Book Review: Yesteryear – by Caro Claire Burke

On By Norbert HauptIn Audio Book, Books, One and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Natalie Heller Mills is a young Christian woman raised in a Christian family with typical Christian values. She marries a “rich boy” she meets in college. She becomes a “traditional wife” in a “godly” family. Her husband does not have any ambition beyond playing video games and surfing chatrooms. Their marriage is doomed from the very start. Natalie, in order to make a living, wants to become an “influencer” and tries to turn her Instagram account into a business venture. With money from her mega-rich father-in-law, also a United States senator, she buys a farm in rural Idaho where she portrays the idyllic housewife, with a cowboy husband, baking bread, milking the cow, living off the land, and producing lots of children.

One day she wakes up in an alternate reality, in the 1850 timeframe, in her farmhouse as it would have been in that era. No electricity, just an outhouse. Her family looks like her family, but things are off. Her husband seems to be her husband, but he is older. She is trying to figure out if she actually time-traveled, or if this is some elaborate hoax. Is she an unsuspecting participant in a reality show? When she tries to escape through the woods she steps into a game trap and severely injures her leg. Her husband rescues her and carries her back to the house. He beats her. Now she knows she is a prisoner in this life.

The plot of this story is well-structured, and it kept me following the book. I wanted to know how it would end. But that was the only thing that kept me going.

I listened to Yesteryear as an audio book. It was painful. There was not a single character in this story that was likable. I severely disliked all the people in the story, and most of all I disliked the protagonist. If I ran into Natalie at a social event, I would quickly turn away. I would not want anything to do with her.

Yesteryear is a book without any joy. I don’t have an Instagram account and I am now more glad than ever that I don’t. The whole influencer thing is not something I am interested in. I am not a Christian,  and now I am more glad than ever that I am not. The stuff that Natalie constantly spews about “the Lord” just makes me roll my eyes.

Yesteryear is a book about a severely dysfunctional family, all the way from the grandparents on. The victims of that dysfunction are her brood of children. And that’s where the plot hits the hardest.

This is a book that I would normally have abandoned listening to about 20% in, just because it was so distasteful.  But the suspense of how this mess could possibly end kept me going and I eventually finished it.

Very distasteful.

 

Book Review: The Only Woman in the Room – by Marie Benedict

On By Norbert HauptIn Audio Book, Books, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was a young Austrian Jewish woman, born in 1914. She grew up in a well-to-do family with a doting father who taught her critical thinking and scientific methodology. She was very smart but also beautiful. In her youth, she was attracted to acting, first in motion pictures and then in the theater.

The story starts in 1933, when Hedy was just 19 years old. While on stage playing an Austrian empress, a mystery suiter showered her with elaborate displays of roses night after night after the performances. It turns out the suiter was Austrian arms manufacturer Friedrich (Fritz) Mandl, who was at the time Austria’s richest man. Not only was he a businessman, but also well connected at the highest level of Austrian politics. At that time, Hitler had just come to power in Germany and his antisemitic policies were feared in Austria. When Fritz proposed marriage, Hedy’s parents advised her to accept, both to not upset a powerful man by refusing his wishes, but also to be a protector to Jews. They sensed that they might need it.

Very quickly, starting even during the wedding preparations, Hedy realized that her future husband was extremely possessive, jealous and both emotionally and physically abusive. She had sold her life to protect her family. While married to Fritz, however, she was exposed to high level discussions about arms developments, including shortcomings and problems with guidance systems for torpedoes. Posing as a demure wife, never speaking, she was always the only woman in the room, but the listened very carefully and learned.

Eventually her outwardly opulent life became an unbearable prison, and she escaped to America. There she restarted her acting career, taking on the name of Hedy Lamarr, in order not to seem Jewish. There was strong antisemitism in Hollywood during the 1930s. She quickly became a movie star.

