Tag: Booknote

Booknote: Youth and Food

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This week I have two books to recommend.  One is serious and to be savored, the other fun and a quick read.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  This is a magnificent book, and that’s an adjective I seldom, if ever, use to describe a novel.  Two parallel stories, two lives, one of a blind French girl, the other a foster German boy who is taken up by the Nazis, lives which you know must converge eventually.  And they do.  But getting there is long and detailed and sometimes painful.  Like a deck of cards cut and then re-cut and stacked, the chapters are brief, sometimes only a page, and occasionally out of order in time and then layered and re-layered until the inevitable meeting. For natural history buffs, the depiction of the Paris Jardin des Plantes is an added delight.  The book is long–500 pages–and demands to be read slowly.

Delicious! by Ruth Reichl.  A complete change of pace, this is a foodie’s treat and an ugly-duckling-becomes-swan tale all in one.  I thought this might be just a frothy confection, but Reichl knows how to tell a good story.  From the thinly disguised Gourmet magazine (here known as Delicious!), to Sal’s marvelous shop doling out cheese and cheer, to James Beard as a character, there is mystery, friendship and enough good food to send you to the kitchen.  Just plain fun!

Booknote: Robert Peace

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One of Jeff Hobbs’ roommates at Yale was a young black man from outside Newark, NJ.  He was smart and personable, but kept to himself.  He also dealt drugs the entire time he was a science major.  Robert Peace lived a bifurcated life; he grew up on poor and mean streets without a live-in father and learned how to survive there and not call undue attention to himself.  But he was also smart and talented so his stalwart mother worked several jobs and stinted for herself to make it possible for him to get a good education at St. Benedict’s.  Later, he caught the attention of a wealthy donor who funded his 4 years at Yale.

Rob Peace’s life ended too soon and Hobbs takes it upon himself to dig deep into Peace’s childhood, his family, his friendships, his relationships with women and all the people who comprised his world from his youth through college and beyond.  The book is The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.  It is a heartrending account of wasted talent and it lays bare how extremely difficult it is to overcome being poor, being black, and having no stable role models—and how one can physically leave one’s home neighborhood, but remain emotionally and mentally tied to it.  I think Hobbs’ book is overly long and sometimes too detailed, but I don’t regret investing the time to read it.

A Room of One’s Own

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It is now 2 weeks and a day since the movers and we arrived at our Florida place!  And what a whirlwind! We unpacked and sorted, made 2 trips to Ikea, and delivered ten loads of kitchenware, linens, and books, etc.  to Goodwill continuing our downsizing from a 4-story home to a spacious 2-level townhouse.  And we thought we’d given a lot of books away on the west coast—and we had, hundreds of them.

Now I’ve had the pleasure of arranging our remaining books, quite a few, on the shelves.  Deciding which books should be downstairs on the den shelves, which on the common shelves in the 2nd floor loft area and which ones in my, note that, my, study. I found old favorites like Cold Sassy Tree,  thought-provoking and insightful books like Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life, and the perturbing but elegant memoir, An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison.  As well as many books I have not yet read.  Some of these get prime, front and center space on the shelves, to remind me of their presence and to nudge me to make the time to read them.

Almost as long as I can remember, I’ve had a desk of my own, from the time I was about seven or so, with drawers in which to secret away pens and papers and stuff.  In our various houses, I’ve generally had some sort of space for my desk and a few shelves for favored books.  On Thayer Road, that desk was in a room my spouse and I shared and each of us had a desk facing the window separated by a file cabinet.  In the Bethlehem house, he had a generously-sized study and I had the servant’s cubbyhole. It was connected to a bedroom, but had room enough for a desk, file cabinet and chair, with some lovely old-fashioned built-in cabinets and blessedly, a door.  Cozy, but functional.  In San Francisco, the top floor was wide open space and I claimed the smaller end of this room for its windows and its peephole view of the bay.  My spouse had more space (he has more things), but less of a view.  I think I won out on this one!

Here in Florida, I have a room that was a bedroom, now my study, all to myself.  I have my working desk and computer, a desk chair, a tripartite bookcase seven shelves high on one wall, two file cabinets, and a very simple table-like desk with just a center drawer.  This simple desk is where I write personal notes or work on my laptop.  There is a window and a door and the whole thing is just heavenly!  I truly have “a room of my own.”  My husband says I can close the door and write a novel.  I probably won’t do exactly that, but I will revel in the space, the quiet, and possibly be inspired to do more than just write this blog!

Julia Glass triumphs!

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We have re-located in Maine for our last week (“different house” as my granddaughter would say) and are finding it all very peaceful. It is a serene spot with stunning views toward Squirrel Island punctuated only by lapping water sounds and the early morning squawks of a jay.  Random sailboats ply the blue waves and a yellow kayak provides a jolt of color.

i have been immersed in And the Dark Sacred Night and have just emerged after several days.  A fan of Julia Glass since Three Junes, I  think this is her best novel yet.  Now I must go back and re-read Junes since some of those characters, Mal, Lucinda, Fenno, and Walter figure prominently here.  Glass draws male characters exceedingly well—perhaps it’s because she has several sons and a male partner—and I was fully engaged with and charmed by crusty Jasper.  Likewise, she captures 40-something Kit’s diffidence, inertia, timidness and neediness as he reluctantly embarks on a search for his biological father.  His wife, Sandra, has thrown him out, in essence, and his first step is visiting Jasper, his sometime stepfather.

JGlassGlass captures the tensions, the hesitations, the undertones and the undercurrents in relationships—the what is not said which can be so much more than what actually is.  Several families here become entwined—Daphne and Kit, a single mother and son;  Jasper, a widower who was then divorced with two sons and a stepson; Zeke and Lucinda, an impaired senator and his aging wife and their daughter and sons; and Fenno and Walter, a couple who nurture through food and compassion and can also rise to the challenge of entertaining 9-year old twins.  These are lives that are separate, then entangled, and then untangled, and then finally entwined for the long haul.  I found this novel to be rich in substance, tinged with humor and humility and thoroughly engrossing.  I loved the writing as well as Glass’s depictions of our all too human foibles and frailties.

I heard Glass read from her previous novel at Book Passage in Marin several years ago and would also recommend that novel,  The Widower’s Tale.