Stepping in the Write Direction

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a big book. It’s about being born, struggling to survive, finding yourself, losing yourself, redemption, family and kin you’re born with and those you choose, being tied to a place on the planet with a fierceness fiction rarely sees, hitting rock bottom, crawling out of a hole of your own making, people who love each other in every shade of loving, and life resurrecting itself like a cold dark mountain ridge as sunrise hits on a spring morning when redbuds and mountain laurel are in bloom. It’s the Appalachian Spring of literature, breaking hearts and lifting them with hauntingly beautiful melodies.   The characters are so vivid they rise off the page,  ready to escape the one dimensional world, testing themselves against the worst and best the world has in store. From wards of the state placed in foster home slave labor farms to those taken in by families for the cash they bring, the system begins testing from early age. Whether it’s ...

The Night Lady by Debra Castaneda is set in  the summer of 1950. A newly hired reporter documents a number of mysterious murders coinciding with two major events in Los Angeles’ Chavez Ravine community, a movie is being filmed nearby, and powerful interests are forcing all homeowners out for a new stadium and a public housing project.  Soon eviction notices are hand delivered to homes, which raises  tensions and emotions:  “Robert only half heard him because he spotted a man from city hall walking up the dirt path. Standing at least six-foot-five, with a gaunt face and grim expression, it was like the grim reaper had exchanged his black robe for a custom-order gray suit, the black leather briefcase he carried instead of a scythe probably full of eviction letters.”   Most of the residents are Hispanic, some lived their whole lives here in homes their parents built; this huge disruption is particularly hard on older people who don’t relish starting over late in li...

I’ve been reading One Damn Thing After Another by William P. Barr (or as I refer to it: “one damn page after another”) since June 9th; July 10th I was halfway through it, finishing it August 21. The audiobook is 22 hours long, and I contemplated why such long biographies weren’t published in smaller volumes, such as two eleven hour audiobooks. I believe the reason is the sales of subsequent volumes might be significantly lower than the first one, so from that standpoint, better to cram it all into one product to market.  Barr’s high school goal was to specialize in China during his post secondary academic study and become head of the CIA. When his first child Mary was born with a heart issue requiring surgery, the quality of health insurance caused him to seek employment in a law firm.    My favorite parts of this book were those about his childhood, the discussion of death sentencing, his in depth discussion of the 2020 George Floyd incident and its nationwide aftermath,...

As I begin this review, I’m only 39% into this Amazon First Reads book, and almost didn’t get it because some reviewers complained there were some awkward phrases in the early part of the book, and it was poorly written. I checked author Victor Methos’ author page and listened to a sample of one of his audiobooks to see if the thousands of positive ratings his previous books received were the products of people who don’t know good writing when they see or hear it. I was impressed by the sample, decided to roll the dice, and make The Secret Witness my June First Reads selection.  Despite having read one reviewer’s listing of several of the “awkward phrases,” as I listened to voice over on the book, I never recognized them. From the beginning this book grabbed my interest and it hasn’t let go yet. If this is bad writing, bring it on! I have been disappointed by far more First Reads selections than I have been pleasantly surprised by them. Choosing a First Reads book takes me such an ...

In the acknowledgement of Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance, author John Waters thanks 3 staffers for being “top notched researchers and copy editors…as they typed each draft of this novel from my hand written original, they teetered on the literary edge of taste with me, hopefully protecting my cockeyed balance.” This book dips into what many may consider “bad taste.“ It is not the book for them. It is a book for those fond of Waters’ gift of painting the societal extremes, humanity’s eckveldt, in rich, resonant, luminous, and humorous literary tones. No one does it better.  Waters is the kind of artist you might think it’s not proper to like, too much sex, too many weirdos, too much sleazy sordid societal underbelly, but as a fan of Flannery O’Connor and Carolyn Chute, such grotesques in literature and film fascinate, and reveal the human condition in all its glory. The only thing better than a feel bad romance from John Waters, is listening to his narration of it on an audiobook. Wa...

Jill is a very different book from Biden’s 2019 memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself. That was a very personal book  (she narrates the audiobook) , wrenching at times. The biography Jill by Julie Pace and Darlene Superville,  is someone else’s observations of her, like taking a class in Jill, taught by two Associated Press professional writers who have followed politics and its players for years, and have had a close up look at Jill throughout their years of White House reporting.   The effort may seem perfunctory at first glance, as though the authors have a specific goal to accomplish in the writing of this book. The book reveals all the things it takes to be a politician’s spouse on a very public stage, the importance of having a career, family as a core value, and the continuous juggling of priorities between family, professional, personal and political obligations. She comes across as fiercely independent. Jill took up long distance ru...

The Pulitzer Prize description of 2013 General Non-Fiction winner Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King: "a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle." Should one be driving on a warm spring night to Groveland, Florida in the late forties with the windows down, a stunning wave of intense floral sweetness might suddenly shock the car, the product of millions of unseen orange blossoms exuding their exotic fragrance in the darkness. Such spontaneously appearing clouds of unimaginable nocturnal loveliness, infusing passing vehicles, belied the human condition residing in surrounding communities.  Racial unrest in midpoint 20th century Lake County Florida throbbed like skin under a torn scab, as it did in many areas of the south following the civil war. The KKK was well represented, and seething c...