But that also was not enough for her. In an effort to help the American military with its lacking guidance technology for torpedoes, she and composer George Antheil developed a frequency-hopping communication system intended to help prevent enemy interference with radio-guided torpedoes. Their patented work later became an important precursor to technologies used in modern wireless communications.

The book The Only Woman in the Room is based on Hedy Lamarr’s life, but the author fictionalizes dialogue, private thoughts, motivations, and many scenes, so you should not read it as a literal biography.

Her actual life was even more colorful than is depicted in the book. If you are interested, you can look up her Wikipedia entry here. She was married a whopping six times and divorced every time. She was even arrested several times for (believe it or not) shoplifting. Eventually she passed away at age 85 in Florida in 2000.

Hedy later wrote an autobiography titled Ecstasy and Me ghostwritten by Leo Guild and Cy Rice. Later she disavowed the book and condemned the book’s contents as “fictional, false, vulgar, scandalous, libelous and obscene,” and claimed it was “not her book.”

To supplement your reading, you might also be interested in the Wikipedia entry for Fritz Mandl, who also had a colorful life at the fringes of fascism.

Painting: Yellow Hibiscus

On By Norbert HauptIn PaintingLeave a comment

Yellow Hibiscus is the state flower of Hawaii.

This painting was sitting unfinished on my easel for over a year while I went through a slump of no painting. I finished it today.

Yellow Hibiscus, Oil on canvas, 24 x 24

Book Review: The Cuckoo’s Calling – by Robert Galbraith

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Cormoran Strike is a private detective in London. He is a former soldier who lost his lower leg in a landmine in Afghanistan. He is deeply in debt. His detective business is faltering. His long-time girlfriend has dumped him and he is sleeping on a cot in his office.

In walks John Bristow, a lawyer with a prestigious law firm in London. His younger sister was a London supermodel who presumably committed suicide a few months earlier by jumping from her apartment on the third floor of a luxury building. John believed it was murder and wanted Cormoran to follow some leads that he provided to that effect. But most importantly, he handed him an envelope with a bundle of cash as a down payment for the services. Cormoran couldn’t pay the rent, so he didn’t have much of a choice.

Even though the police ruled it a suicide, Cormoran quickly finds circumstances that make him think otherwise. In a world of supermodels, big-ego designers, hot-shot lawyers, movie producers and all their entourage, he gets a taste of a world that ordinary citizens like him can only watch in the tabloids. The intrigues mount.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a whodunnit crime mystery and nothing else. It is meticulously crafted like a crime story has to be. The storytelling is excellent, it keeps the suspense. The protagonist is a likable character.

Robert Galbraith is actually a pseudonym of J. K. Rowling, the author of the famous Harry Potter books. This is her debut mystery story that introduces Detective Cormoran Strike. She wanted this new line of books to stand on its own and not be affected by her fame from Harry Potter. There are currently 8 books in the series, with a planned total of 10. The Cuckoo’s Calling is book 1. 

It’s a very well written story with an intricate plot, obviously by a very experienced author. It is great entertainment. But that’s all. I didn’t learn anything, I just had fun reading. While I am giving this book 2.5 stars, making it a good read, I will not read any more of the Strike series in the interest of time. Too many books, too little time!

If you like crime novels, you’ll like this one and, I can only assume, the rest of the series.

Michigan State Capitol

On By Norbert HauptIn State Capitol BuildingsLeave a comment

Today I visited the Michigan State Capitol.

Here is a better shot of the building itself.

The first Michigan State Capitol building, built in 1847, was considered “an old rattle trap.” In 1871 Governor Henry P. Baldwin challenged Michigan’s Legislature to build a fireproof capitol to house the state’s governmental offices, records, and civil war relics. Finished in 1879 and modeled after the United States Capitol, this building is one of the first post-civil war capitols to feature a lofty cast iron dome. Heralded a great success upon its completion, Michigan’s capitol became the model for statehouses across the nation.

