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.