Category Archives: Reading . . .

****The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

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Texas, guns

(photo: C. Holmes, CC license)

By Anand Giridharadas (read by the author) I missed this nonfiction book when it came out last May, and was astonished that I haven’t heard any chatter about it. The book probes the 2001 murders of two South Asian men and the attempted murder of a third because they “looked Muslim” to the assailant, a “Texas loud, Texas proud” man named Mark Stroman, who viewed his actions as revenge for 9/11. The story is told from the points of view of Stroman and the critically injured Bangladeshi man, Rais Bhuiyan, “two men bound, as it turned out, by more than just an act of violence,” said Ayad Akhtar in the New York Times.

Over the course of the trial and the long wait on Texas’s death row (the death penalty applied because one of the murders occurred in the course of another crime, a robbery), the victim, Bhuiyan, comes to believe Allah saved him from death so that he could do something remarkable. That something, he decided, was to forgive Mark Stroman. Not only to forgive, but to save him from execution.

The lengthy interviews journalist Giridharadas conducted give unparalleled access to the thinking of both Bhuiyan and Stroman, however tangled and inconsistent it may be. Bhuiyan, who would appear to hold all the moral high ground here, at times gets caught up in the self-promotional aspects of his international justice campaign. Meanwhile, Stroman cannot be simply dismissed as another gun-toting nut, either. He has been let down in many ways by people and institutions that should have served him better; in his time on death row, he learns to admire Bhuiyan and to think more deeply about his actions—or at least to mouth the words.

In this truly riveting tale, the author comes to no simplistic conclusions about these possibly imperfect motives on either side. As Akhtar says, “Giridharadas seeks less to uplift than illuminate.” And, Anne-Marie Slaughter says the book “explores two sharply opposed dimensions of the American experience in a style that neither celebrates nor condemns. We readers become the jury, weighing what it means to be a true American today.”

Update: 5/30/15: Anand Giridharadas won the New York Public Library’s 2015 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism for The True American.

 

*****City of Thieves

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Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad (Dennis Jarvis, flickr, CC license)

By David Benioff – Santa put this 2008 book in my Christmas stocking, and though I’d listened to it in the audio version several years ago, I enjoyed it just as much the second time around, in print. If you asked whether I’m a fan of coming-of-age novels, I’d probably say “no,” but this is the second one I’ve recently given a top ranking.

The story takes place during the 872-day siege of Leningrad, one of history’s longest, in which the starving residents were reduced to eating the glue in their books. Two young Russians, strangers to each other, are thrown together on an impossible quest: Lev—a short, dark, Jewish 17-year-old caught looting a dead German—and Kolya, 20 years old, tall, blond, and charming, a Red Army private accused of desertion. Either of these crimes is punishable by firing squad, no questions asked, and they have only this one sliver-thin chance to save themselves: find a dozen eggs so that the daughter of an NKVD colonel can have her wedding cake.

Lev narrates the tale of how the two search the desperate, lawless city and the countryside thick with snow and Nazis, in their search. It begins: “You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold.” And while there is misery in drifts, Kolya’s irrepressible nature brings much humor to the telling as well so that, as USA Today said, “This spellbinding story perfectly blends tragedy and comedy.”

Benioff is the co-creator and showrunner for Game of Thrones, and wrote the screenplay for The Kite Runner, so it’s no surprise he can tell an exciting story—and he can tell it well.

****Strange Gods: A Mystery

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Lion cubs

(photo: wikimedia.org)

By Annamaria Alfieri – Set in British East Africa in the early 20th century, this evocative mystery describes the colonial way of life, with all its pleasures and strains, its hypocrisy and search for cultural understanding, and the land’s lurking dangers and astonishing beauty. The murder of a white physician by a tribesman’s spear must be solved by a young, inexperienced colonial police officer, who argues (perhaps once too often) for a thorough investigation, in order to demonstrate the fairness of British justice. He’s opposed by the area’s District Commissioner who wants to summarily try and execute the first suspect who comes to light, the local medicine man.