Movie Review: The Dog Stars (2026)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

I recently read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and then watched the four-episode 1989 miniseries based on the book. That miniseries followed the book closely.  Of course, the book has 864 pages with amazing detail, and the combined series was “only” six hours long, so the movies had to leave some plot details out and simplify the story. However, what was there followed the plot of the book to a level of accuracy and authenticity I have never seen before.

I watched The Dog Stars in the theater as soon as it came out, because I had just read the book in June 2026. Here is my review: The Dog Stars. It was a good book, and if you are interested in the post-apocalyptic genre, you should definitely read it.

It’s approximately 2035. A pandemic virus has wiped out humanity approximately 15 years earlier (think COVID in 2020). What remains are small pockets of survivors who all fight for the same limited resources left from before the world ended. Some gangs have dozens of people, some only a few. Hig and Bangley are holded up in a small airport in Erie, Colorado. Bangley is an ex-special forces operative and has learned to shoot first and ask questions later. He is the “armed forces” of the team. Hig is a pilot and mechanic. His best friend left is his dog Jasper. Through his skills the two have been able maintain some solar power, keep simple engines running, and most importantly, keep his Cessna flying. This helps them with reconnaissance. Regular flights around their stronghold alerts them to marauders before they can creep up on them. Hig also flies into Denver to find medical supplies, groceries like soft drinks that survived looting, and general gear they need.

But Hig has a vision of more. When he hears a faint transmission on the radio from Grand Junction, a city far west in the Rockies, he packs up the plane and leaves to explore. Just as Bangley had warned him, things turn bad very quickly.

The movie changes the plot line significantly from the book with respect to the Grand Junction excursion, and the result is perhaps better movie action, but I found it just inappropriate and distracting. I think this would have been a better movie had it followed the book more closely, at least in the second half of the story.

The epic flying scenes in the mountains were spectacular. Most of all, the depiction of our world if all the people just suddenly disappeared was very worthwhile watching. Denver skyscrapers crumbling, overgrown with vines and trees, the roads taken over by weeds with just sections of asphalt remaining, wrecks of cars and trucks everywhere, and residential neighborhoods dilapidated and overgrown.

Most people won’t read the book, so they will watch The Dog Stars movie as a thoughtful reminder of what might happen if a pandemic actually did wipe out humanity. From that point of view, this movie is a valuable reminder that maybe we should not buy into the idea that we can let a pandemic burn itself out without vaccination.

Good luck with that!

Book Review: The Calamity Club – by Kathryn Stockett

On By Norbert HauptIn Audio Book, Books, Four StarsLeave a comment

I tried to read the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett in 2011, and I couldn’t get into it. I didn’t choose The Calamity Club on purpose either. I wanted to try an audio book so I would have something to listen to on long walks – and I randomly chose the first book that popped up on my Audible app. I might note that this is the first time I have “read” an audio book. In written form it’s 640 pages long.

The story plays in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933,  during the height of the Great Depression. Nobody is doing well, and even many rich families are losing everything. The poor can barely survive.

Meg Lefleur was nine years old when she was abandoned by her single mother on  Christmas Eve. She was put into the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum for girls where she spent two years being abused. The big girls don’t get adopted very often, so they are neglected until they are twelve, old enough to be shipped off to factories as child slave labor.  Eleven years old as the story unfolds, Meg has learned that there is nobody she can rely on and trust but herself.

Birdie Calhoun, at age 24 and unmarried, she is the older of two sisters in a small town in the Mississippi Delta, taking care of her mother and grandmother, living in poverty.  She works as a bookkeeper. When times get desperate, she travels to Oxford where her socialite younger sister Francis has married into a banker family. She has the humiliating assignment of asking her sister’s family for money to help them get by.

She find out that everything is not as it seems.  The Depression has closed in on her sister’s family and the banking business is not going well. She quickly learns that she appears to be the only one in the family who grasps the severity of the situation they are in – they are about to lose their house to foreclosure. As life around her collapses on all sides, Birdie is the only resourceful person around, trying to remain positive and holding things together.

