Nancy Drew Mutates into Victor Carl

I am back into my murder mystery addiction, something that started when I was 12 and decided to read every Nancy Drew.  Now I have discovered William Lasher's Victor Carl series.  So far, I have finished Bag Man and Marked Man.  Bag Man is better, but maybe the first encounter with any author is always the most memorable.  Lasher evokes Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane.  His throw away paragraphs, scene setters or Victor's internal musings, are forte performances in noir fiction.

I am about to start A Killer's Kiss.  These books call to me ... interfering with my best intentions to chop ice in the driveway and back Christmas cookie dough.  Ah well, the temperature is above freezing and I don't have to drive tomorrow and the garbage cans are out by the curb already, and four batches are in the refrig and another just waiting for its flour so some day after work when I have energy, ha, I will bake them all.

More Carl to follow,

Today is Christmas and my drive to read all Lasher continues.  I finished Fatal Flaw and actually said Wow out loud when the final page was turned.  Both A Killer's Kiss and Fatal Flaw have main characters juxtaposed against Victor:  a former lover who is the murderer in the former, a a current lover who is the victim in the second.

In addition to the power-house writing style, I enjoy how Lasher has echo or parallel themes in all his books:  Other minor characters whose lives mirror his own as in Bag Man and especially in Fatal Flaw where the intrigue is compounded by the prime suspect also being the lover of the victim and the motive of giving it all up or bargaining for love seeps through all characters in the story, some more creepy or opportunistic than the others.

I am moving on to Lasher's first book from 1995, Hostile Witness.

In the meantime, today was reading day since all the gifts were open last night, the tree trimmed days ago, and no fancy cooking planned.  Read cover to cover American Catch - The Fight for Our Local Seafood by Paul Greenberg.  He has three major sections on NYC former oyster beds, there destruction and attempts at regeneration despite Chris Christie and Hurricane Sandy; the decline of shrimping in Louisiana as much attributable to the Army Corps of Engineers channeling the Mississippi as to the oil industry and spills (both oysters and Louisiana topics I wrote about previously); and threats to wild salmon fishing in Bristol Bay Alaska from mining for gold and copper.  Overlaying the State issues is the unsophisticated pallet of Americans, choosing farm bred imported low nutritional value fish over Atlantic and Pacific fishermen.  Rededicates my purchases to Fin, long live Fin.

Five Days at Saint Peter's

No wait, it was only seven hours in the ER and the only power that was lost was Don's ability to perambulate.  He woke up Saturday morning in extreme pain and could not put any weight on his right foot.  His knee was swollen and red and he self-diagnosed as either gout or an infection and wanted to go to open hours at his GP.  After struggling to get him out of the house, through the driveway ice and snow and into the car, John and I decided take him to the hospital where they could get immediate (in hospital time of course) results of lab tests.  First no bacteria indicating Lyme Disease, never got the results of the uric acid test, and it was going on 3PM before the ortho drained out the joint and bursa.  Discharged with narcs and meds and crutches.

So once again, my uninterrupted reading time was in the emergency room where I started and almost finished Tina Fey's Bossypants.  If you're going to be stressed out and imagining the worst, get distracted with this book.  Skip the accolades in front and the inane book club discussion questions in the back.  You really won't snort liquids you intended to swallow through your nose or need to grab someone to list out your favorite SNL skits, but I did giggle occasionally and wanted to read random quotes to my faithful son on ER duty with me.

I liked her analysis of what live skills she learned from improvisation, probably the same life skills a deliberate, thinking middle-ager would reach from any reflection on what works best with superiors and subordinates at work.

I got this book in a box of paperbacks my daughter in law brought with her for Thanksgiving from Texas where her mother proof reads pre-publication manuscripts.  So I'll end with my favorite quote:  "I know why you bought this book.  Or should I say, I know why you borrowed this book from that woman at your office."  Guess what's going to work with me tomorrow?

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

I have been wanting to read this book since I learned of it being published.  I started and could not put it down, reading last night until way past 11 and just finishing now once the duck was in the oven and the vegetables pared for dinner.  I am watching a looming snow storm outside, maybe getting nine or ten inches by tomorrow.  Thankfully that does not qualify as a disaster, nothing like the seven feet of snow that lambasted Buffalo last week.