While the sexual mores might be more elastic in that time and place than back home in Britain, the romantic interplay between the police officer and the dead man’s niece cannot escape the push and pull of social inhibitions and desire. Throughout the book the two trade the role of protagonist, augmented by insights from an African tribal lieutenant struggling to bridge the cultural gap.

The book was written with an obvious love for the land and its peoples and the complexity of life there. Not for nothing did Alfieri include an epigram from Isak Dinensen: “Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you: that God and the Devil are one.”

Are you as fascinated by Africa’s history and secrets as Alfieri is? Check out this African reading list by Swapna Krishna.

****Don’t Get Mad, Get Even

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Christmas lights

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

By Barb Goffman – These “15 Tales of Revenge and More” are an amusing exploration of the way put-upon individuals’ revenge fantasies, carried out, can deliver juicy justice or go amazingly awry. Though some of the stories—many of which have been award-nominated—are told straight, in most, you can picture the diabolical twinkle in the author’s eye.

The collection offers a chance to reflect on the recent the holiday season, too, as a number of the stories feature the special opportunities for mayhem inherent in Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas traditions—all that tricky family togetherness, all that food and gifts-with-a-message, that white carpet—as as well as tyro reporters with unorthodox ways of getting a story, deathbed confessions, and yard sale treasure.

If you enjoy clever short stories, the lively and refreshing reads in this Goffman’s tales will be right up your alley.

****The White Rock

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Inca Masonry

(photo: c2.staticflickr.com)

By Hugh Thomson – When I was in the 7th grade I came into possession, I cannot recall how, of a pamphlet about the Incas. No more than 20 pages, it was probably not scientifically accurate, especially since understandings about this civilization have evolved considerably since it was published, primed with new discoveries and interpretations, but it seized hold of my imagination, and I’ve never recovered. The Incas built on the achievements of previous groups to extend their empire throughout the high Andes, establishing looser affiliations with trading partners in the jungles and on the coast, until their offhand destruction by the Pizarro brothers in the 1500’s.

No surprise, then, I was easy prey to the charms of The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, which tells of TV documentarian Hugh Thomson’s several bold trips through Inca country as a young man in his twenties and, after waiting out the passing plague of the ultra-violent Shining Path movement, his renewed adventures seeking as-yet unexplored and under-explored Inca cities, including Old Vilcabamba, the last jungle redoubt of the last Sapa Inca, Tupac Amaru. Thomson weaves into his narrative the history of the Incas and the state of native Peruvians today. The book contains several maps (which could have been keyed to his journeys), a glossary, and welcome photographs.

Inca stairs, Emmanuel Dyan

(photo: Emmanuel Dyan, Creative Commons license)

The possibility of new discoveries yet to be made is part of the continuing appeal of Andean exploration. The conquistadors were so intent on acquiring gold and silver that they ignored everything else, and Peru “is one of the few places left in the world where new ruins continue to be discovered,” says Thomson.

Because the Inca had no written language, and because their arts were destroyed by the fires of smelters or simple desecration, their remaining stone buildings, having stood half a millennium or more, are a stubborn, silent testament to their achievements.

This book is a tribute to the adventurers who are looking up, up to the mountains, following the ancient Inca roads. Well beyond the Machu Picchu overrun by tourists lies a world of still-unknown cities and outposts. Overlooked in the days of human betrayal, and sometimes hidden by encroaching nature, the old Inca roads and stone stairs beckon.

***Three Ellery Queens

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Green Door, Arizona

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

The three latest Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines contain 31 short stories—historical, locked room, humorous, and many other splinter categories from U.S. and international authors. Reaching into this Santa’s bag of offerings, I’ll pull out some of my favorites:

