Category: Books

Book Review: Prodigal Summer – by Barbara Kingsolver

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

In Zebulon County in southern Appalachia (a fictional location) is near the border of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.

Deanna is a reclusive park ranger in her late forties who lives in a log cabin on the mountain. Her job is to maintain order, including fixing trails, clearing downed trees and keeping the local farmers from poaching. One day a young hunter comes around and he arouses new yearnings she has long been suppressing.

Lusa has a masters degree in entomology and she spent her short career studying moths. She falls in love with one of her students at the university, Cole Widener, a young and struggling farmer, and she marries into a family that does not seem to accept her.

Garnett is an 80-year-old widower, retired vocational agriculture teacher, and fundamentalist Christian who has lived his entire life in the southern Appalachian valley of Zebulon County. He  is living next door to Nanny, a 75-year-old woman who runs an organic apple orchard. He has spent the last few decades trying to crossbreed American and Chinese chestnuts to come up with a strain that can fight off the chestnut plight that wiped out the species in America.

All of these protagonists have one thing in common: their love of the land, of biology, evolution (well, not Garnett), and the natural order of wild things. The story brings forth the reality of small farms in America, the plight of displaced animal species, and the eradication of the American chestnut trees.

I finished the book feeling that everything is connected, the people, the animals, the plants, the land and the history.

A couple of years ago I read Demon Copperhead, which Kingsolver published in 2022 and which won the Pulitzer Prize. I gave it 4 stars. It prompted me to pick up other books by the author, specifically this one.

In contrast, Prodigal Summer was published much earlier, in 2000, and I don’t feel it is as refined. I enjoyed reading and learning about nature, the balance of flora and fauna, predator and prey, moths, coyotes, farmers, hunters and conservationists. But the story didn’t flow enough, and in particular, it didn’t have much of an ending. Things did not “come together” for me in the end.

Book Review: Whistler – by Ann Patchett

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

Daphne and her sister Lela are in their early fifties and live in New York City. They are both happy in their careers, successful, and married to loving husbands. Their mother, Abigail was married to their father, Buddy, when they had the two girls. Buddy was a fisherman, in love with the ocean, his live, and his daughters. But it was not enough for his wife. She divorced him when they were little girls. Along came her second husband, Eddie, who bounded into the family and was the best stepfather the girls could have dreamed of. Due to unexpected circumstances, Abigail threw out Eddie after less than two years. Daphne was nine years old, Lela seven, and they were devastated. They never saw Eddie again. Children are resilient, and they eventually forgot him. Their mother married a third time. His name was Lucas. They had two more boys. While they were a happy family, Lucas was never a father figure to the girls but they accepted him as their dad.

When Daphne and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, they have a chance meeting with Eddie. That fateful encounter catapults Daphne back to her childhood. She and Eddie decide they will not be separated again and the event does not only change both their current lives, but it unearths forgotten memories and family secrets.

The title of the book is Whistler, which is the name of a horse, but surprisingly, Whistler does not have much to do with the plot. It’s a story about modern American life, the balance of career and family, homosexuality, health, cancer and the fragility of life, and finally death.

It’s a sad story, yet uplifting in its own way, and I can see how it would make a great book club selection.

The audiobook I listened to was narrated by the author herself, which gave it emotional depth I might not have felt if I had just read the story.

Books I Have Read Twice (or more) – Take Three

On By Norbert HauptIn BooksLeave a comment

I have added a few more books to my list of books I have read twice or more times. I am not sure there is much value to this list for my readers, but it does help me remember my books. And, I guess,

Time Tunnel: The Twin Towers – by Richard Todd (2.5 stars)

Foundation Trilogy – by Isaac Asimov (1.5 stars)

Timeline – Michael Critchton (2.5 stars)

A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving (3 stars)

The Songs of Distant Earth – by Arthur C. Clarke (2 stars)

Die Blechtrommel – by Günter Grass (in German)

Le Petit Prince – by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (in French, Spanish, German and English)

The Stand – by Stephen King (4 stars)

An American Tragedy – by Theodore Dreiser

Fathers and Sons – by Ivan Turgenev

Anna Karenina – by Leo Tolstoy

Sons and Lovers – by D. H. Lawrence (3 stars)

Treasure Box – by Orson Scott Card (2.5 stars)

