how to know if a history or biography is good, I can't claim I wasn't already interested in WWII. But I had no idea I cared about the tank war in particular, and in fact had never thought about the men who operated them. I had no idea there were so many in each of those tanks--they hardly look big enough for one or two crewmen, let alone a half a dozen. Makos brought those men to life, and brought home how young they were-- most of them around the ages of my sons, a sobering thought.

This was a good book to have chosen for reading, rather than listening, as there were lots of photos and maps. It would probably have been even better in print, where the maps are bigger and easier to reference as you read!

 

Title: Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Author: Robert K. Massie.  Read by Mark Deakins

Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2011 (24 hours). Hardback Random House, 2011, 625 pages

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into empress of Russia by sheer determination. For thirty-four years, the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars, and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution. Catherine’s family, friends, ministers, generals, lovers, and enemies—all are here, vividly brought to life. History offers few stories richer than that of Catherine the Great. In this book, an eternally fascinating woman is returned to life. 

 My thoughts:

This one really was something I wouldn't have gone looking for. If I knew there was a Catherine the Great of Russia, that was as much as I knew. I was predisposed to be attracted once I saw the book, because Eldest Son is studying Russian, but I'd never have gone in search of such a book. 

It didn't take long to get me interested in the history, starting right off from the unexpected fact that one of the "Great" Romanovs wasn't even Russian, and was a Romanov only by marriage. On the other hand, since all the noble houses of Europe seemed to be related one way or another, it didn't seem to matter that much.

I was intrigued by the ways in which strong, intelligent women with a knack for leadership had to negotiate their times. The limitations on female power were real, and only partly went away when one was crowned Empress. If the book spends a lot of time talking about Catherine's lovers (and those of her predecessor, the Empress Elizabeth), it's because they had an outsized influence on the course of the nation's history for as long as each remained a favorite.

 The structure of the book did sometimes confuse (the overall progress was from beginning to end of her life, but each chapter seemed to follow one thread for a long way, then the next would jump back), but in general the narration was easy to follow while my attention was on the road, and I credit both author and narrator for keeping me awake.

 

My Recommendation:

Give history a chance. Check out random books and learn about something you never knew happened. 

 

FTC Disclosure: I checked the above-reviewed books out of my library, and received nothing from the writers or publishers for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."    

Audio-book Review: The Hired Girl

Title: The Hired Girl
Author: Laura Amy Schlitz; read by Rachel Botchan
Publication Info: 2015 by Recorded Books; hardback 2015 by Candlewick Press
Source: Library digital resources

Publisher's Blurb:
Ever since the untimely death of her mother, 14-year-old Joan Skraggs has been desperately unhappy. Under the thumb of her cruel father and three sullen brothers, Joan lives like a servant on their farm just outside of Lancaster, forever cooking, cleaning, and attending to the many demands of the home. But she has little freedom and less support from her family for her love of reading and blossoming interest in education. But when her father tells Joan she can't go to school anymore, it sets off a journey that will see her become first a runaway, then a hired girl on $6 a week, and finally her very own young woman.

Set in America during the optimistic years before the First World War, and told through a series of journal entries, The Hired Girl is the story of a young girl in search of real life and true love. It takes in feminism and housework; money, religion, and social class; literature and education, romanticism and realism, first love and sexual yearnings, cats, hats, and bunions. And it's a comedy. 


My Review: 
I listened to this right after A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and there were certain similarities that would provide fodder for a lengthy term paper on the changes in children's literature in the last 3/4 of a century. I won't write that, so don't panic!

I was struck by the power of the writing about Joan's miserable life before she runs away. The author has made masterful use of the journal approach; Joan is given a distinctive voice and her writing is just the right amount of over-blown prose (reflective of her age and education), combined with very well-chosen words to carry the feelings. It certainly made me want to clobber her awful father!