  • “The Lure of the Green Door” by Norizuki Rintarō is a locked room mystery featuring a Japanese sleuth named, yes, Norizuki Rintarō and his humorously prickly girlfriend Sawada Honami. Says EQMM, he’s part of the “new traditionalist” movement in Japanese mystery writing, emphasizing puzzles, and he’s put together a good one here! (11/14)
  • Suzanne Arruda’s “Deep Shaft” effectively conjures Prohibition-era Kansas and the trouble city slicker outsiders can get themselves into. She’s the author of the mystery series featuring adventuresome, world-traveling photojournalist Jade Del Cameron Mysteries set in WWI and the 1920s. (11/14)
  • “Getaway Girl,” by Zoë Z. Dean, her first published story and one with a great last line: “there was something terrifying about a girl that good at living.” (11/14)
  • Joyce Carol Oates’s equivocal “Equatorial” is an accomplished cat-and-mouse game, but who is which? (12/14)
  • “Concrete Town” by Michael Wiley is set mostly in a bar, perhaps inspired by work on his irresistibly titled detective novel, The Bad Kitty Lounge. (12/14)
  • Another first story, “Chung Ling Soo’s Greatest Trick,” by Russell W. Johnson, was most entertaining, but then, I like mysteries featuring magicians! (1/15)
  • Accomplished novelist Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote the tension-filled “Christmas Eve at the Exit” about a woman’s attempted escape from an abusive husband. (1/15)

Always something to admire in these EQMM collections! Available in many bookstores and digitally.

*****The Cowboy and the Cossack

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Cowboy and the Cossack, Clair HuffakerBy Clair Huffaker, narrated by Phil Gigante. I loved this!! It’s one of Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscovery novels—books she believes are out of print and shouldn’t be. If this one is an indication, the whole list deserves to be checked out.

The Cowboy and the Cossack (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries) is the story of 15 Montana cowboys and a herd of 500 longhorn cattle who travel by ship to Vladivostok and embark on a journey across the Siberian wilderness en route to the small town of Bakaskaya where the people are desperate to have them. Unexpectedly, when they arrive in Russia, they’re met for the trip by a troop of elite Cossack horsemen. The cowboys, under the leadership of laconic Shad Northshield, don’t want or need their help. Or so they think.

But what they think doesn’t matter, because the Cossack leader, Captain Rostov, is every bit the stubborn leader Northshield is. Told through the eyes of a young cowboy named Levi Dougherty–and Gigante’s perfect narration–the novel is a coming-of-age story, a “when men were men” Western, and a thrilling adventure. It’s told in the appropriately colorful language of a young man of the 1880’s, which adds to the realism. Levi struggles to see the multiple points of view of the two cultures—and the men in them—thrown together in extreme and life-threatening circumstances.

Clair Huffaker, who died in 1990, wrote more than a dozen Western and other novels, as well as screenplays (including The Comancheros and Rio Conchos) and for the television series, Lawman. Huffaker’s daughter has written about the significance of having this book dedicated to her, and among her thoughtful comments is this: “It is a profound honor for me to (invite) new readers into an epic adventure tale which at its core illuminates the essential traits that my father believed a true man should steadfastly possess: honor, courage, integrity, and quiet strength.”


Comment from reader Nancy Kaminsky: “I am half way through reading The Cowboy and the Cossack per your recommendation. I love this book. The writer’s descriptions are so vivid. Thanks for your review. It may be the best book that I have ever read.”

****As Texas Goes . . .

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Texas, farm, road

(photo by Carol Von Canon, creative commons license)

By Gail Collins – This funny-but-serious political analysis is a good, quick read. The book came about when Collins realized that “Without anyone much noting it,” Texas has “taken a starring role in the twenty-first-century national political discussion.” Certainly, it has produced a goodly number of memorable politicians in the last quarter-century: Phil Gramm, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, up-and-comer John Cornyn, Ron Paul, Karl Rove, Rick Perry, ex-President Bush II, and the inimitable H. Ross Perot.

The state has had outsized influence in many spheres, says Collins in As Texas Goes…, subtitling her book “How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda.” On prosperity: the 2008 economic meltdown was largely the result of financial deregulation inspired by Phil Gramm. On education: although its influence on school textbook content across the nation may be waning, the Texas State Board of Education’s past actions promoted its conservative, anti-scientific, and ahistorical views on a generation of Americans. (At one point, the Board included a member “who believed public schools are the tool of the devil,” Collins reports.) On national energy policy: the state’s representatives, attuned to the needs of the local oil and gas industry, shape national energy policy and denigrate global warming. And, as the New York Times review picked out, Texas leaders have been “entangling us in an occasional war.”