Vox – by Nicholson Baker

Time Pressure – by Spider Robinson (3 stars)

Illusions – by Richard Bach

Jonathan Livingston Seagull – by Richard Bach

The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger (4 stars)

King Rat – James Clavell (4 stars)

Orphans of the Sky – by Robert A. Heinlein

Forever War – by Joe Haldeman (3 stars)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – by Harriet Beecher Stowe (4 stars)

Book Review: The Correspondent – by Virginia Evans

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

Sybil Van Antwerp is 73 years old in 2012 when the story starts. She is a retired distinguished lawyer who later clerked for a prominent judge. That was her career. She lived her entire life in the Washington, DC area. She had a husband, three children, and a lot of friends. Her favorite way to communicate was in writing. She started writing early as a young girl and kept it up all her life.

In the mornings, four days a week, she sits down at her writing desk and hand-writes letters on custom stationery with a fountain pen. Of course, there are also just notes and emails in the later years, but she always prefers the pen.

She makes sense of her life through writing correspondence and literature.

The entire book has no exposition and no dialog. It is all correspondence, spanning from 2012 all the way to 2022. Through letters and emails from her to a variety of recipients, family, friends, colleagues, suiters, writers of novels she reads, university professors, tech support agents, neighbors and even children in some cases, we learn about her life and her views. And of course we learn from the responses the receives through the various channels. It’s an entire book of correspondence.

She is an avid reader, and she discusses the books she reads with her friends. Often she would write “I am reading XXX by YYY, what are you reading?” Notably, she writes a long letter to Larry McMurtry about her feelings about his book Lonesome Dove and he writes back. I say notably because I myself just recently read and reviewed Lonesome Dove, so I could relate. The connection between my reading that book recently and the book being referenced here is purely coincidental.

However, there are many references to literature in The Correspondent, which provided me with a valuable reading list. I thought I’d extract and show it here. I will likely use this list for my own future reading.

Here it is. I have linked the books I either read with my rating, or I didn’t finish reading, for quick reference.

Books referenced in The Correspondent
  1. State of Wonder — Ann Patchett
  2. Bel Canto — Ann Patchett
  3. Cutting for Stone — Abraham Verghese
  4. Murder on the Orient Express — Agatha Christie
  5. Crossing to Safety — Wallace Stegner
  6. Blue Nights — Joan Didion
  7. The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
  8. The Satanic Verses — Salman Rushdie – not finished reading
  9. Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
  10. The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro
  11. Ulysses — James Joyce – not finished reading
  12. The Orphan Master’s Son — Adam Johnson
  13. 84, Charing Cross Road — Helene Hanff
  14. Travels with Charley — John Steinbeck – 3 stars
  15. Mary Poppins — P. L. Travers
  16. The Space Trilogy — C. S. Lewis
  17. The Lord of the Rings — J. R. R. Tolkien
  18. The Chronicles of Narnia — C. S. Lewis
  19. The Emperor of All Maladies — Siddhartha Mukherjee
  20. Inferno — Dan Brown
  21. The Round House — Louise Erdrich
  22. Stoner — John Williams – 4 stars
  23. Outlander — Diana Gabaldon
  24. The World Below — Sue Miller
  25. To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
  26. Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë – not finished reading
  27. Amongst Women — John McGahern
  28. That They May Face the Rising Sun — John McGahern
  29. The Collected Stories of William Trevor — William Trevor
  30. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen – not finished reading
  31. Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry  – 4 stars
  32. The White Album — Joan Didion
  33. Rebecca — Daphne du Maurier

Overall, The Correspondent is a delightful book, a very different book, almost an experiment, due to the unusual format, but it worked for me.

I used the audio version, and it was expertly narrated by a whole host of different readers, all with custom accents to match the writers.

Book Amnesia – Reading Books Twice

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, MemoryLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago someone (unidentified) posted a comment to one of my book reviews of March 2022:

The first book, Time Tunnel: Twin Towers was well done. Empire was not. I know science fiction can be interesting, but Todd’s “Empire” is molded into pure unrealistic fantasy. Worse, it shows a real left leaning bias. It portrays southern people, particularly Texans as far right nationalists and stupid. Todd chose “Empire” to change history at Wounded Knee. He even uses the “stolen land” phrase as if the native Americans were not as bad, when in fact the war like tribes, stole land, murdered, raped and enslaved peaceful tribes. Todd’s preachy revisionist utopian fantasy is just that. One army female officer is portrayed as a special forces soldier. Fantasy yes, plausible? No. It is a shame Empire was science fiction with ridiculous plot. I haven’t read ” Eclipse”yet, I hope it is not looney left wing propaganda again.