The entire book is told from the points of view of Meg, the child, how she sees her life, and how she copes with the abuse in the orphanage, and Birdie, the young adult. The two cross paths as Birdie volunteers at the orphanage, and their tenuous friendship ends up with huge implications for both of their lives and the lives of many others they come in contact with.

Almost all the main characters are women. The story deals with racism in the south, segregation, hypocrisy, the abuse of women on all levels, legal, societal, at the workplace, and in the home. It makes life in the 1930ies in the American South come under a spotlight, bright, depressing and often frightening.

As I said above, I didn’t read this book, I HEARED it. And it made an amazing difference. The narrators are January LaVoy, for Birdie, and Jenna Lamia for Meg. Both are extraordinary. They change their voices to a lower octave to simulate the voices of men, they take on accents of the various characters, so you can actually see in your head who is talking by the voice and the accent. Both narrators are doing a phenomenal job in that respect. I wouldn’t want to read this book now, because I’d miss the voices. I want to hear it again.

To top it all off, I didn’t want it to end. It had to end, of course, but there was so much more to experience and live. There were about a dozen people who’d become part of my life that I would like to follow some more. I am already missing them.

This book is a perfect recommendation for my wife’s book club. It does not get any better than this. Only problem, their size limit is about 400 pages, and this, with 640 pages, is a tad above that.

Be that as it may, it gets four stars from me, which means: read this!

 

 

What the Duck, Happy Birthday to Me!

On By Norbert HauptIn Crack-Ups2 Comments

For my seventieth birthday, a couple of weeks ago, my wife, without my consent or knowledge, inspired my friends to give me ducks.

It’s a Jeep thing!

Here I am with my newly acquired collection of ducks.

I am telling you, it’s a Jeep thing!

I was grateful and overwhelmed how there could be so many ducks from so many friends.

But trust me, I didn’t inspect them all, even though there are cowboy ducks, and dinosaur ducks and park ranger ducks and even a chick (not a duck).

Then one friend just had to point it out – the mini-me duck:

You know how dogs sometimes look like their owners?

What can I say?

What the duck, happy birthday to me!

Movie Review: The Rivals of Amziah King (2026)

On By Norbert HauptIn Four Stars, MoviesLeave a comment

Some of the best movies I have seen were as a result of my wife taking me on a “blind movie date.” I went to see The Rivals of Amziah King yesterday without knowing anything about the movie or even its title. She walked me into the theater with my eyes closed. And I am glad, because if I had read the description, I would likely have passed. But then, here I am giving it 4 out of 4 stars. It was one of the best movie experiences I have had in a long time.

My choice of words is purposeful. I didn’t call it “one of the best movies,” I called it “one of the best movie experiences”  because this movie is not something you watch, but you feel!

Before I go and explain my thinking (or feeling for that matter), let me talk about  the substance of the movie, as always, without any spoilers. Amziah King (Matthew McConaughey) is a bee farmer and bee expert somewhere in Oklahoma. He cultivates hives and sells honey. There are bad actors who steal and resell bees and honey, making life difficult for Amziah and all other honest people. It’s a crime thriller. But Amziah is not just a bee man, he is a former foster parent who always wants to the the right and good thing. And he is a bluegrass musician. That’s all I will tell you about the content of the movie.

The music is absolutely captivating, and stunning cinematography and storytelling accompanies the soundtrack, or so it feels. The images don’t always just flow like in a movie, sometimes they stay still, sometimes time rolls in parallel between two scenes playing at the same time behind the same song. It’s a comedy, with sometimes shocking surprises. It’s a masterpiece of a painting of a nostalgic yet rough and tumble southern life. Sometimes it feels like a long music video, like you are at a concert and you see images of the musicians doing stuff, like in the old days of MTV, although you didn’t usually see the musicians get overed by bees.