This book is wonderful,  The fact is that 19 people were injected with morphine and other drugs at Memorial Hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  The author presents unbiased renditions of everyone's memories, impressions and concerns.  Factually, these people were injected as the hospital was being finally evacuated after five days of no power, little food, overworked staff and rioting neighborhoods.  Fink does a marvelous job of describing the horrific conditions and the mental strain not only of dealing with weather related realities but also the bureaucratic and corporate mishandling of the process.

The second section of the book hits too close to home as Fink details federal investigations, criminal charges, grand jury deliberations and both the tactics of lawyers for both sides and the denial of hospital owners.  The lack of single point of clarity or responsibility, the mix of best intentions versus changing or nonexistent procedures or plans is my world.  I work for the NYS Department of Health.  After Fink recounts how various oversight organizations tried to learn from Katrina on how to respond to complete failure of power, to limited medicine, etc etc, she finds herself in the midst of Hurricane Sandy and the hospitals and nursing homes in New York City and Long Island that were subject to equally harrowing conditions.  At DOH, my team oversees the distribution of federal grants to many of the healthcare providers mentioned in the book.  Fink's descriptions of their damages are even more graphic than those they sent us in their application for funds.  I am sort of living a post-disaster situation almost as frustrating as Sandy:  other bureaucracies are placing burdensome requirements to document expenses claimed for grant reimbursement; all contracts and payments are reviewed by multiple agencies, both State and federal.  To date, only about 15% of the funds my team controls have been paid out.

I also deal with many of the people Fink mentions who work in NYS DOH and many others who are the backbone and heart and soul of our emergency preparedness and response group.  How these folk and the top executives can cope with the issues that seem to occur with more and more frequency amazes me.  I was recently on a conference call where one woman was informed it would be her fault if more than a dozen people needing dialysis deaths if she did not find a way to get them out of their snow bound homes in Buffalo and to treatment.

Finally, Fink devotes the last part of the book to the ethical issues involving the triaging and distribution of scarce or diminishing medical treatments during a crisis.  Fink compares New York's establishment of standards against Maryland's where much more public involvement informed the regulations.  I am all for the wisdom of the crowd, but Fink's book does not circle back to the vested interests that seep into public forums.  These are decisions that must evolve.

I plan on buying several copies of this book to give to my team as Christmas presents.  Read it, it is a thoughtful, valuable "retreat-like" discussion of issues anyone in public health has to face.

The Industry that is John Lescroat

I believe I have read some Lescroart mysteries before and picking up his latest, The Keeper, last weekend at the library was my attempt to kick start my lagging reading/blogging life by going back to my favorite genre.

I grabbed the book Wednesday morning and cracked it open as I lay on a gurney in the ER going through tests to see if I was having a heart attack.  I have learned through dozens of emergency room adventures with my mother, son and husband, that reading material is essential to make the hours of waiting tolerable.  I was through the first 100 pages before I saw a doctor.

The tests were anticlimactic and so, in a sense, is The Keeper.  Not to keep you in suspense like a good murder mystery, the test results showed a flare up of arrhythmia that last occurred seven years ago.  More doctor visits to follow.

As was the book somewhat less than dramatic at its conclusion.  The character of the retired police investigator taking a job for the defense attorney was excellent.  Here was a person who aimed only for results, utilized his decades of job experience, and relished going around bureaucratic obstacles.  Yup, I identified with him,  Lescroart lards his story with as many women as men; while the jail is all male, the police investigators include a woman with some what if insights that add to the case development.  The victim, the marriage counselor, the victim's extended family and in-laws all include well depicted female characters.

So why am I not raving about the book and recommending it to the max?  The thread that eventually becomes the identity of the killer is as apparent as a red thread in a blue piece of fabric.  Too much back story is added to the criminal's earlier life to justify motivation that is not otherwise evident in the main story of a teetering marriage, partially attributable to one spouse's hostile workplace.