I had to check, because I didn’t remember the books, so I checked my trusty log and found that I reviewed the series of three Time Tunnel books all within a week in March of 2022. Here are the reviews:

Time Tunnel: The Twin Towers

Time Tunnel: The Empire

Time Tunnel: Eclipse

I wrote those only about four years ago, and when I read them again, I could not remember anything about those books. Is it my memory that’s failing? Is it that I just read too many books and they all blend together over time? Is it that these books were not very good and therefore didn’t leave a lasting impression? Whatever it is, I was intrigued, and I simply picked up The Twin Towers again last week and read it again. I liked it again. Re-reading it, there were passages that I remembered, vignettes only, that reminded me I had read the story, but I didn’t remember enough that it spoiled my second reading.

One of the passages I remembered was good enough I thought I’d quote it here:

Annika is a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, flying a General (an African American) out of a battle zone in Iraq. To pass the time during the flight, they chat:

“Forward Operating Base Cobra. Roger that,” repeated Annika as she banked the Blackhawk east-northeast toward the new destination.

“So, what’s your story, Captain?” asked the general.

“The short version is that I tried to get into Special Forces, but I was denied because of a birth defect.”

“What’s that?”

“Born without a penis.”

The general nodded. “If it’s any consolation, Captain, we black folks know a thing or two about bias.

I have read a number of books multiple times – I’ll have to do a post about that sometime – but never because I could not remember the first time. This was unique.

I have committed to myself that I review every book I read partly for this reason – so I read more conscientiously and remember more about the books. It certainly didn’t work this time, for these three books. But it did validate my practice to review and log all the books, so I can quickly look them up and re-read if necessary.

And now for my memory…..

 

 

Book Review: Theo of Golden – by Allen Levi

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Four Stars7 Comments

Bestow: to convey as a gift

Usually used with on or upon
Example: the university bestowed an honorary degree upon her.
— Merriam Webster Dictionary

I came in possession of Theo of Golden under circuitous circumstances. My good friends Jayne and John bestowed upon me the hardcopy book for my birthday last month. It was in a hotel lobby. My wife surprised me with their presence for my birthday dinner out. When I got home, I put the book onto my reading stack in the living room, committing to pick it up when I finished what I was currently reading. Then I went on a trip and during the trip I finished the audio book I was then listening to, and while on the road, I randomly picked up the next recommendation in my queue in Audible: Theo of Golden.  I started listening while driving. I didn’t make the connection that the hardcopy book from Jayne and John, sitting on my reading stack at home, was the same book, until I got back days later.

As a result, Theo of Golden came to me in two different channels fortuitously at the same time. It was definitely meant for me.

When you read my ratings key for books with 4 stars, you find:

Must read. Inspiring. Classic. Want to read again. I learned profound lessons. Just beautiful. I cried.

Normally I start my book reviews with an excerpt of the book, before I give my opinions. Here I just have to start the other way around.

I cried – Bill, a friend of ours, as we discussed getting older, said that all he had to do is watch a movie with a dog dying and he teared up. As I get older, I find myself much more emotional, too. Is it just age or am I really getting softer? Be that as it may, I don’t remember ever having that many tears when reading a book as I just did reading (and listening to) Theo of Golden. The last time might have been in the fall of 1992 reading The Bridges of Madison County.

Just beautiful – Theo lives in an idyllic world of music, art, nature, books, friendships and love. While there is adversity in his life, like in all of ours, there is mostly beauty, and I picked up some of that beauty in the book.

I learned profound lessons – Theo of Golden made me think about my life, and the stage my life is in. What could I change today to make my world better for me, and  more importantly, for the people in my life, and for those people, I have not met yet but I am due to get to know next. One night after listening to the book during a long walk, I came back into the house, sweaty and hot, eyes still teary. My wife was sitting on the couch immersed in something on her phone. I walked over, kissed her, and said I loved her. Later that night, she asked if all was ok, because the way I had gone about telling her I loved her had made her suspicious that something was wrong. The only thing that was “wrong” was that I had learned some profound lessons during the walk from Theo of Golden.

