March books - a summary

The Lost Battles by Jonathon Jones was my last book of the month and the most difficult.  It was a tough read that demanded my attention beyond my person art and Italian history interest.  Written by an art historian this is an greatly researched look at the rivalry of DaVinci and Michaelangelo - the superstars of this art and historic era and the story of Florence.

Fascinating in a way is that the art project that is the central theme of the book is gone.  We cannot see it.   We can get splashes of it from other artists like the sample that accompanies this review, but we cannot see it.

So we find our way through various historical alleys with other artwork, other artists and the story of Florence as we try to piece together this great confrontation, but I found myself seeking web sources to show me what we were talking about.  To that end the book succeeded in sending me seeking, but on the other end, I found myself wading through knowledge that is valuable but beyond my care.

If you have the right interests the book should be great, if you have curiosity like I do, it is a good struggle.  To the general reader I do not recommend it.

My favorite books of the month were my last two postings - The Stages by Thom Satterlee and  Badluck Way by Bryce Andrew.

Bossypants by Tina Fey had times of laughter and some poignant humor, but if you are not a television person - my weakness in this - a lot of the book did not have much value.  However, before I just pan it, I have to say there are some excellent passages that have great humor and justify wading through the materials that lack enlightenment or inspiration to a reader like me.

Chester Alan Arthur by Zachery Karabell that confirms the unscientific conclusion that Arthur is not a president worth remembering.  Still, he was a president, so we should know something.

Waldenwest by August Derleth was in another review - a 1961 classic of Wisconsin writing that had an excellent start but suffers from a half century of time.  It is fun to see some of the people and the philisophical parts are excellent, but once again the end did not come soon enough.

The Red Man's Bones by Benita Eisler is the perfect companion to the new biography of Curtis.  The combination of Curtis and Catlin are responsible for the images and knowledge we possess of the American Indian.  It would be my third favorite book of the month of variety.

The Hammer, a Sports Illustrated collection is truly a collection of the Sports Illustrated stories that span Hank Aaron's career as my favorite baseball player.  It not only is a reminder of the man and the complicated path he took from Negro Leagues to Icon, but also of the horrible racial undertones of our nation.  The stories are excellent and the book was a pleasure to read.

The Serpent's Tooth by Craig Johnson is a continuation of the excellent Longmire mystery series set in the Bighorns and the Crow reservation and this book did not disappoint a fan. I enjoy the personalities and I know the setting.  It is a good modern western and the series continues to keep me going at the same time that I am losing interest in other on going series like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone where the character seems to be the reason the mystery was written.

Sherlock Holmes in America by Lellenberg, Greenberg, Stashower. deals with another of my old favorites - one who never seems to disappear from history or literature.  I am putting Doyle next to Shakespeare for the creation of a literature that goes beyond time and location to be a reference to all others that dabble in the same form of writing.  Why this has three editors is beyond me.  It is uneven, and often disappointing, but there are always those gems that make you glad that you took the time to read.

The Stages - thom satterlee

This novel was a good reminder of why you must invest in a book before deciding if you like it or not.  The difficulty of the topic made the first chapter difficult, by the second chapter I could not stop.  Once you gain the voice of the American translator who suffers from Aspergers it becomes a fascinating murder mystery in an exotic setting (at least for Americans).

This book is set in Copenhagen and the back story is the work of Storen Kierkegaard.  I love Copenhagen, but until this book I have not been motivated to learn about Denmark's most famous classic writer and philosopher.  Fortunately you are not required to understand his complex and multi-voice writing.

The person you follow through this story has to fight through the limitations of emotional expression and lack of ability to read the nuances of public discourse.  He is the American translator of Kierkegaard and is excellent at the job because it is what he can concentrate on and avoid confusing changes of schedule and routine.

However the director of the institute where he works, his first and only love, is murdered.  A manuscript is missing.  The translator was the last known person to be at the address before the murder and also finds another dead person along the way.

How does he sort this out, what does Kierkegaard say?  What is the strange clue that the murder victim left to him?  Can he sort out the clues, can he make things right after striking a policeman?  Can he find time for is Mozart deserts and hot dogs?