But more than that forced ending, I hated the author's acknowledgements.  He comes off like a book-grinding industry.  I have this innate bias against people who hire others to run their webpages and social media.  Worse yet, is a writer who sort of bids out the chance to have a real person's name be used for a literary character.  In hindsight, it looks to me like a cast of thousands of minor walk-ons show up in the story only to meet this obligation to use a "winner's" name.

So this is two "industry" books in a row:  the one that turned out to be penned by another Rowlings alias went back unread.  Will I read another Lescroart?  Maybe, at least look for one of his earlier ones before he became corporate.

Break Down

As I grow more frustrated with the overlays and post mortems of decisions made months if not a year ago at work and I scan the horizon for an assignment that will be challenging but appreciated, my interests suggested I mention helping out with the latest crisis of Ebola.  I pass the NYT's articles to staff every day, we've hung up pictures of three grads of haz mat suits over the desks, and I thought it was about time to read Robin Cook's Outbreak.

Was it only 1987 when this book scared the stuffing out of us?  How simple it seems now and how James Bondish.  Cook's outline was that the only way for Ebola to come to America was that vial of the virus had to be stolen from CDC but mad scientist/doctors who were evil one percenters looking to keep their money and privileges away from the dreaded new enemy:  HMOs.

The CDC is portrayed as competent but infiltrated with such executives out to protect their wealth and status.  There is obvious cultural bias as they attack doctors coming to America from foreign countries, then the ones most likely to work at HMOs for lower wages.  Well, lets not go there in this review.  It's Ebola now.

In Outbreak, the evil doctors and their henchmen select hospitals at which to expose the virus selecting a doctor to mug and inject.  Exposure does the rest, essentially killing off the hospital staff, lab workers and immediate family.  Other than issues of isolation, Cook does not delve into treatment or containment.

So cycling back to my introductory paragraph, my frustration with politics in my own assignment is magnified a trillion times in the nation's response to Ebola transmission.  There have been so many editorials that I read this weekend that I am not sure this review has not been infected with their ideas and observations.  Specifically, Ebola is not lonely a medical crisis, it has become a crisis of confidence in government.  The CDC has been exposed to be as bureaucratically inept and face saving as the Veterans' Administration, the IRS and the Secret Service.  Lassitude, lack of responsibility, in inability to triage risk and anticipate unintended consequences are no longer factors under consideration on federal and state employees annual appraisals.

The outbreak of Ebola today in 2014 is much scarier than Cook's 25 years ago:  There are no villains to escape from.  We have met the enemy and they are us and us just isn't as talented as before.

The Lost Art of Dress

Subtitled, The Women Who Once Made America Stylish,was written by a history professor at Notre Dame named Linda Przybyszewski (the lost art of vowels?)

I loved this book.  It fits into my reading history along the woof theme as Linda P tracks the rise and fall of home economics in the 20th century's high schools, colleges, and granges.  How could I not like this book:  I am a child of a frustrated designed, born in an era when her father believed it was too risky for her to go Parsons in NYC.  I am the cousin of a boy who in my generation made it there and worked for Halston and then opened his own boutique.

My mother and I had an agreed upon division of labor when it came to sewing:  I laid out the pattern and matched the stripes and plaids so they all lined up, pinned the fabric and she sewed it on the old Singer.  I could not wait to go to the fabric store every month to check out the most complicated styles from Vogue and see if she was up to the challenge.  I would get simpler ones when I attempted to approach the machine and deal with threading bobbins but always working in my favorite material, Italian wool knit.  I wish I never threw out the one that was all rust red in the front and all cinnamon in the back, two colors that always looked good with my complexion.

Going to Catholic school spared me from home economics but the principles of good taste were pervasive.   Yes, uniforms covered my growing tall frame for eight teenage years but when the occasion arose, Mom made a prom gown is glowing white slipper satin with a rolled seam waist and full bodice without sleeves.  (Blue chiffon sleeves were added later and it became my lady-in-waiting costume for The Mouse That Roared.)  Another gown for college came with a full length buttonless wool coat lined in cream Japanese silk our neighbor brought back from a a tour of duty there.  She underlined it with an old baby blanket so I could wear it comfortably for the dance in the dead of winter.