I think there’ll be some Oscars coming from this. Matthew McConaughey delivers a phenomenal performance. Watching The Rivals of Amziah King is a truly amazing cinematic experience.

Arches – Windows into Infinity

On By Norbert HauptIn Nature, Travels1 Comment

The snow-covered ground glimmers with a dull blue light, reflecting the sky and the approaching sunrise. Leading away from me the narrow dirt road, an alluring and primitive track into nowhere, meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the labyrinth of naked stone. Near the first group of arches, looming over a bend in the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height; it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre.

— Edward Abbey – Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, 1968

This is the Balanced Rock Edward Abbey described. He spent 1956, the year I was born, and 1957, as a park ranger in Arches National Monument, as it was called then. In 1968 he wrote Desert Solitude, which I read and reviewed in 2012, and he included the passage above. Almost 70 years after Abbey stood there, Trisha and I were there and looked at this timeless marvel in awe.

Arches is a magical place. Some of the “windows” are small(ish), and some are gigantic, seemingly big enough for an airliner to fly through. It boggles the mind that such arches can be created by just water, wind and time.

Above you can see the size of one of the arches with Trisha for scale.

Can you see us? We wore the right camo clothes for the event, didn’t we?

Some of the multiple arches are truly breathtaking.

Here you can see me in the Jeep with a giant monument behind me. Notice the grey-white line running horizontally along the wall? This grey-white layer is visible throughout the park in various walls, monoliths, arches, etc. This comparatively thin gray to whitish band near the base was formed by a shallow sea. Here is the chronology:

  1. Under the white layer, the area was a broad, flat coastal plain. Shallow lagoons and tidal flats existed along the edge of a shallow inland sea over 165 million years ago.
  2. Then the sea level fluctuated repeatedly, and fine mud settled in quiet waters. During dry periods, evaporation concentrated dissolved minerals, producing carbonate and sometimes gypsum-rich sediments. The water became shallower and more saline at times, but geologists don’t think there was a sudden worldwide change in ocean chemistry.
  3. Then the sea retreated. Winds built hundreds of feet of sand dunes over the area, similar to what we see in modern Namibia in southwestern Africa. Those dunes became the Entrada Sandstone, which forms most of the spectacular cliffs and arches today. These dunes started accumulating about 165 million years ago.

The white layer erodes much faster because it contains much finer particles and weaker cement than the sandstone above. Once it wears away, it undercuts the massive Entrada Sandstone, leaving dramatic overhangs.

One fascinating detail is that the white layer represents perhaps just tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand years of deposition, while the thick Entrada Sandstone above it may represent millions of years of migrating sand dunes. In other words, a relatively thin layer records a very different world sandwiched between two much longer-lasting desert environments.

And here I was, sitting in my truck, watching it all, my short lifetime just like a firefly in the endless times of this ancient world. One day our civilization will just be a centimeter-thick layer of crumbled concrete, glass and plastic spoons and shopping bags in the stone, covered by more millions of years of dunes.

Book Review: A Voice Like Mine – by Deb Haaland

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Cool People, Political, Three Stars2 Comments

My wife and I recently undertook a road trip of over 2,500 miles that touched six states: California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Along the way, we stopped at Four Corners. Indian country. Driving along the endless roads in the Arizona Navajo Nation, I gave much thought to the lives of Native Americans, both now and throughout our history. Also, having just read Lonesome Dove recently, I was struck with the terrible injustices our “civilization” inflicted upon the Native American people everywhere. While in Colorado we stayed a night in Boulder, and while strolling along Pearl Street mall, I went to the Boulder Bookstore. I don’t usually buy hardcopy books anymore, but Deb Haaland’s memoir A Voice Like Mine jumped into my hands. I recently visited the New Mexico State Capitol and actually walked into the Governor’s office there. Deb Haaland is the current frontrunner for the governorship in New Mexico.