The maturing of Joan over the year is interesting to watch and well done, if perhaps too accelerated. She continually sees her own immaturity in actions of even a few months earlier, while missing the naivete of what she is thinking and writing at the time. And (like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), she at times comes to believe the lie she's told about her age. Perhaps the most brilliant illustration of this (and the one that is most aggravating) is how she falls in love. She does remind herself occasionally that she is only 14, but most of the time she acts and fantasized as though she were 18, only without the understanding you can bet she'll have in four more years! The careful (or maybe adult) reader can also see the difference between how she sees the young man she's in love with and what he really is--himself a callow youth without the ability to think his actions through.

The narration is very well done, and I have to wonder if I'd have felt Joan's excitement and misery so strongly if I were just reading the words on the page.

My recommendation: 
I'm not quite sure if I consider this one MG or YA. There are enough adult issues that I'll tag it for 12 and up. There's nothing explicit or inappropriate but there is a lot of adolescent angst. There is a fair amount of discussion of religion, both in terms of addressing antisemitism and of Joan's Catholic faith. I think the value of the former--including recognition of those who don't see their own prejudice--more than offsets any problem a reader might have with the latter.


FTC Disclosure: I checked The Hired Girl out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Middle Grade Classics: Gone-Away Lake

 

Title: Gone-Away Lake
Author: Elizabeth Enright; read by Colleen Delany
Publication Info: 2005, Listen and Live Audio. Originally published in 1957 by Harcourt, Brace & World, 180 pages.
Source: Library digital resources

Publisher's Blurb:

Portia always expects summer to be a special time. But she couldn't imagine the adventure she and her cousin Julian would share this summer. It all starts when they discover Gone-Away Lake--a village of deserted old houses on a muddy overgrown swamp.

"It's a ghost town" Julian says. But the cousins are in for a bigger surprise. Someone is living in one of those spooky-looking old houses.  


My Review:  
Just for fun, I have to start by sharing some of the historic covers for this one (one of the delights of old kids' books is seeing how the covers changed through the publication history).

This one was the original. It feels very 1950s to me--much like the covers of books I got in school a decade later.


1989 saw a bit of an update:
 

Another publisher in 1990 went for a different look:
 

Okay, enough of that! Just wanted to share. What about the story?

Gone-Away Lake surprised me at first with how equal the two kids seem. For most of the book, Portia is a tomboy after my own heart, and the inequalities in the relationship come from an age difference, not gender. That was how it was for my brothers and me growing up: what I couldn't or didn't do had little to do with being a girl, and a lot to do with being a lot smaller (only 3.5 years younger, but a lot smaller). Sadly, when other boys are girls are added to the mix, all of the kids fall right into standard gender roles. That might make sense in one way, but I would have expected Portia to feel some regret or resentment. Not a deal-breaker, but just a reflection of my own bias :)

Many kids reading today might be surprised by the freedom the kids have, but I remember doing that kind of roaming as a kid, so I think it's in keeping with the period. It certainly solves the problem sometimes referred to as the "Dead Parents Society"--the need to get parents out of the way so kids can have agency, that leads to so many books with dead or disfunctional parents. These kids can have their adventures without parental interference because they are allowed to.

What about the story? Well, in some ways the story doesn't really go anywhere. It's a tale of a rather delightful summer that's a bit more special than most. There's a bit of an arc, in the discovery and development of the abandoned community and the surprising residents, but really--I felt like it was primarily a celebration of a summer of freedom to explore the world and do what kids (should) do. It also contains a certain nostalgia for a still older time, the early 1900s when the lake was a lake and the summer homes were full of families.

The point of view is mostly Portia's, but does shift at times to Julian, and a few times to Portia's little brother Foster and even to some of the adults. I guess that makes it a classic omniscient viewpoint. The shifts are not head-hopping and happen appropriately.

And the audio? Very good. I remember almost nothing of it, which means the narrator achieved the transparency that is probably one step down from the very best (when the narration can really add value).

My Recommendation:
Honestly, I don't know if today's kids would like this or not. I'd say it's aimed at the 10-12 range, around Portia's age, and equally appealing to boys and girls. City kids might be mystified, or might become very dissatisfied with their own constrained lives. So watch out!


FTC Disclosure: I checked Gone-Away Lake out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."