It is an adventure that spins through people and settings and arrives at a conclusion that may leave you clapping or unsatisfied.  Getting there is a wonderful literary journey.

Badluck Way by Bryce Andrews

What a pleasure - this is not a critical review - I loved the book and the pace.  Since I love the area, love wolves and wildness, understand the conflict of ranching and have a horse (my wife's) at home - the last of a wonderful line of horses this is a novel that had to appeal to me.  Perhaps I should say as an old Hopalong Cassidy fanatic I love the open range stories.

But this is a book that does not mindlessly enter in to any of the typical genres.  It is a western in that it is in the west and on a cattle ranch - but that is it.  It is not a wildlife and wilderness book even though the second main character is a wolf pack. It is a story of a man yearning for the basics of life - ranch hand, but carrying the environmental and modern attitudes that make blasting away every wolf a burden on his conscience.  It is a contrast in sympathy for the dying cattle who, of course, are being raised to be killed, and sympathy for the wolf, who are in fact breeding to kill.

It is not always pretty.  The answers are not always easy.  That is the tension of the true novel and it works.  I can feel the saddle, I looked into the dark forest ravine with the author, I anguished at the elk caught in the barbed wire, and I could sense how difficult it can be to cross lines and be with others who have such clear-cut opinions and actions when you are conflicted.

The writing in excellent and the conclusions are not simplified and glazed over.  Even on a ranch with conservation as a high priority the decisions can be sad and even brutal.  The writing is excellent and the desire to keep reading is strong.

February book notes

Another good reading month with some real gems.  Please note - I read books from all years - I am not partial to new releases.

My favorite was The Homesman, a book that is about to be a movie - I only hope the movie comes close to the quality of the writing.

This book depicts an aspect of American Life that I first encountered in Pioneer Women, a book that still haunts me.  Women brought west and following the dreams of their husbands, often just newly married.  They are brought to the prairie where wooden houses are replaced by sod structures and often just holes in the ground.

Without neighbors, without libraries or any form of entertainment the women are kept in these prisons where they are to provide sex, meals, and mothering.  The result is that many women lose their mines in the isolation, desolation, and suffering.  They raise their children without a true vision of a better life and watch children die in childbirth and from diseases and accidents.  It is a life that is truly helpless and hopeless and the author is able to convey this and the even more devastating image of how society, as it exists on the plains, reacts to the insanity that is visited on these former wives and mothers.

In this epic an unmarried woman takes on the task of taking these women to Iowa where they might find care and this requires journeyed across the prairie, carrying for the women, and responding to Indians, weather, and emergencies.

She tries to enlist one of the men, one of the husbands, but they are anxious for the women to leave and to be rid of the burden.  With no success she engages an outsider, a claim jumper, who is hated, about to be hung and without any visible salvation.

The insane women are pariahs to their families and their community and even to strangers.  The group cannot even find comfort by the fire of a wagon train.  There, the men fear that their women might glimpse a future for themselves.

The unlikely duo presents some enjoyable moments of exchange - the pragmatist loner and the optimistic care giver.  Their relationship plays out as they cross this lonely landscape and I cannot give away how it develops - that must be encountered through reading.  But all of the change, the women in their care have endured an unspeakable set of circumstances without real promise of better days and in their continuing presence we are reminded of circumstances that are hard to envision today unless we think of life in some remote desert areas where time has a different meaning.   The character focus is on the man and woman leading the trip, the background is the women, and the primary character is the demanding land.

My second favorite for the month was The Longest Road.  This is a true Road Trip from the furthest point south Florida to the Northernmost point in Alaska.  What makes is so enjoyable is the fact that it documents the people they encounter along the way and the conversations that portray the human attitudes and emotions of everyday people.  No politicians, no stars, no rich - just the people they encounter at lunch counters, and gas stations, and other locations that are part of a road trip.

Since Kate and I have done this on the Mississippi River and around Lake Superior we can relate to what Philip Caputo writes.  A former newsman, he and his wife are now seniors with a world of experiences of their own, but these do not intrude on the stories they tell.

Of course the Airstream they live in is part of the story too.  Jump aboard and take a ride with them.