Haaland identifies herself as a 35th-generation New Mexican and descendant of the continent’s original inhabitants. I still remember being moved and impressed when Haaland was appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Biden. While I didn’t know very much about her then, to me it was a watershed time, just like the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Having a Native American woman put in charge of the U.S. Department of the Interior and its 65,000 employees was one of the most rewarding political moves I have observed in my lifetime, and I give Biden much credit for that.

During my road trip, much through Indian country, reading Deb Haaland’s memoir was a moving experience. I found myself reading passages to my wife as she was driving, sometimes with tears in my eyes.

She grew up surrounded by Native Americans. Her father was a descendant of recent Norwegian immigrants. His career was with the U.S. Marines. This combination of being a child of a military family and a Native American family gave her a unique background and insight into lives of minorities of all types. She has lived a life of poverty, alcoholism in her younger years, and single parenthood. Despite severe adversity, she managed to go to college and eventually earned a law degree. She has been a lifelong runner, including a marathon runner. As she entered politics as an organizer and a volunteer to Obama’s first campaign, she advanced to progressively higher positions and finally served as one of the first two women in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On July 22, 2019, Haaland published an opinion essay in the New York Times titled “Trump Wants Immigrants to ‘Go Back.’ Native Americans Don’t.” The essay responded to Trump’s statements that four Democratic congresswomen, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, should “go back” to other countries. One of Haaland’s quotes in the essay is:

“There is no moral high ground from which President Trump or any of his followers can tell anyone to leave this country, because they are not the first inhabitants of this land.”

In A Voice Like Mine, Deb Haaland tells the story of her life, in chronological order, with simple language and many stories and anecdotes. Since she is a dedicated cook and baker, the book is sprinkled with recipes for some of her favorite foods. Reading the book gave me a thorough insight into the woman who overcame many disadvantages and adversities to become the clear favorite for the governorship of New Mexico in the 2026 election. The race is not over, but I wish her the best of luck!

Movie Review: Odyssey (2026)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Three and a Half Stars2 Comments

Odyssey is almost three hours long and I was riveted from start to finish. It was a little bit like watching Titanic, where we all know the ending, but we still sit at the edge of our seats, hands balled to fists, feet fidgeting.

But then, it was the Odyssey, after all, based on one of the oldest works of literature in human culture. Attributed to Homer and first written and composed around the 8th or 7th century BC, the Odyssey is actually a series of 24 books of poetry. Yes, ancient Greek poetry in the dactylic hexameter, which is a form of meter commonly used in both ancient Greek and Latin poetry. Unfortunately, I have never studied Greek and therefore can’t appreciate Greek poetry, but I have read Latin poetry, particularly Ovid, and it’s also in the same meter, the dactylic hexameter. Trust me, reading Latin poems in the original is one of the most beautiful experiences in literature, and one of the most difficult ones – after all, who can read Latin?

Back then, most people were illiterate, and in order to tell a story, and repeat a story, it was best to have it be a poem, so it flowed smoothly, somewhat like modern songs, where we remember the lyrics because they are associated with music and a rhythm.

Per Wikipedia, here is a picture of the oldest-known manuscript fragment of the Odyssey, produced in Ptolemaic Egypt during the 3rd century BC and unearthed in Medinet Ghoram:

By Zunkir – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152028761

Christopher Nolan started with the poems of Homer in the Odyssey, left out much detail but focused on the most memorable and iconic imagery and drama that we all know even today, almost 3,000 years after it was first written.

It’s amazing how much information from the Odyssey made it into our current culture. We all know the names of Odysseus, Achilles, Athena and Penelope. We know locations like Sparta and Ithaca, which is even today a modern city in upstate New York. Odysseus was the king of Ithaca, a state in ancient Greece. There is Calypso, the nymph who rescues Odysseus from the sea and nurses him to health but then holds him prisoner as her lover for many years. We know of the gods Zeus, Poseidon and Helios, all of which play central roles in this story. We know the Scylla, a multi-headed monster who eats sailors that pass by its den. We know of Sirens, mythical half-bird, half-woman creatures whose song is so seductive, sailors jump into the ocean and to their deaths because they have to get nearer to the Sirens. The English word “siren” came from that. We know of the cyclops Polyphemus, a giant one-eyed goat-herder who will eat humans like sushi. But he is also the son of the god Poseidon and he directs his father to take revenge. There is the goddess Circe who turns Odysseus’ men into pigs. In the poems, Circe and Odysseus become lovers and he stays with her for a year. And of course, the most iconic reference of the Odyssey is the Trojan Horse, which takes a leading role in this drama. Everyone knows what a Trojan Horse is.

