Monday, October 31, 2011

American Boy...Guest blogger Steve Head



As revealed in an earlier entry, I stopped by LaDeDa recently. To call my time in Manitowoc a visit would be an overstatement. It was more like a hit-and-run. Before I could dash to my next location our hostess of books asked me three times if I wanted to read Larry Watson’s newest book, American Boy. Her final query included the fact Watson had written Montana 1948. This tidbit was the tipping point and I left with Watson among my take-aways.

American Boy is told in first-person by Matthew Garth, a high school senior only child of a single mother, set in Willow Falls, Minnesota. Matt’s best friend is Johnny Dunbar, oldest child of Dr. & Mrs. Dunbar, where he is enjoying Thanksgiving Dinner in 1962. Before the night is over a young woman is brought into the Dunbar home, the victim of a gunshot wound inflicted by her loser boyfriend.

Dr. Dunbar allows the boys to watch as he treats the girl, exposing her midriff where the bullet traversed just below the surface. Matt is smitten with this slightly older girl who was “pretty in a way unfamiliar to most of us.” Since she has no family to go to the Dunbar’s take her in and she eventually becomes the doctor’s office assistant.

You have probably guessed where this is going. Two boys. An older girl. Trying to impress the girl. Pushing and pulling to define relationships. By Christmas we witness Matthew operating as an adult, paying the personal price for this growth.

If you are a fan of coming-of-age books I recommend American Boy highly. Even if you are not, Watson is a fine writer and storyteller. Support local writers. Larry Watson lives in Milwaukee. And support your independent book seller.


*******Thanks Steve. "Hostess of books"....funny!


For those of you wondering which book won the great Torn Between Two Covers battle, here's your answer: The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise. The Washington Post called this book "satisfying and heartwarming," and People magazine said "...this book will steal your heart." I agree! More next week.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Two Books and One Big Problem





Last week, I ignored my number one never-to-be-broken reading rule and started two books on the same day. Being on the negative end of the multi-tasking capability scale, I have no excuse for what I did, and now I find myself in a bit of a quagmire. How big is that quagmire? Well, now I am stuck...torn between two covers (bad pun, but this seems like it is shaping up to be one of those awkward stream-of-consciousness pieces). Want to know what happens when I start a new project before I totally complete another? Come to my house and check out my Heart-A-Rama piles from last May. I brought the bags of costumes and other assorted accouterments home, set them down...binders in the dining room, stuffed garbage bags in the bedroom, and there they remain, because I got sidetracked by another great opportunity.




Now I find myself with a huge decision, my peace of mind, and the future of my reading comfort hinging on the outcome. Which book do I continue reading? Will I have to start all over to get reacquainted with the characters and the plot? And what about the book I dismiss? Will I return to it at some point, or will it forever be forgotten, pushed aside and left to rot like a partially eaten banana that looked good when first peeled? Speaking of rot, that last metaphor stunk, didn't it?

What the heck, maybe telling you a little about the two books causing me such angst will help guide my decision. First, there's The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise. Being a sucker for quirky British stories...Sue Townsend being my favorite quirky Brit - I knew this would give me a few chuckles. Balthazar Jones lives in the Tower of London. He is a Beefeater, and has an unusual hobby that drives his wife batty; he collects rain. Balthazar is also charged with creating a zoo to house the exotic animals the Queen has been gifted, but he isn't quite up to the task. You gotta love a book book that includes seven ravens and a one-hundred and eighty-one year old tortoise named Mrs. Cook as major characters.




That's book #1. About thirty pages into it, I received a signed ARC (advance reading copy) of Christopher Moore's book, set for April 2012 publication, Sacre Bleu. Moore makes me laugh even though I don't always understand his esoteric references. He get irreverent at times, as he does in Lamb, the story Jesus' teen years wandering and doing boy stuff with his best friend, Biff. Moore gets outrageously bawdy in Fool, a re-telling of Shakespeare's King Lear. But that's OK with me. The guy is smart, and I enjoy his smartness all tangled in ways that are unexpectd and obtuse.




There's a surprise on each page, along with something to be learned, and, I assume, a lot of fictional history. Sacre Bleu opens on the day of Vincent Van Gogh's suicide, or was it a murder? The premise is intriguing, and the disjointed group of characters have me wondering just how they will all fit together. I know that Henri Toulouse-Lautrec wanders into the picture at some point.




Well, that's where I'm at. It would cost me nothing to abandon either book since I have barely broken the binding on either. But, both plots are calling. Oh, what to do? Today, I will dwell. I will evaluate. I will pace, ponder and obsess. I have set a goal. By 4 pm today, I will screw my courage to the sticking point (what did Lady Macbeth mean by that anyway?) and bravely set one book aside, out of sight, and commit to either Balthazar and the bully ravens, or return to the cornfield to uncover the truth behind Van Gogh's untimely death.