I love the Craig Johnson series about the western sheriff - Longmire and The Dark Horse will not disappoint fans.  For the first time Longmire must go under cover - not something he is really good at and as such he is alone and the great supporting characters have less of a role, but we see more of Longmire in this story of murder that starts out with the murder solved.

The trouble is, Longmire does not like the solution.  He does not believe the woman's confession, and neither does the sheriff of the district where the murder was committed.

Longmire's need to put things right, puts him in the sites of a lot of unsavory characters and introduces us to a connection with a horse that sits at the heart of the mystery.



In the Wilderness by Kim Barnes is an excellent memoir of a woman raised in the woods of Oregon and Idaho by a family that does whatever work is needed to survive.  It is about a woman who faces the fiery force of evangelical preachers and churches, and numerous events that she must come to grips with to find her own place and history.

Lost Duluth was a gem.  A record of old building that no longer exist (and ones you will wish still did).  But the real value is in the stories that surround these buildings.   The people who would build monuments, their stories are the story of Duluth.

Fitgers is a similar book to Lost Duluth, but it captures the brewing history of the city and the downfall to the economy that was generated by the Prohibition era.  Micro-brewing is now filling these niches, but not with the magnificent structures of the past.

The Story of Earth by Robert Hazon was an excellent book of Earth history that captures the complexity of geology and the beauty of the planet in terms that paint pictures and enlighten the read to complex ideas.  It is also a warning that what we are doing as a species is devastating to our own existence on this magnificent planet.

The Last Outlaws, by Thom Hatch is a historical search to know Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  As such it is good history, but I am still fascinated by the story and the telling of the history lacked the bold strokes of a story teller and therefore was not as enjoyable as I would have liked even though any historian of the west should read it.

Natchez, is a book I picked up in Natchez (surprise) and it was filled with stories of this southern town on the banks of the Mississippi.  It survives today as an interesting town, but at one time its location on the river and at the beginning of the first great Southern Road - the Natchez Trace - made it a pivot-able point in the history of the Mississippi River region.

The New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook written in 1967 has a good compliment of recipes, but its value is in the history of the famous restaurants of this gourmet paradise.

The Explainer by Slate Magazine was neither entertaining nor informing in my opinion.

January book notes

It is really hard to go back over a years worth of reading and give the January books the same attention that the most recent books get so here is a one month set of book notes.  January is a good reading book and I hope you have had some good reading, but still got some great outdoors time.

1. Americans in Paris, Charles Glass is really outstanding history giving us insights into the very complex life in Paris when it was occupied by the Nazis.  First when the US was neutral and then when we were the enemy.  Paris is a complex city in any time, but never more so than in this period.
2. Old Man River by Paul Schneider.  This was an excellent book on the Mississippi River.  It blended old tried and true stories with personal observations and gave an excellent look at this complex geographic location called the Mississippi. 
3. The Trail to Seven Pines, Louis L'Amour.  One of four Hopalong Cassidy novels that L'Amour did.  It is well paced, captures my old hero, but with more edge and excitement and satisfied all my love of westerns.
4. Unfathomable City, Soluit and Snedeker.  Actually a combination of essays, each with a map of New Orleans looking at the layers of the old and eccentric city.  I loved the beginning half and the last chapter, but got lost in a series of essays that were too esoteric for my taste or it would have been number one on the list.  Very well written and the maps are a unique and effect support to most of the essays.
5. Dirt by David Montgomery is a look at the basic building block of all continents and life on earth.  It is the undervalued by lynchpin of our lives too, one we disregard too regularly.  We sacrificed topsoil down our rivers, substitute chemicals and artificial GMOs for the historic organic basis of life.
6. Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman follows the around the world race of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.  It is a look at two women who do an amazing travel adventure.  The loser, as is the American tradition does not get the recognition she deserves, but in fact comes out the better in life itself.  It is a time when Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days set the standard, even though fictitious for world travel.  A very enjoyable read.
7. Madam by Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin is the story of Storyville in New Orleans.  It is a fictitious story in that the authors have to create a narrative that fits between the blank spots in the information that is available about this experiment in legalized, but controlled prostitution.  The characters are reall and the history that the novel exposes is fascinating.
8. Bull River by Robert Knott is a continuation of the Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch westerns of Robert Parker.  Good characters, the black and white west is crisscrossed by characters who are sure of their decisions, but constantly in the gray zone between good and bad.
9. Catch Me by Lisa Gardner is a very good police thriller.  It is about the thin line between police and vigilante, the dangers of on-line trolling for underage victims and gives good suspense with some real red flags for people to consider.
10. Cooperstown Confidential is the story of baseball Hall of Fame, but not the bio of those who get in, rather the politics of induction.  The choices that were made that should not have been made and the  very human aspect of HOF decisions. 
11. Red Planet Blues by Robert Sawyer was a genre buster for me.  I am not a SciFi fan, but this mix of Sci FI and detective was well done and well paced.  
12. The Persuader by Lee Childs is a Reacher Novel.  I read out of curiosity. It is first and last.  A testosterone novel.  No suspense - he is too good and he is the narrator so he has to make it.