All of this makes it into the movie Odyssey. Matt Damon plays a very credible Odysseus. The fighting scenes are numerous and intense, almost like our modern superhero movies. But that, too, is consistent with battle scenes in other epic movies that we have all seen, with themes like Napoleon, World War II, the Civil War or the Vietnam War. Be ready for lots of blood and gore, not always visible, but in your imagination.

In summary, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is a monumental cinematic achievement. It is breathtaking with outsized cinematography and an intense soundtrack. I think there was some Oscar material in Odyssey. I am glad I watched it and I recommend you do too, and perhaps then study up on the classic origins of it all. This Wikipedia link will help.

Book Review: On the Calculation of Volume (Book 1) – by Solvej Balle

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, One and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Tara Selter is a dealer of rare books. She travels frequently to buy and trade books, and during a trip to Paris on November 18th she wakes up the next day and discovers that it’s November 18th again. And again, and again. On the Calculation of Volume is based on the same concept as the famous movie Groundhog Day. Everyone else around Tara experiences the day anew every day, but for her, it’s the same day.

I kept reading because I wanted to find out how she would eventually solve the problem and get out of her predicament, but alas, she never did. After I finished reading the book, disappointed with the ending, I found out it’s a series of seven books.

I don’t know why it’s called On the Calculation of Volume. Salvej Balle is a pretty good writer. The books were translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland. It is acclaimed as a literary series. While it sounds like science fiction, the series is supposedly much more philosophical than action-oriented. It explores themes such as the nature of time and memory, loneliness and marriage, identity and personal growth, the way humanity uses resources and finding meaning in life when the future has disappeared.

All those concepts may be important and interesting, but I found the book outright boring, and I certainly won’t be reading the other six in the series. The only interesting concept is that of Groundhog Day, but that was well explored in the old movie and didn’t need a retake.

Book Review: Lonesome Dove – by Larry McMurtry

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Four StarsLeave a comment

I recently browsed a Reddit post that asked “what is the best book you have ever read” and the first post was “Lonesome Dove.” As I progressed scrolling, there were many books I had read myself, and I agreed that they were very good, but the most common one named was one I had not read:  Lonesome Dove.

My favorite book: there are so many that I would be afraid to say. Probably if I had to pick anything I’d say Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.

—Stephen King

So I finally read it myself.

Lonesome Dove won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. The book is 864 printed pages long and it took me quite a while to read it. It’s an epic Western.

The story starts around 1876 in the hot of dusty town of Lonesome Dove on the Texas side of the Rio Grande in south Texas. There are just a few houses, a blacksmith, and of course a saloon with a single prostitute. 

Two retired Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae whom they call Gus or Mr. Gus and Woodrow Call whom everyone calls Captain Call or the Captain, live together on a ranch with a cantankerous cook and a few ranch hands, many of them former Texas Rangers, with nothing much to do. One day they decide t0 pick up stakes and go on a cattle drive to Montana. In those days, Montana was untamed wilderness. The Captain had the vision to be the first one there to start a cattle ranch. Along the way, they face unspeakable dangers, from the weather, perilous heat and drought, snakes, bears, outlaws, horse thieves and Indians.

Besides the two protagonists there is an unforgettable cast of characters, all of them deeply developed, their lives intertwined and their fates interconnected, to make for a kaleidoscopic story of lust, love, regret, hope, sorrow, pain, loyalty, grit, grit and grit, showing us the unyielding spirit of the American West.