Okay, there are my memories and credentials for reviewing the book.  Linda P is scholarly in tracking down biographical history of the women who were devoted to home economics, teaching not only style, but frugality and practicality.  While home ec was segregated by gender in State colleges, during the decades of the 30s to 50s, it was not the dumb sorority blondes who went, but more often than not the chemistry and engineering girls who were not welcome in the regular science majors.  Many went on to work for food production companies, "ladies" magazines, and high governmental positions.

When Linda P lists out the principles of style, and she's not talking high couture here, it almost seems like a Rosetta Stone of ideas I consumed with my childhood breakfasts of poached egg on toast:  certain colors work best in the office; fabric finishes clash as badly as certain colors do; a concealing dress is more alluring than a revealing one.  The first page I dog-earred down to save as a quote for this review builds on the last premise:  "... the idea of a dinner suit originated with the clothes designed for wear in the speakeasies of Prohibition days.  She does not tell us why.  Maybe women did not like being too bare when buying drinks from gangsters.  Or maybe a suit gave them more confidence when scrambling over tables during a police raid?"  (Shades of Nick and glamorously dressed Nora.)

And another:  "So much was required for good wardrobe planning ... It is not only a proof of our understanding of design and color and texture, of means of creating illusion and expressing temperament, but it also tests the real character of a person in discernment, in farsightedness, in self-discipline and in organization, and in ability to hold unswervingly to principle and purpose.  And you thought you were just shopping."

Not sure of the date of this quote:  "The New York Times proclaimed standardized dress (this must have been either during WW1 or WW2) was doomed - There is and ought to be in the heart of every woman, conscious of being well dressed, a triumphant satisfaction, not untinged, perhaps, with some rejoicing in the admiration, dissatisfaction, or envy stirred in the hearts of other women by the sight of her perfection."

"... planning a wardrobe and sticking to it required skill, knowledge, and practicality.  A thrifty and beautiful wardrobe proved that a young woman had not only mastered the Five Art Principles and understood the Six Occasions for Dress, but was also self-disciplined, organized, and determined.  The qualities that allowed her to dress beautifully without spending a fortune were the same qualities that would allow her to take on a position of "trust and authority." 

The final chapters trace the decline of style starting in the late 60s.  Linda P goes a bit nostalgic:  "The fashion photography of the 1950s reflected (sophistication).  Of course, there were young models, but some models worked into their thirties and forties.  You may object to their impossibly polished up appearance and their girdled silhouette, but notice their superior attitude, their knowing glance.  The older models of the 1950s looked like they could handle the world."   Twiggy, Mary Quant and Betsy Johnson come off rather badly, nay juvenile after such worldly allure.

Finally, and I'm not sure how old Linda P is, but this surely is my conclusion:  "Today's culture seems to have little appreciation for what years of living can do for you.  We all know that growing older usually makes you less of an idiot.  But there's little sense today that age might endow you with sophistication, dignity, grace, stateliness, and wisdom.  Or that we might aspired to dress in a way that expresses all these qualities."  When did yesterday's Dress Doctors become today's Fashion Police?

I'll Have Another

Still trying to catch up on the books I read recently and never posted to the blog.  This month, I sped through a simple book called, The History of the World in Six Glasses.  I bought it because I hoped it would be as good an alternate perspective on global history as were Cod and Salt.  It was not.

The author, and I'll add his name in shortly, posits that what the majority of people were drinking during certain historical ages was significant.  (I carefully chose that word because I really think the book does not successfully argue that these beverages had any cause or effect on history, rather they were more contemporary.)

The reader pub crawls from the cradle of civilization where some poor fellow drank week old gruel that had fermented.   Alas, near beer.  Next stop, Roman and Greek wine, with only the slightest reference to Retsina, and the proposition that wine, per se, creates wine snobs.  The wine gets harder as brandy fills the next glass/chapter.  The reader/imbiber sobers up with the introduction of coffee, then tea, and finally Coke.

What I appreciated more in Cod and Salt was the interweaving of history with commerce and daily life across the continents.  Salt is such an essential of life that it determined where people settled, caused conflict, became industrialized, can be traced linguistically.  Cod was a dominant industry, founded on supply and demand, and essentially an international trade.