Eighty Days - Matthew Goodman

This is the story of a race around the world by two women in 1890, Nellie Bly, reporter for the New York World comes from poverty in Pittsburgh and makes a name as an investigative reporter.  Elizabeth Bisland comes from the deep south, daughter of a plantation owner in Louisiana who suffers the displacement of the Civil War and the loss of family fortune, she goes to New Orleans to begin her writing career and ends up in New York working for Cosmopolitan Magazine.  

Bly is sent East to circle the globe and with less than 24 hours notice Bisland is sent West as a competitor of Bly.  We see the world through these two travelers and the contrast in how they see the world is fascinating.  It is a comparison between a woman who hates England and finds everything about America better than anything else in the world with her competitor embracing and falling in love with Japan and eventually moving to England.

Jules Verne is visited by Nellie Bly and it is his fictitious character's Around the World In Eighty Days race that inspires this race.  So even though they are racing each other, the women are in fact racing a fictitious person.  It does show how literature can inspire.

The story is also about the place of women and their struggle to survive.  The attitude that women belong in the home and not in the workplace was prevalent in their lifetime - it still lingers in ours - and yet when the fathers die, the daughters are often the sole support of the widowed mother and these women have to create a home and care for their families.

There is a wonderful passage in Hong Kong where Elizabeth Bisland reflects on the speed of communications now that there is the telegraph.  Today we would be upset to think we had to send Morse code and wait for a response.  This and the travel accommodations help us contrast time periods.

The trip around the world is the same year as the Massacre at Wounded Knee, it is a time of rampant racism, and terrible treatment of works who are trying to strike for living wages.  Yet in the midst of this the race consumes the American Public, makes a celebrity of one woman, and disregards the efforts of the loser.

The book follows the two women to the ends of their lives and it is a stark contrast as their personalities might have suggested from the beginning.  Who really wins, who really loses?  That is something the public decides and even today we have not learned to appreciate the efforts of those who try but do not come in first.

Madam by Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin

When the book arrived in the mail I was both intrigued and a little hesitant.  I am not in to pornographic books, overt romantic novels, or overwrought tragedies - I need not have worried, the book is excellent and I only fear that the title and the wonderful photo of the actual Mary Deubler on the cover taken by the enigmatic Bellocq may not convey what the book really offers.

Long before Nevada legalized prostitution, New Orleans had Storyville - 1898 - 1917.  It was the creation of Sidney Story, a real-life crusader who thought that the way to clean up the prostitution and depravity of New Orleans was to designate an area - the District or the Tenderloin - names he preferred.  The result was the elimination of indiscriminate cribs all throughout the town and the legalizing of a business.

Storyville's full impact is not covered in this historic novel, only its beginnings.  Later there would be terrible deeds done within the district, but in the beginning it was actually a way for women who had very little choice in how they could earn a living to find a house and an income.

In this story the authors blend a lot of truth with enough fiction to hold it together as a story.  It portrays the depth of depravity that existed and the hopeless and helpless situation that many poor women faced, the cruelty of the men and the fact that those in power, as is true today, loved to make pronouncements in the public while engaging in the very acts they said they deplored.