Collins’s theory about the source of Texans’ attitudes are illuminating. “You have to start with the great, historic American division between the people who live in crowded places and the people who live in empty places.” In crowded places, you need rules to protect you from other people’s intrusive behavior; in empty places, you do not. In fact, you don’t want government rules and programs. Tom DeLay was once asked whether there were any government regulations worth keeping, he said, “None that I can think of.” That’s empty-space thinking. And, she says, “The current Tea Party strain in the Republican party is all about the empty-place ethos.”

Ironically, Texans holds fast to their empty-place perspective, even though eight out of 10 of them live in a major population area. Six of the nation’s 20 largest cities are in Texas. Most Americans probably consider Fort Worth no more than an upstart cousin of Dallas, but its population is larger than that of Seattle, Boston, or Denver.

If you want to read about outsize personalities who sometimes need to lasso it in, and how the country got to where it is in important policy areas, you might enjoy this entertaining and well-researched book. “Don’t mess with Texas” began as an anti-littering campaign slogan, but it’s taken on a larger life and now may need a coda: “but Texas is messing with you.”

***Blood, Bones & Butter

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Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood Bones & Butter

(photo: author)

By Gabrielle Hamilton – An engaging memoir that chronicles the author’s intense relationship with food, from her upbringing with a French mother and artist/set designer father, her falsifying her age to work in New Jersey kitchens starting at age 14, her drug-riddled stints as a bar waitress and catering kitchen dynamo, to the opening of her own restaurant in the East Village. That restaurant became the mini-phenomenon known as Prune, helped bring home-style cooking into vogue. In 2011, Hamilton received the James Beard award as New York City’s best chef.

The book describes Hamilton’s difficult relations with her mother and husband, but it’s never clear what the source of these difficulties is, why the relationships deteriorated as they did, or, rather, why she let them drift. Her essential alone-ness appears to be the strongest strain in her character.

I enjoyed this book’s lack of typical foodie descriptions, though it is over-the-top in its own way, determined not to, ahem, sugar-coat kitchen proceedings. She’s a compelling writer, with an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, and winner of the James Beard book award for writing and literature in 2012. Power on the page gets you past some of the unsavory spots, and it was well received. Legendary chef Anthony Bourdain calls the book “simply the best memoir by a chef ever.”

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***The Orphan Train

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Orphan Train

Orphan train flyer, 1910 (photo: wikimedia)

By Christina Baker Kline – This book tells an interesting story, two of them, in fact. The modern-day story is about foster child Molly, goth makeup and hair, piercings, who has trouble fitting in with the multiple families she’s rotated through. Not an orphan, her mother’s persistent drug abuse has made Molly a ward of the state of Maine. When she steals a copy of Jane Eyre from the library, she receives the surprisingly harsh punishment (reading ought to be encouraged, one would think, the classics especially!), of 50 hours of community service.

The job she finds is helping 91-year-old Vivian clean her attic, but it turns out Vivian doesn’t really want to discard anything; the tidying up is an excuse for her to revisit the boxes of memories hidden away up there, some of which she hasn’t touched literally or emotionally in decades. Vivian, it turns out, was one of the 200,000 abandoned, homeless, or orphaned children transported on the “orphan trains” from the East Coast to the Midwest during a 75-year period between 1854 and 1929. Many found loving homes, many others found conditions of neglect and near-slavery. It was a confusing, uncertain, and frightening time for them. (The orphan trains were the subject of an American Experience documentary, also, if you’d like to learn more about this topic.)

For both Molly and Vivian, growing up had its perils, though the advantages they had in sheer intelligence may have set them apart from other children in similar difficult situations. They both have secrets and have to learn to trust each other, if they are ever to be able to share them. A quick read.