The Six Glasses reminds me more of a flight of chards waiting for a plane to depart Austin:  something to fill in the time gap and served in such small portions that only the most superficial of distinctions can be made between the samples.  It only skims the surface of Indian Tea Trading companies and their impacts on India and Asia as well as England.  More successful, but more disturbing, is the treatment of Coca Cola.  Here is a beverage that has mutated into a logo, a drink that notwithstanding its early elimination of coca, is designed and marketed to be addictive and exploitive.  (Have I been getting to many emails from my old left leaning friends to have that word pop up in my blog?)

I would not really recommend this book to anyone, despite the fact that I gave it to my co-worker as a mental debt settlement for keeping her Ann Patchett book while she was out ill.  She really is giving it to her husband anyway.  But I still want to pursue books that look at history by the woof instead of the warp.  I have an earlier volume by the author on a history of food.  Let's hope it is a more substantial amuse bouche.

Don't Drink from the Fountain of Youth

Doing these couple of reviews in reverse order:  I read State of Wonder by Ann Patchett before I skimmed through On Democracy.  I wish I had read it faster because the woman who lent it to me was home recuperating from surgery and she would have enjoyed the distraction of this good book.

Our book club selected a Patchett book, Bel Canto, at least a year ago.  When I read it, I thought it contrived, a plausible scenario, but a tad affected.  Canto does have an echoing reprise that stays in the memory like a haunting song.  I think I will remember State of Wonder long after I forget its title .... which I seem to have done already.

Patchett loads this novel with many themes and many philosophical questions.  It is a cross breed between Heart of Darkness and Alice in Wonderland.  The heroine sent into the Brazilian jungle seems too weak to tackle her assignment.  She drags a complicated history behind her:  a distant foreign father, and a failed first career.  A lab worker for a large pharmaceutical company, she is told to go bring back a renegade mad scientist and the body of a co-worker who failed himself to perform the same thing.  The terrain, the language, the culture, the economy, the geography, all are more than alien:  they make no sense to a woman who deals with knowledge, precision, proof and consistency.  She is placed in a tableau of obstruction and obfuscation.

The thoughts that Patchett plants in your mind to reexamine, if not completely refine, include what is motherhood, who is responsible for a child, how can cultures interact without contaminating or eroding important traditions, who owns health.

I probably should not have read the NY Times review of this book before I sat down to type because in it, the reviewer criticizes Patchett's rosy view of conflict resolution:  the villian dies, the lost hero is reunited with his wife, the Tinkerbell like child who acts as her guide returns to his tribe.  

My secondary motive to finish the book was to think about preventive medicine, fertility drugs and the possibility of drugs being tailored to genetic profiles.  What if a drug, with a specific limited market, had wider beneficial side effects but only to a restricted population, be it gender, blood type, etc.  I end to find some lectures in medical ethics. 

Well, It Has Almost Been Forever

How does one know when the job has taken over?  Maybe not blogging for half a year?  It's not that I haven't relaxed.  Over these months I have completed upwards of ten or so thousand piece jig saw puzzles.  It has been my equivalent of shifting from one side of my brain to the other.  Coming home from work and not wanting to look at another written word, or worse yet, write anything more, not only wrecks your leisure but makes you a most unbalanced person.

So even though I have 1,000 shades of blue in the form of Niagara Falls tempting me to become a whole image, I will write.  I will read.

Can't say I completely finished On Tocqueville - Democracy and America by Alan Ryan but I read the interpretative parts, 103 pages, but this is a tiny 5 by 7 book.  I must have mentioned somewhere sometime in this blog of mine, that Democracy in America is a touchstone to me and for years, it was one of my coffee table books.  (Another indication that all is not well in the land of work is, rather than skimming through the high-minded and inspiring socio-political analysis of de Tocqueville, I prominently display and refer to The Prince at work.)

Ryan is a "warden" at Oxford and most definitely this little book sounds like a seminar lecture; he even goes so far as to encourage the reading of the sources, of the kids these days, wanting Cliff notes and Wiki summaries!  So two-thirds of the book are selected chapters from Democracy, so there you collegiate slackers.