I found myself constantly going back to the web to research the people and places that were mentioned in the book and have a much better appreciation for the work of the authors as a result.

The best of my 2014 reading

The list below is a personal one based on the random 120 books I read in 2013.  It was a good reading year and it is hard to pick the best since I remember the last books better than the first and I have read 6 more in 2014 which can't be included in this list - otherwise Americans in Paris by Charles Glass would have to be on the list and probably Old Man River by John Schneider.

Westerns
Among westerns the best I read in 2014 was Badlands by Richard Wheeler.  I loved two of the original Hopalong Cassidy novels written by Louie L'Amour - Trouble Shooter and The Rustlers of West Fork.  And I continue to love the series that was begun by Robert Parker featuring Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch which have been continued by Robert Knott continued the series in Iron Horse and I am pleased.

Sports
It was a good year for sports books - The Art of Fielding by Harbach, The Ghost Horse by Layden and The Old Ball Game by Deford were all books of great writing and excellent stories.  The first is the only fiction.

Science
The Age of Edison by Freeberg was an excellent look the shift from gas to electric.  It is hard to think of how the simple lightbulb could cause a nation to create a massive network of lines and connections, of interconnected electric services.  The bulb was great, but what could have succeeded if the electricity could not be delivered to the homes.  The second excellent book was the Emperor of all Maladies by Mukherjee that traces both the discovery and the treatments for cancer - it was frightening as well as enlightening.

Mystery and Thrillers
I am not much for the thrillers.  For example I find Reacher to be boring - he narrates the story, not much suspense about the fact that he will succeed.  It is just testosterone writing and it does entertain a lot.  This year I discovered Lehane and his Live by Night was excellent - his development of both place and person deepens the story telling.  C J Box has entertained me for years and Breaking Point and Highway were both well written.  Highway is frightening in many ways - the biggest image that stays with the reader is the number of worlds within the worlds exist and not just gangs and gangsters or terrorists and anarchists.  Inferno by Dan Brown was an amazingly quick read.  I guess I would have to get it a high grade based on the fact that it did not let me go until I finished.  Krueger's mysteries in Minnesota continue to entertain and Trickster Point continued the entertainment.  However, I am getting near the end of reading this series - Cork O'Connor is a wonderful character, but it is getting to be too far beyond acceptance that the mysteries and danger continues to be so personal.  A Fistful of Dollars by Spencer Quinn continues to provide me with laughs from my favorite dog detective, but like Krueger and other series it starts to get too familiar and I will be interested in the next book and whether it will be the last I read.  On the other hand I read The Valley of Fear by Doyle again for the ??? time and it is still the writing of the master.  There is no better.

Biography and memoir
Let Me Finish by Roger Angell is a wonderful memoir by one of the great baseball writers, The Man From Clear Lake by Christoferson is the biography of Gaylord Nelson - father of Earth Day and the greatest environmental Senator we have had.  Grant and Twain and Grant and Sherman continue to explore the complex life of this iconic General and president.  The Thunderbolt Kid by Bryson is the funniest of memoirs and The Wizard explores one of our greatest inventors and electrical innovators - Tesla and puts him much higher on my list of great thinkers, scientists, inventors.   Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher follows the life of Curtis and his amazing photographic adventures to record the American Indian in place and culture.  Home to the Wilderness is an old memoir by Sally Carrighar and we forget how influential her words were in speaking to our environmental Conscience.  But number one would be On a Farther Shore by Souder - the biography of Rachal Carson.

History
The Hour of Peril by Stashower was a surprise.  First I never heard of this plot to assassinate Lincoln, but second because it was spell binding and even knowing that Lincoln would not be assassinated it was still a tense read. The Children's Blizzard was a tragic weather event in the Dakota's and all of us who know what winter really is can not help be be caught up in this narrative. In the Footsteps of Little Crow is essential to MN history as well as the history of the western Indian Wars while A Chain of Thunder is a fictional story of Vicksburg that really captures the tragedy of this encounter.  I loved all the details of the New Madrid Earthquake in A Chain of Thunder and Bataan the March of Death leaves you feeling frustrated with the cruelty of humankind and the strength of humankind and the fruitlessness of wars.