I want to read again – This is one of the most beautiful books I had read in a long time. I’ll wait a few years, and I’ll read it again.

Classic – The author, Allen Levi, in the epilogue, tells the story of how Theo of Golden came about. He says if any book ever got written “accidentally” it’s this one. It’s his debut book, and as such it’s a masterpiece. I predict will be a classic in due time.

Inspiring – If this book is one thing, it is inspiring, to live a fulfilling life, to help other people, to listen more and talk less, to lead by example, to do the right thing even when nobody is watching, to see beyond the outer shell and find the person inside, to love.

Must read – well, here is a book review about a book you must read, and I am telling you very little about it.

An old man arrives in the Southern city of Golden in Georgia. During his first stroll through downtown he stops at the local coffee shop. While he waits for his coffee, he notices hand-drawn, framed portraits of people from town all over the walls. They are for sale. He decides to purchase them one at a time and give them to the person depicted. Hence the word “bestow” that I have used several times in this review. The only thing he asks in exchange is to have a conversation where he can hopefully hear their stories. Theo of Golden is a powerful story about the importance of personal connection, depth of relationships, generosity, friendship and love.

I won’t tell you anything else about the book, other than I have learned to call my bicycle my “noble invention” and I will go to Bevmo soon and buy a good bottle of port wine. I long for the taste.

Book Review: AS1 – by Trevor Lewis

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science Fiction, Two StarsLeave a comment

A brilliant young electromagnetics engineer fortuitously gets a research job at Green Bank Observatory, working on the country’s most powerful radio telescope. He notices a faint signal from a fixed point in space and through some out of the box thinking manages to decode it sufficiently to understand it is an artificial signal. When he tries to publish his findings to the scientific community, looking for validation of his conclusions, the entire security and law enforcement apparatus of the United States government seems to descend on him.

He quickly finds himself part of an elite international scientific team tasked with decoding the signal and understanding what might be happening. Long story short: aliens are making contact with humanity.

What follows is what might happen if in our world of today, aliens contacted us and were interested in exchanging information. No one country would be able to lead these efforts. It would take the entire international community, and the role of the United Nations might become more important.

AS1 speculates on what might happen if aliens suddenly were among us. As you may surmise, the bureaucratic inefficiency of the United Nations, the hype machine of the media, the insanity of cults, the insecurity of religions, all would cause an apocalyptic panic of the masses and would transform humanity. The world would never be quite the same again.

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.

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.

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!

 

 

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!

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.

Book Review: The Dog Stars – by Peter Heller

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Three StarsLeave a comment

It’s about 9 years after a global pandemic, where a deadly flu killed 99.9 percent of the population. If that makes you think of Stephen King’s The Stand, you are right on. The Stand is one of my favorite books of all time.

After 9 years, all gasoline has become stale. Regular unleaded gas gets old after a few months and will be unusable after a year. Cars and motorcycles can no longer drive. Too bad, Mad Max!  However, Jet fuel, because it is a highly refined kerosene, lasts much longer, and with additives can be used for years.

Hig is a forty-something man and an experienced pilot. He maintains “the Beast,” a 1956 Cessna he keeps at his home base at a small airport in Colorado. He lost his family and his wife. The only friend he has left is his dog, Jasper. One day a gun-toting crazy guy named Bangley arrives and the two of them live in a strange symbiosis keeping each other alive fending off marauders and attackers – with Bangley doing most of the killing. 

During one of his flights he hears a strange transmission and he hopes, against all odds, that there are other people out there that are not out to kill them. He fills up his plane with provisions and flies beyond his capacity to return home (there is only that much gas he can carry) in hope of finding a better life.

The author writes in a strange, chopped style, with sentence fragments, and pretty much no dialog. It takes a little time to get used to it, but it grew on me quickly and I kept turning the pages. Life in America after an apocalypse comes alive in this novel and it will scare the shit out of you. No matter how hopeless, how brutal, how demoralizing every day is, when I was done reading this book, I closed it and I immediately missed it. I wanted to know what would happen next.

 

Interestingly, after I finished reading The Dog Stars just a few days ago, I came across this movie poster when browsing Reddit. Looks like it’ll be in the theaters in late August.

 

I am definitely going to see this.