This time as I reconsider Alexis' observation, I overlay them on a completely adversarial Congress, an apathetic electorate, a Huey Long-like mayor in NYC, and a country uncomfortable on a crumbling world stage.  Ryan squarely places the influences of others, in particular Rousseau and Montesquieu, on deTocqueville, and in turn, his impact on Mill.   All this context time travels me back to Saybrook, listening to the political history majors their try to order their readings and my realizing I was not similarly intellectually challenged by any confusion between Pope and Carlyle.

So I will quote because Democracy's observations became bedrock theories, theories that sometimes today seem aligned on the San Andreas fault:

"Equality of condition was not equality of income, education, or anything in particular; it consisted in the absence of social obstacles to whatever ambitions an American entertained."

"Tocqueville thought that Americans understood that in the absence of an interfering and omnicompetent state, they must manage their own affairs ... This is self-interest with an eye to long-run, shared interests.  The danger was that individuals would eventually give in to the temptation to have the state do everything for them; it was the natural path of a democracy to look for uniform solutions and centralize power ..."

I tried to edit Ryan's interpretation of de Tocqueville's analysis of how people compare themselves with other classes since it devolves from the quote about obstacles.  But instead I will give an even further from the source precis:  a lower class, aspiring to move up the economic and social ladder, is more frustrated when they begin to ascend and get stymied than if they never began the effort.  Now as I write that, I recognize not only the frustration of falling back, but more insidiously, I overlay a political conscious intent to make a class "fat and happy and lazy," dependent on governmental assistance to subsist but not excel.   When I stopped reading yesterday, I again said to myself keep those local charter schools growing.  A leg up not a hand out.

More of a vacation post card than a book review

Spent about a week in Waco and it felt like a farewell tour.  No, since I never expected to be back there after my son's graduation, it was an unexpected reunion with a town I like a lot.  But this time really feeling it would be the last, I did all the town's highlights:  the Dr Pepper museum (okay ... how many bottles are too many); the Texas Ranger museum (a bit better but ... how many guns are too many); the science and history museum on campus (way too many kids on free admission day); and the best of the lot, the zoo.  That was the week's best weather as well and enjoyed strolling in the sun.  Some animals took my breath away, like the jaguars, others were too reminiscent of the back yard (white tail deer and turkeys).

Speaking about taking my breath away, landing in Austin did that as the fields between the runaways were awash in bluebonnets, with dabs of Indian paint brushes for accent.  Sure the blues were out for the wedding a couple of years ago, but Houston was so rainy that week, the sun shining in the heart of Texas reminded me to bless Lady Bird.  And speaking about deer, I had the best ever chicken fried variation with venison at Diamondbacks ... and wonderful BBQ oysters, and sushi with a sash of Bearnaise sauce, returning several times since it is a short walk from the hotel.

Buzzard Billy's must have been taken by eminent domain as it has relocated to the other side of the Brazos near where the school is building the new football stadium.  The seedy, western unique ambiance of the old place is sorely missing, most notably in there being NO POOL TABLES!  However, the deep fried alligator and the crayfish etouffee is still wonderful and the porch overlooking the river is a nice touch, however, being next to a major forest of electrical transformers is not attractive.

The CAMWS panels were great and I am much more savvy now in picking topics that I can relate to, most of them what the experts call "reception" which translates into how Roman and Greek myths weave their ways into other works of non-classical art.  What struck me this time as markedly different from the time it was held in St Louis is many attendees look like reenactors from a Nero orgy in modern, too modern, garb:  one guy with enough blond dreadlocks on his head that it looked like a young lion cub was resting there, straining his neck somewhat backward and doing the typical teenage girl effect of hair in a pony tail too long ... shearing out the new hair around his forehead.  There were two other people there, sort of mirror images of each other, with similar hair cuts, one side shaved military length, and the other a mass of bed head curls.  Naomi wore tailored suits and sneakers, a la DeGeneris (degenerate?) and her unnamed male counterpart wore tights and a micro mini skirt as he asked questions in a beautiful baritone.  Even some of the professors seemed a bit visually extreme.