Adventure
A Father's Odyssey by Hitchcock - running daily marathons from MN to Atlanta was moving and emphasizes the cause of single parents, but the writing was not as compelling as the less well motivated Paris To the Pyrenees that chronicled one of lessor known pilgrimages across France.  The couple was fun, but not people I would want to walk with.  It was my favorite book in this category this year.  I read three books on walking the Appalachian Trail and AWOL on the Appalachian Trail was my favorite.  Canoeing the Congo was good but I really wanted more about the canoeing.  What may surprise is that Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail which was a best seller was not one I particularly liked.

Environmental
Toms River by Fagin is a classic already.  Covering the chemical plant that takes over a town by offering jobs and then holds the town hostage while it ravages the rivers, ground water, and air is too familiar.  It is playing out now in the battle over the Sulfide Mining near the Boundary Waters.  Jobs, money is the cry, but devastation and finally financial ruin is the reality.   Shadows on the Gulf by Jacobson and The Great Deluge by Brinckley are outstanding looks at the issues at the end of the Mississippi.  I just wish Brinkley would be a little less wordy.  American Canopy by Rutkin, Mycophilia by Bone, and The Town that Food Saved by Hewitt were also entertaining and enlightening books this year.

Novels
Andrew's Brain by Doctorow is a fascinating trip looking out from someone else's brain and a brain that is a little warped too. Paris by Rutherford is a history of the most intriguing city in the world and my favorite novel of the year while Songlines by Chatwin was an intriguing look at the musical trails that guide the Aborigines across Australia and The Man in the Basement by Mosely was the strangest set up for a novel this year - a guilt ridden white man seeks to be locked up in the basement of a black man - imagine the complications this can have.

Poetry
Only two books of Poetry this year - Tin Flag by my favorite poet and humerous - Louis Jenkins and a peaceful combination of poetry and photos - Conversations by Clem and Elizabeth Nagel.

Americans in Paris by Charles Glass

Paris is the city of light, the literary capital of the western world, a gathering place, a place of love and yet for one dark period it was an occupied city with the bleak flags of the Nazi horror fluttering from every post and building and the sound of the Jackboot replacing the light murmur of the streets.  The city was saved because it declared no resistance and we all better off because of that.

But the people suffered from lack of heat, lack of food, lack of freedom and life in occupied places is not pleasant for anyone.  The potential knock on the door, the Gestapo and all the other horrid institutions of intimidation were always there and a neighbor might choose to turn you in for false reasons just because they are angry at you.

But this is only a story of the French in that it is there city and their institutions and their battle, instead it is the story of the Americans who lived there and chose to stay for the occupation.  In the beginning, America was not in the war so they were not subject to the ill treatment of the French, and especially the Jews and the minorities.

The cast of people is a fascinating combination of shopkeepers, doctors, actress, businessmen who each played a significant role in the drama.  We follow a businessman who is so intrigued by his own genius that he is happy to pursue his ideas with anyone who has the power in cash and so he becomes involved with the Nazis as easily as the British, French and Americans he has previously worked with.  Even after the US enters the war and the Americans are captured and put in controlled structures within the controlled city.

There is the couple who saves the American Hospital and the American Library, but has no time for the resistance movement.  We meet the owner of the Shakespeare bookstore who has been a friend of Hemingway, Joyce and numerous other important literary figures – Hemingway even makes an appearance at the beginning and the end.

Doctor Jackson and his family save lives in the hospital and also save pilots through an underground railroad that gets many American fighters out of France, but ultimately all of his family will be sent to prison camp and in a terrible irony die when the British blow up three ships that are filled with prisoners shortly before the war ends.

And then there is the story of the black pilot who had to fly for the French because the Americans prejudice was so great.   He saw how the American’s forced the French to remove Africans from their ranks and refused to allow blacks to walk in the victory parade through Paris – a city that did not share these terrible racial traits – traits that were more in line with the Nazis.  In the city of enlightenment it was obvious that the great American Nation stilled needed its own enlightenment in this area and that would be the next big chapter in American history.