Or, maybe I could store my Heart-A-Rama gear. But then again, why bother, HAR 2012 is right around the corner.





*******If you have some time, check out the table setting exhibit at the Rahr West. Neat-O!

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Tortoise and the Artist...Where did my post go?

honestly...I really did write a post this week, and I was happy with it, unike several of the past entries. ut, where has it gone?

No time to re-do right now! GRRRRRRR.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Movies, Books, and More




August was Night of the Stars month on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and mid-month they featured Joanne Woodward, wife of Paul Newmann. Although both are deceased I’ve always been a fan of both and took the time to watch The Drowning Pool. This was a follow-up to Harper, with Newmann in the lead role. And both are based on the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald. TCM explained Newmann wanted to keep the "H" theme going given his success in The Hustler and Hud.

Drowning Pool, released in 1976, was possibly the first film to include the annoying buzzing sound when your seat belt is not engaged. Harper was able to do what everyone at the time wished they could do, make it go away without buckling up. Since I had never read the novel it seemed appropriate to see how Hollywood changed the original 1950 book.

Besides altering Archer’s name they moved the location to New Orleans, away from Quinto in the Nopal Valley. Like Archer’s home base of Santa Teresa, theses locations cannot be found on any map of California. The film also included a previous romanatic relationship between the detective and the client, missing from the novel. But there is something in the book the movie will never capture, and that is Macdonald’s style, like his introduction of the client.

If you didn’t look at her face she was less than thirty, quick-bodied and slim as a girl. Her clothing drew attention to the fact: a tailored sharkskin suit and high heels that tensed her nylon-shadowed calves. But there was a pull of worry around her eyes and drawing at her mouth. The eyes were deep blue, with a sort of double vision. They saw you clearly, took you in completely, and at the same time looked beyond you. They had years to look back on, and more things to see in the years than a girl’s eyes had. About thirty-five, I thought, and still in the running.

Or a personal recollection.

…For the nephew of a lord he was very obliging. I myself was the nephew of my late Uncle Jake, who once went fifteen rounds with Gunboat Smith, to no decision.

I tried to remember what my Uncle Jake looked like. I could remember the smell of him, compounded of bay rum, hair oil, strong clean masculine sweat and good tobacco, and the taste of the dark chocolate cigarettes he brought me the day my father took me to San Francisco for the first time; but I couldn’t remember his face. My mother never kept his pictures, because she was ashamed to have a professional fighter in the family.

And lastly, the proprietor of a restaurant and lounge.

Dennis’s Hunt Club was dim and chilly and crowded. Indirect lights shone with discretion on polished brass and wood, on polished plates and highly polished faces. The photographs that lined the paneled walls were signed by all the big names and the names that had once been big. Dennis himself was near the door, a gray-haired man wearing undertaker’s clothes, clown’s nose, financier’s mouth. He was talking with an air of elegant condescension to one of the names that had once been big. The fading name glanced at me from under his fine plucked eyebrows. No competition. He registered relief and condescension.

MacDonald is known for having introduced psychology to the hard-boiled detective novel. But his descriptions, observations, and recollections grab you by the collar and make you see and feel what he’s looking at. That is what keeps me turning the pages.

There are more than 20 Archer novels. The early works are not as polished as Drowning Pool, and the later books have a repetitive feel to them. But on a lightning-filled night when the power goes out I’m only too happy to light the oil lamp, or the battery powered reading light, and entered the world of Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer.




*********A few words from me.




Hey, guest blogger, Steve, was in town last week and stopped for a visit. He is a neat guy and I wish you all could meet him. OOPS. I guess I forgot to take a current picture. Looks like the mystery of his true identity will linger longer.




The Minneapolis Trade show was uneventful...unless you count my falling into a ditch outside the Guthrie Theatre. I'm not sure how much of that humiliating experience I want to commit to cyberspace, but let me add that the words "alien abduction" come into play.




I have meant to take back my ugliness concerning Cormac McCarthy's The Road. No, I didn't like the story one little bit. But, the writing, the intensity, and the provocative issues will stick with me, and I will be an advocate for this book in the future.




Not much else happening today. Matt and I are attempting the big fall store jumble...moving shelves and generally assessing what we have and what we need. Of cours, Matt has volunteered to move things while I direct traffic. I have already warned him that by the end of the day, he could be shoving all shelves to their original spots, and may be plotting retaliation schemes. We will see.




See you next week.