Dare I?

Should I write a negative review?

I try not to. It’s not an issue of dishonesty. I simply won’t post any review of a book I don’t think I can recommend honestly. If you come into the bookstore, I wouldn’t hand you all the books I think you wouldn’t like, and so I wouldn’t do that here either.

But it’s a little more complicated than that with Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. I don’t think it’s a bad book…I just think I’m the wrong reader for it. Or, at least, the wrong reader for some of it.

What I mean is that I’m a sucker for a good adventure book. Jon Krakauer, Sebastian Junger…I love that stuff, and that’s what I thought I had in Wild. The prologue was very promising — a short story of the day Cheryl Strayed lost her boots over a cliff on the Pacific Crest Trail. And then I started the first chapter. Some legitimately heart-wrenching family stuff. “Okay,” I thought, “we’ll get some background for the author, and then we’ll get straight to the good outdoor adventure.” And for a while, I was rewarded.

Then there was some more family stuff. Then a bit of hiking. Then some marriage and relationship history. More hiking. Back to family stories. Some drug use. Childhood memories. Whining about blisters from hiking.

And then, somewhere between the drug use and the childhood memories, I realized that the book isn’t really about an outdoor adventure at all. Wild is about transformation, or finding oneself, or loss, or healing, or any of number of things that have nothing in particular to do with the outdoors or adventure.

This was a disappointing revelation to me.

Undoubtedly, this reveals more about me than it does about the book. I can live with that.

If you enjoy the writings of Jon Krakauer or Sebastian Junger; if you read Outdoor magazine; if you want man facing nature at its most unforgiving and extreme…look elsewhere.

On the other hand, if you enjoy emotionally raw, honest memoirs; if you read Jeannette Walls or Mary Karr; if you want the author to spill the ugly details of her life…give Wild a shot. Just ignore the hiking boot on the cover.

Ernie K-Doe: The R & B Emperor of New Orleans

by Ben Sandmel with a foreword by Peter Guralnick

(The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2012)

One Friday afternoon after Ernie K-Doe’s death, but before Katrina, I drove to New Orleans and landed at the Mother-In-Law Lounge for a party. I had no idea what I was getting into or what pleasure the evening would bring about.

The outside of the lounge with its decorative walls really doesn’t prepare you for the experience inside. Within the K-Doe museum you’ll find a life size statue of the Emperor himself just like he is still alive–which inside the Mother-In-Law Lounge he is still alive.

In May 1961, Ernie K-Doe had a monster-sized hit with “Mother-In-Law”. This tune rose to the top of both the R & B and pop charts. “Mother-In-Law” was played constantly on black and white air waves. Being eleven years old at the time, I remember singing along with “Mother-In-Law”, as a chatter-box kid. Didn’t we all?

“The worst person I know, Mother-In-Law”

. . . and Satan should be her name”

There ain’t but two songs that will stand the test of time, until the end of the world. One of them is “The Star Spangled Banner. The other one is “Mother-In-Law”. -Ernie K-Doe

There have been five great singers of Rhythm and Blues–Ernie K-Doe, James Brown and Ernie K-Doe. -Ernie K-Doe

I met Ben Sandmel, a New Orleans-based journalist, a few years ago. I’ve developed respect for his work and efforts in helping musicians and encouraging their music. His beautifully bound and illustrated  shows an extensive effort. Ben’s book is a must for K-Doe fans and for all who love New Orleans music.

Over the years I saw the R & B Emperor of New Orleans at Jazz Fest. For those who share those memories, Ben’s K-Doe is a treat. For those who need to learn about the majesty of K-Doe, the bible is here. You just never know–A trip to the “Mother-In-Law” Lounge could just make it all just right.

Y’all,

Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly said this

Every summer, the beach-read conundrum begins — whether to slog virtuously through Anna Karenina or Infinite Jest, or succumb to the kind of Fifty Shades of Tattooed Twilight genre pulp that practically shrieks to passersby, ”Why, yes, I did buy this on layover at 
the Miami-Dade airport!” Bless the latest from Jess Walter (The 
Financial Lives of the Poets) for offering a near-perfect rendezvous between those distant poles — a novel whose decade- and continent-
hopping ingenuity expertly scratches the seasonal itch for 
both literary depth and dazzle. (for full review go here)

Maureen Corrigan from NPR said this

This novel is a standout not just because of the inventiveness of its plot, but also because of its language. Jess Walter is essentially a comic writer: Sometimes he’s asking readers to laugh at the human condition; sometimes he’s inviting us to just plain laugh. (for full review go here)

Nina Sankovitch from Huffington Post said this

In all his books, Jess Walter is smart and generous and prodigious, and Beautiful Ruins is no exception. Surprises abound but Walter keeps his plot tethered to reality, resonating and reverberating and building to a conclusion that is as satisfying as it is gratifying. Dreams can come true, just not the ones you expected. (for full review go here)

Allegra Goodman from the Washington Post said this

Adept at mixing flavors and textures, Walter whips together dying beauty, enduring love, war-shadowed Italy, haunting landscapes, veiled identity. It’s a tribute to his light touch and to his speed that when movie star Richard Burton makes a cameo appearance in Italy, he’s almost bearable, even though he’s more cartoon than character: “What goddamn kind of place hasn’t got a bottle of cognac in it?” (for full review go here)

Before even reading these reviews I wanted to read this book.  Quite frankly I was hung up on the beautifully nostalgic cover.  It simply LOOKED like something that would be good.  I think we all read fiction for entertainment.  To read a good love story, to be scared, attempt to figure out a mystery, laugh, or simply marvel at the language or style a writer uses.  I have a tendency to lean more towards snobbish fiction.  I rarely read mystery books, but that cover just looked TOO good.  What I found I appreciated.  His editor mentioned that the book “defies classification.”  I think that is exactly right.  The story may unfold in the same way a mystery might, but it does so in a way that doesn’t entertain only on a story’s level.