But anyway, I love these conferences' content and raw brain power.  Must have attended a good dozen presentations, each with three to five papers read therein, and read myself four books.  Blessed free time.

So this entry is in part at least a record of what I read last week:  The Paris Wife, The Wild Things, 12 Years a Slave, and Gilead.  Also half way through a rereading of Machiavelli's Prince, required refresher for work.

Recording Just to Record

A spate of mediocre books.  I will admit it, I lapsed and took another JD Robb "in Death" book out of the library, the latest Thankless ...

Every time I do this, it just parallels my lack of will power to say no to a bag of chips in the cupboard or a container of ice cream in the fridge.  Neither leave me with a long term feeling of satisfaction or with a sense of doing something meaningful.  As I wrote after the last JDR popcorn, she hardly ever introduces any sci fi new features into her story.  It has long since become a riff on Dallas and Rourke and the crimes could have happened any time.

And as for my reading on tangent, I whipped through Dashiell Hammett's Thin Man today, a snow day, but the snow never hit double digits and I'm sure with a tad more dedication and drive, I could have made it into work.  Here is that rare example where the movies were better than the book.  I can easily imagine Powell and Loy as Nick and Nora, but the facial expressions aren't there.  The movies have such physical flirting tension that just is superficially introduced in the book.  In fact, it often could be interpreted as matrimonial sarcasm rather than fast paced repartee.

So on to Lillian Hellman's memoir.

Political Junkie that I am

As usual, I found my own Christmas present and presented my family with the bill.  I pre-ordered Love and War by Mary Mataline and James Carville from Amazon and finished it last night.  I wanted to read it to understand how two political polar opposites could live together as I will affirm, I could never envision myself doing and have actually checked potential mates off my marriageable list for such a divergence.

Maybe meeting each other so late in life, definitely sharing the same career, and eventually figuring out that a home base and raising kids is more important than most other things has kept them together.  I was also surprised at the fact that they were actually married three times:  first in a raucous NoLa wedding on a Thanksgiving when everyone assumed it was some kind of political stunt over 20 years ago; a vow renewal on their 10th anniversary; and finally in a small Catholic church, exactly 100 years to the month of when James' grandparents were married after Mary converted.

It is the latter part of the book I loved the most.  Granted, political junkie that I am, I loved the insights of both campaigns and their friendships with the powers and wannabees from both parties, but the reconciliation and comfort of a home in New Orleans, a commitment to to rebuild this wondrous city to what it was pre-Katrina, and the flavor of partying that pervades NoLa was what I enjoyed the most.

I cannot fathom how the managed to avoid each other during the Gore/Bush Florida recount and the visceral hatred and accusations that ensued.  But on the other hand, I cannot appreciate Mary's idolization of Dick Cheney.  In fact, I am strained to even understand her devotion to Poppy Bush.  I just cannot idolize any particular politician of either party.  To me, they are all flawed and bear no resemblance at all to Founding Fathers and 18th Century political philosophers.

I was surprised to find quirks about Mary that even I would find impossible to live with:  a menagerie of cast off feral cats and rag tag dogs, and even pet rats, her preference to run the air conditioner while opening all the windows and lighting a fire in the fireplace would drive me to distraction.  Here I only expected to find James' traits annoying.  Towards the end, he acknowledges there are certain basic family concerns that tend to make a father and husband a tad conservative.

Yes I have plenty of dogeared corners of quotes I wanted to lard my review blog with, but perhaps another day.  Other readers are in the queue to read the book and I am fried from my own political intrigue lately to write much more than this.  So I will revisit this blog another day to add those wonderful religious and personal slants that resonated.

By the way, the one slant that I will cede Mary won hands down, is the book alternates with sections, in different type fonts, of Mary's and Jim's view of what is happening in their lives.  Mary writes better, more humorously, more cleverly, but just as politically extremely.  I agree with the final tally:  Democrats love humanity but hate individuals, Republicans favor doing favors for individuals rather than pontificating about mankind.

It Pays to Re-request Books that You don't Pick up at the Library

So it was with Lillian and Dash by Sam Toperoff.  The hold expired when I was savoring Brave Genius for weeks on end.  (Unbelievably, the fine was only $3.60.)  And the real life Nick and Nora was still waiting on the shelf for me.