The story plays just 100 years before I myself landed there in the Arizona desert in 1977. How much has changed since then, and yet, how much does the land still look the same! Today I can drive from Texas to Montana in three days. It took the cattle drive six months.

I learned so much. For instance, I studied up on the Texas Rangers. Before reading Lonesome Dove, Texas Rangers just were some exotic law enforcement men in – yes, Texas. Now I know they are among the oldest law-enforcement institutions in the United States. The Ranger tradition is generally traced to 1823, when Stephen F. Austin arranged for small groups of armed men to “range” through the territory and protect Anglo-American settlements. The provisional Texas government formally authorized a Ranger force in 1835, shortly before the Texas Revolution.

I also realized how brutal and lawless life was in the West in those days. Romanticized westerns are not giving us the right, clear picture. Read Lonesome Dove and understand, yes – feel the brutality of life for those early settlers in the West. Read Lonesome Dove and get a sense of the utter cruelty that was inflicted on the Native Americans and how they were systematically decimated and brutalized by the white conquerors. Read Lonesome Dove and forever change your view of the romantic “Cowboys and Indians” lore that we have all been spoon fed with.

Lonesome Dove was the first book of what became a series of four books, two prequels and one sequel.

There is also an epic miniseries for television: Lonesome Dove (1989): The foundational miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, which follows the retired Rangers on their arduous cattle drive from Texas to Montana. In addition, several other series have been created about the prequels and sequels. I will first watch the 1989 series to match the book I have just read, and I may follow through with the other ones, if I decide to read those (if I find the time).

Lonesome Dove will definitely be on my personal list of the top 10 best books I have ever read.

4 stars

Visiting Four Corners

On By Norbert HauptIn Travels2 Comments

There is a place in the Western United States where four states meet, colloquially known as the Four Corners.

It is the location where the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet.

I have lived in the American southwest all my life, and in Arizona almost 50 years ago. I have always wanted to go to Four Corners and never made it. It’s partly because the northeastern corner of Arizona is a vast open area not accessible by any major freeway. There are no close cities around. The land is governed by the Navajo Indian Nation. Four Corners is really a place that is many hours away in the “middle of nothing” from all directions.

Finally, last week my wife and I made it there. In the photo below we are standing with her left and my right foot on the medallion that marks the junction of the four states. Technically, we are in four states at once. More interestingly, we can time travel one hour back and forth by shifting a foot to the left and then right, since New Mexico, Utah and Colorado are in the Central time zone, while Arizona is in the Pacific time zone.

Here is a closer look at the circle where the states meet.

And here is a closeup of the medallion itself.

Stepping back, there is a small crowd of tourists all waiting for their turn on the medallion, and many people got down on all fours with one limb in each state.

Around the circle there are vendor stands, mostly selling mementos of the place, tourist trinkets and of course Native American jewelry. There are no food services, except for a couple of food trucks with simple stuff like shaved ice or lemonade. Toilet facilities are very primitive, as they generally are in Native American attractions. There is an entry fee of $10 per person collected by the local tribe.

You might call Four Corners a tourist trap, but I found is very well worth it. It’s one of those very unique places for no reason other than a long time ago governments agreed on a set of long straight lines connecting four states.

One curiosum for my non-U.S. readers is that there are only two states in the U.S. that are purely rectangular. Those are Colorado (included in the Four Corners) and Wyoming.

If you are in the area, and you have a full extra day, definitely make a visit to the Four Corners. It takes that long to go there and then go back to where you are actually heading. It’s not on the way to anywhere.

There is a bonus reason why you might want to go:

On the way from Monument Valley, just south in the Arizona corner, up to Utah, you come across this iconic road that you might remember from the movie Forrest Gump:

This is the exact spot where Forrest was running up the hill, followed by a bunch of groupies, where he finally stopped and decided he was done running.