The book follows an Italian man in the 60s who once knew a cinema actress.  The book follows a Hollywood producer’s assistant.  The book follows a failed novelist turned possible screenwriter.  The book follows a failed musician struggling to find his life as a musician again.  The book follows a writer who is actually a car salesman who doesn’t write his novel about WWII that he pretends he is writing.  The book follows that Hollywood producer who is described as

a man constructed of wax, or perhaps prematurely embalmed. After all these years, it may be impossible to trace the sequence of facials, … lifts and staples, collagen implants, … tannings, … cyst and grow removals, and stem-cell injections that have caused a seventy-two-year-old man to have the face of a nine-year-old Filipino girl.

It is a funny, sad, interesting book that spans several generations of people, jumps through time and characters, and is quite alive and gripping as it does so. I listed Leah Greenblatt’s comment first for a reason.  I think she hit the nail on the head.  This is the perfect summer book.   This is the perfect book club book.  It is the even median between a literary piece of fiction and a trashy mystery novel.  Beautiful Ruins is sure to please anyone.

This is from the Spiritualized’s new album that I listened to while I read this book.

by Simon

She’s the first southern poet laureate since the original laureate, Robert Penn Warren, and she’s also the poet laureate of Mississippi. Our state has no shortage of literary talent, and I am especially excited to claim Natasha Trethewey as a native daughter.

Her poetry masterfully confronts her personal history surrounding race, while also giving a voice to the historically voiceless members of a racially charged south. Domestic workers tell their story in her first volume of poetry, Domestic Work. The imagined story of Ophelia, a mixed-race prostitute and subject of photographer E. J. Bellocq in early 20th century New Orleans, beautifully unfolds in Bellocq’s Ophelia:

Bellocq

-April 1911

There comes a quiet man now to my room-

Papa Bellocq, his camera on his back.

He wants nothing, he says, but to take me

as I would arrange myself, fully clothed-

a brooch at my throat, my white hat angled

just so- or not, the smooth map of my flesh

awash in afternoon light. In my room

everything’s a prop for his composition-

brass spittoon in the corner, the silver

mirror, brush and comb of my toilette.

I try to pose as I think he would like-shy

at first, then bolder. I’m not so foolish

that I don’t know this photograph we make

will bear the stamp of his name, not mine.

Her Pulitzer-prize-winning Native Guard focuses on the stories of the Louisiana Native Guard, a black regiment in the Union Army (mostly former slaves) that guarded Confederate prisoners of war.

Last but not least, Trethewey’s memoir Beyond Katrina describes the heart wrenching after-effects of Katrina on her family and the community she grew up in on the Mississippi coast.

Check out these two great articles about Trethewey’s appointment as poet laureate:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/books/natasha-trethewey-is-named-poet-laureate.html?_r=1

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/10/154584917/two-poems-from-the-nations-new-top-poet

by Anna

Adam Levin’s stories have the sense of Salvador Dali’s surreal portraits—if you focus, you can even visualize the mad scientist making broad and lovely brushstrokes behind this canvas. And, like Dali’s own melting clock, this book introduces us to characters who are frozen in weird time. One is stuck working on an invention—a doll that digests food, no less—for fifteen years; another tells herself that she lost her legs to a jungle cat as an infant, denying the truth about a car accident and breaking her parents’ hearts with this charming delusion. We struggle each day with moments of risk assessment, of whether or not to text and drive, of what will hurt others and what will hurt us. We wonder, what if we had invented that gadget—what if I had written my novel?

I love a short story writer who can put these human peculiarities of feeling to the music of language, shining light into a microscope at a tiny person, who simply reflects that light back into our own souls. These stories are extra real—what some call hyper realism. Hence, the appropriate title, taken from a story, Hot Pink. This book is not dusty, and the stories are not about boring situations or characters; as Richard Ford said at the reading Tuesday, the writer’s job is to tell us something—not something we already know about. This collection is something quirky, different, constantly rewarding your attention with little surprises. No two stories even look the same on the page. They will, I think, ignite a twinkle in your eye, bestowing a taste for the bright beauty in everyday human longing.

Come visit Lisa’s new short story nook in the fiction room and try holding this good-looking volume in your hands.

WARNING: These stories aren’t loyal to much tradition; they hover in the neon light, collapse time, take up the story right in the brunt of the action. But they will certainly delight readers who aren’t afraid of a little hot pink.

Reminds me of: Grace Paley, Kevin Canty, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Lydia Davis (Each story seems to take inspiration from a different contemporary storyteller. It will be interesting to watch this writer hone his influences and develop a more distinctive voice in future work.)

by Whitney