I love Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy as the Nick and Nora and from my point of view, there are never enough film festivals of these wonderful double entendre repartee movies.   But I have never read anything by either Lillian Hellman or Dashiell Hammett, let alone never heard of Toperoff.  Toperoff's books are not to be found in our library network and even on Amazon his reviews can be counted on one hand despite having written books with interesting titles about the Pittsburgh Steelers, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.  Meanwhile, I have reserved a copy of the Thin Man and a collection of Hellman's plays

This biographical novel is a segue for me, still looking for stories stuffed with lust yet with intelligence and wit.  But, it is a wonderful contrast to Brave Genius as well.  Dash's involvement in WWII was basically an attempt to recapture his youth, not anything that was motivated by higher values; Lillian seemed manipulated, first by movie producers and Hemingway to film the Spanish Civil War and then by FDR and his son to do a propaganda piece that was very pro-Russia.  Both ended up before HUAC, bizarre given their arguments about FDR

Lillian and Dash had years of separation in their decades long love affair:  she filming the war in Spain and Russia, he enlisting in his late forties and being shipped off to Alaska, she writing for Broadway plays, he trying to get work and stay sober in Hollywood.  Dash was married, Catholic and easily tempted, as was Lillian, but Jewish.  Her writing flourished under his advise.  They did the 21, he won $23,000 at the '41 Santa Anita Handicap.  I am easily lost in fantasy of a love story with painful lows and dizzying highs

Did Hammett or Toperoff write the letters to Lillian?  Does every man say the same things to the woman he loves the most?  "To never see you again is a fate I deserve ... still I can't imagine living out my live -- our lives --and never again spending an evening with you ... To never see you again would be impossible for me.  So how and when becomes the issue, and those are entirely up to you.  I'll wait ..." and again "I miss your face.  I miss your brains.  I miss you.  I have always missed you."  Such simple words stop me cold.

It's Easy to Keep a New Year Resolution on January 1

Finished the first book of 2014 today, with the sound muted on the LSU Bowl game and the designated chef struggling in the kitchen to defrost a chicken to no avail.  Thankfully, the grocery stores stay open on 1/1.

So I even read The Plague by Camus.  The story is heavily philosophical, and the pestilence much more than a metaphor.  Maybe Camus' existentialism is a bit preachy but not out of character with the narrator Rieux.  I really liked those parts but was affronted when he used a conversation with another character to interject an off theme discourse against capital punishment.  With that included, the novel seemed a bit too much a personal propaganda or diatribe.

I also didn't really like the sermons of the Jesuit priest, but I have my family-related biases of course.  With Rieux defining his life by the service of work, the Catholic overlay, no more a biblical overlay of the purpose of suffering and the Eden curse of work, did not get adequately reconciled.

That said, I will still venture to read more by Camus.  Cannot find a copy of Monod's Chance and Necessity in the library network and one of the books I ordered through Alibris has been cancelled.  I was thinking the other night of St Exupery's biography that I read several years ago, yet another valiant Frenchman.  Maybe I should stick with the French as a theme for this upcoming year.

One additional thought, like many others today not only figuring out new year's resolutions, I looked at my horoscope for the upcoming year.  I am most interested in how upbeat my work and career is supposed to be at least through the first several months.  Like Camus, I define myself by what I do, do day in day out, and am so much more grateful the past year, that my daily efforts and attempts are noticed and appreciated, unlike those years in my former job.

Well the TV is still on mute but the coverage has shifted to the Rose Bowl.  Surprised to see some empty seats.  Version two of dinner is being prepared and the dog is quiet.  Nice beginning to '14.  Now if the blizzard just doesn't materialize tonight.

So this will be the 2014 log of books read

January 1:  The Plague by Albert Camus
January 5:  Lillian and Dash by Sam Toperoff
January 22:  Love and War by Mary Matalin and James Carville
February 5:  Thankless in Death by J D Robb
February 5:  The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammet
April 12:  The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
April 12:  Wild Things by Dave Eggers
April 12:  Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
April 12:  12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup