Colored Television by Danzy Senna

Ok, the truth be told, there is a lot about satire that I am pretty sure that I do not get, it just goes over my head, and then there is the part where I just don't think it is as funny as other people do. This book is all about racial identity, and in an election cycle that saw a clearly babbling and incoherent candidate who not only questioned the other candidate's racial identity, but he also called her a B---- and a C---, denigrated people of color, simulated oral sex with his mic, and talked about someone else's massive penis, and yes, he is the one who won. So if you are looking at something to laugh about in all that, this might suit you. It has nothing to do with politics, except that it has everything to do with politics. It’s an exceptionally assured novel about trying to find a home and a job in a culture constantly swirling between denigrating racial identity and fetishizing it.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (2024)

Let me start out by saying that while I do write a fair number of reviews of movies, I am a mere amateur when it comes to movie viewing, and all the opinions offered up are mine alone--which seems important to point out in a movie like this, which is the sequel to a classic original, albeit 35 years in the making but one that picks up seemingly right where the other left off. The Maitlands have since departed, and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has harnessed her abilities into a blossoming Ghost Hunters-esque reality TV show that comes off as fake, but maybe it is because her manager ramps up the commercial aspects of the enterprise. Her influence has made her something of a town legend, causing a significant rift between Deetz and her teenage daughter, Astrid. She sees her mom as an out and out fake and doesn't much care who knows it. A tragedy sends Lydia, Astrid, and Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) back to their home, where a chance encounter leads them on a twisted path involving rogue demons, demonic possessions, sham marriages, ghost cops, and ultimately into the clutches of the Ghost with the Most, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton)--who is in fine form and every bit as enjoyable as in the original (or annoying, I guess, if you didn't much care for him the first time around). I’m pretty comfortable saying that this film would not be anywhere near as good if it hadn’t been directed by Tim Burton. Burton is most famous for his gothic horror aesthetic and use of practical effects, which often personify a cartoonishly grotesque world, and while I suspect the whole thing is computer generated effects, it has the feel of old school Tim Burton. If you like that,t hen you should not miss this.

Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen

I read this as part of a leadership training course, and it was kind of surprising to me that I had not been assigned to read it before--I have had some very high quality leadership training over the years, and this is a pretty widely used book. A difficult conversation is one that you find hard to start and/or stay in, and that is a good place to start, how do you make such an interaction go well. It starts with trying to be what they call "the third story", meaning that there are three points of view in any conversation that involves controversy--your story, the other party's story, and the independent mediator's story--try to start with the third story. That helps to avoid some aspects of the three conversations you could be having if you start with your story. They are: The “What Happened?” Conversation The Feelings Conversation The Identity Conversation Far better to start from a neutral point, and keep feelings and challenging your and the other person's identity. I think this is very good advice, and can be used in personal conversations with loved ones and in work conversations that involve delivering bad news, or information that will not be well received. One example in the book that I thought was fraught with challenges is one where friends do business together, and they have a falling out over what happened, why it happened, and who played what role. I came away feeling that it was far better to avoid business arrangements with friends if it involves money or prestige. This is well worth reading, especially if you are one to avoid such conversations. It really could help.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

I watched this en route to a memorable vacation in Southern India, having read favorable reviews of it prior to my departure and with the knowledge that the 2025 Oscar shortlist for Documentary Feature Films would be announced while I was gone. It did not make the shortlist (which came as a bit of a surprise to those who know more than I do), but it is a suitably a comprehensive, if overly celebratory, tribute in this traditional talking-heads-style documentary. Christopher Reeve is best known for playing Superman in the iconic 1978 movie of the same name. but in truth most of what I knew about him occurred after his life changing equestrian accident that left him a quardiplegic. This is not a before-and-after story. Instead, it considers the breadth of Reeve’s career and personal life — his beginnings in the theater, his feelings about playing Superman, his efforts to break the mold, and his two most important romantic relationships — with his injury looming over his successes like Kryptonite. Reeve’s bond with his fellow actor Robin Williams was completely unknown to me, and it also makes up one of the documentary’s meatiest threads, adding depth to the character study. In many ways, Reeve actually was a gentle all-American type, but footage of his friendship with Williams brings out his funny, artistic — and to some extent dark — side. There is a lot of dark here, and a healthy helping of sadness when both he and his wife die young, but it is well worth watching as bio-documentaries go.

Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald

This is on the New York Times list of the best books of the 21st century--to date. There is an almost strange aloofness to the writing in this succinct book that softens the blow of its message, and I think it should be amongst the first books you recommend to someone who wants to better understand the long term nuanced impact of what the Nazi's achieved in WWII before they were stopped. I wish I felt that it would never happen again, but in this day and age that seems very foolish indeed. The hero/ anti-hero was born in Prague, the son of a moderately successful opera singer and the manager of a small slipper-making factory who was also active in left-wing politics. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany and the subsequent German invasion of Czechoslovakia meant that his father had to flee to Paris, never to be seen or heard from again, his letters to his family confiscated by the German authorities. His mother managed to arrange for her son to be sent on a Kindertransport to London. He was adopted by a Nonconformist preacher and his wife, in North Wales. He had an ordinary enough life, but one without much in the way of joy, and then at some point he starts to remember what it was that happened to he and his family. I was in Terezin years ago, and it was horrifying to me to see what was wrought by the Nazis there and throughout Poland. This book brings a bit of that home.

Twisters (2024)

Our family of six are maybe some of the few who really enjoyed the 1996 tornado movie of a similar name--we had it on VHS and it frequently made the cut to be included in the bag of movies that came with us on vacations where we traveled by car. This is an updated version of that, and while it is still strong on melodrama, I enjoyed this one as well. It is populated with likable characters and terrific visual effects, so it resembles the original in all the right ways. As a meteorology student Kate Carter had great ambitions. Tame tornados and save lives. Her initial ambitious work, on the plains of Oklahoma, with a fellow colleague Javi ended in a catastrophe when a tornado proved to be more powerful and deadly than they could have fathomed. Five years later, traumatized by that tragedy, Kate is in New York working in an office with weather forecasters. Still in the game but far removed from the playing field. Until her old pal Ravi shows up, drafting her into a project that could be a life-saving tracking system. The second time around she finds herself veering away from the slick state of the art system that Javi has (which is tied to a corporate profit motive as well) and allying herself with someone who at first seems more show than substance, but ends up helping Kate to both make some progress in her theory as well as see which side she wants to be on. This is a visual effect extravaganza that I found fun and a little nostalgic to watch.

Playground by Richard Powers

Well, I suspect this is an author that you are really into or where the stories fall flat for you, and I am definitely all in. He tackles big subjects in a big way, and there is often an undercurrent of climate change that he is basically screaming that we need to get serious about or we are seriously screwed (and suspects that the later is therefore true because the former is not happening). The palette of this is the ocean and as always there is a big interconnected story that pulls the reading in a lot of directions and winds it all together. The friendship between Todd Keane and Rafi Young is one such story. Todd is a computer nerd from before there is much in the way of computers and Rafi is intensely into literature and there area of overlap is a love of playing games. Todd is white and rich, Rafi is black and poor, and they do have a major abruption in their relationship that centers on betrayal and a woman. When we meet Todd, he’s been diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies, which is rapidly eroding his mind. Across the scope of the novel Todd sets down what he calls the story of my friend and me and how we changed the future of mankind. The most unbelievable element of this speculative novel may be Todd’s thoughtful, plaintive voice, which has no parallel among real-life social media moguls. Two other equally compelling stories grow through Todd’s deathbed memoir-- One begins in Canada in 1947, when a girl named Evie Beaulieu is pushed into a pool wearing a contraption that lets her breathe underwater, and she becomes a foremost expert on underwater life. Then there’s Ina Aroita, an artist who lives on the thinly populated island of Makatea, an atoll in French Polynesia. It all comes together in a thoughtful and thought provoking way, and I very much loved it.

Touch (2024)

This movie from Iceland is shortlisted for the International Feature Film category for the 2024 Oscars, and is a parable about Iceland itself, where the population is so small that everyone needs to do two jobs. The filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur has crafted a bittersweet love story that manages to be both sad and hopeful at the same time, and goes beyond the expected. It is based on Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson’s novel (he also co-wrote the script with Kormákur--and as a typical Icelander, was both a businessman at Sony and an author) and centers on Kristófer (Egill Olafsson), who was a chef/student from Iceland who studied in London in the 1970's and now in 2020 is grappling with maybe a bad diagnosis. His doctor in one scene advises him that it is time to do the things you want to do while you still can. So he is now in search of Miko, a lost love who vanished without explanation when they were both in their twenties. This enchanting, poignant film crosscuts older Kristófer journey with a much younger Kristófer (Palmi Kormákur, the director’s son) as he decides to leave his studies to work in a Japanese restaurant where he first meets Miko and now, when he is searching for her 50 years later. Miko (Kôki) and her restaurant owner father emigrated to the UK from Hiroshima. She’s a “hibakusha” (atomic bomb survivor) whose mother died shortly after she was born, and this important plot note is key to the secrets revealed in the film’s finale--which is wildly optimistic, but in a world where that is in short supply, it was much appreciated.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

This is the long story of how we in the United States got to where we are today, which is a country where the Republican presidential candidate in 2024 was an avowed white supremacist fascist who advocated the violent overthrow of the government if he couldn't win legitimately and the race was literally too closed to call. That does not, however, capture what the book is about--it is largely a political recapitulation of 1992 in the U.S. The author's angle is that the populist resentments of today’s MAGA America were present in that late-recessionary year, in which the country, having emerged triumphant in the Cold War, turned in on itself. It is an interesting proposition to contemplate--and for me, it was a lot interesting to read in such detail. I was, after all, alive and well during this period, and (apparently inappropriately relieved) to have a third candidate break the stranglehold that Reagan had on beefing up the wealthy and gutting the middle class. He places the origins of the current distemper earlier than most others do--although some trace them all the way to Andrew Jackson in 1828, or at least to the Civil War. Some people never got over having a caste system whereby as a white person, no matter how poor and uneducated, you are not at the absolute bottom of the ladder. The Ross Perot phenomenon of 1992 and the related crack-up of the Reagan Republican Party under George H.W. Bush is a major flag for Ganz’s argument, and he mines the period for other useful omens--Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, and Howard Stern, to name a few.

Kneecap (2024)

I was in the midst of a lengthy vacation when the shortlist for the 10 categories that the Oscars release a shortlist for, and on the trip home I looked for movies on the plane that were on the list. I was so happy to see this was one of them--I like to try to see as many of the International Feature Films that I can get access to before we know what the final five that are chosen are, but am lucky if I can see a third of them. I feel like I am off to a good start this year. This is another movie set in Northern Ireland where the underlying message is the desire for independence from England. The vehicle of change is what is different--instead of revolutionary fervor mixed with guns and bombs, the thing that is inspiring young Irishmen in Northern Ireland is hip hop. Gaelic language hip hop. When Belfast schoolteacher JJ goes in his wife's stead to translate for a youth who professes not to speak English, he not only does the translating, he also spirits away his notebook--which includes a sheet of LSD hits as well as chronicling invovlement with drug trading. What he doesn't expect to find is that the Irish poetry that the young man writes translates very well to a hip hop beat, and he convinces them to go into his storage unit cum recording studio and see how it sounds. And then they go into public performances, and in the end, they get into a lot of trouble but that is mixed with a fair amount of success. Rapping in their native Irish language, KNEECAP fast become the unlikely figureheads of a Civil Rights movement to save their mother tongue. But the trio must first overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians trying to silence their defiant sound -- whilst their anarchic approach to life often makes them their own worst enemies. In this fiercely original sex, drugs and hip-hop biopic KNEECAP play themselves, laying down a global rallying cry for the defense of native cultures. It is fantastic.

Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu

I found this book to be a little bit confusing when it opened, and by the end I felt like I finally had a handle on where it was going all along. It opens with a sudden death of a man, Samuel, in the United States. He was working as a taxi driver and died under suspicious circumstances. He was by all accounts a witty yet enigmatic Ethiopian immigrant whom Mamush, our journalist hero, thinks of as his father. When he learns of Samuel’s death, Manush leaves his wife and child behind in France and returns to the close-knit Ethiopian community in Washington DC that shaped his childhood. He’s propelled by feelings of personal grief, but also a professional urge to investigate the truth--but the more he learns, the less he understands and the more he sees that he knew only part of the story of Samuel's life. Samuel’s ambitions in America were never realized, and thoughts of his past life in Ethiopia left him feeling stuck in a state of not-quite-belonging, an in-between-ness that is a familiar story for immigrants, being betwixt and between, and Mamush of course figures out some things about himself as he seeks out Samuel's story.

Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa

This is a personal story but one that is all too common in the Americas. The author is indigenous but of mixed heritage. Her father is a Quechan (Yuma) and Laguna Pueblo and her a Catholic Latina mother who never discussed being descended from both Spanish conquistadors and Native people. She comes through experience to understand the hierarchy within the American Southwest, that places more value on Spanish blood over indigenous blood, paying no heed to the fact that girls were enslaved to Conquistadors and the mixing of blood was not consensual. Her parents’ attitudes about things diverged drastically, as did their temperaments. Her father seemed to be raw to the world, his memories and traumas always just beneath the surface of his skin, spilling out in stories and outbursts alike; her mother anchored herself with prayer, preferring to keep her hurts private, her doubts buried, her insecurities hidden away behind a competent and confident facade. They were united, however, in their commitment to the family they’d built and raised together. There are issues related to violence, poverty and drug abuse--but they play supporting roles in the story. This is a coming of age story from someone whose ancestors came to this land first but are not treated as such.

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

This is a highly improbably and thoroughly enjoyable tale of a young girl who is the picture of a young thing who has no conception of what is happening to her and the consequences of the choices she makes until they are upon her. When we meet Margo she is a 20 years old about to give birth to a baby boy. The father is her junior college English professor, a man who is exactly who you would expect in the situation--a terrible husband who preys upon his students, although he would deny it. Everyone in Margo’s orbit has begged her not to have the baby. She doesn’t listen, following her heart instead, a decision full of stubbornness and naiveté. Of course she drops out of college but she begins by being sure she can raise her son, Bodhi, alone while living with a gaggle of roommates in Southern California. She cannot, at least not easily. She gets no help from the professor, of course, and his mother tries to buy her off. Margo’s mother, Shyanne, a former Hooters waitress who is now a sales associate at Bloomingdale’s, won’t take time off to help and probably shouldn't be trusted with another child. Margo’s father, Jinx, a WWE Hall of Fame wrestler turned manager who was never around because he too fathered a child while married to another, is absent. Until he isn’t. A few weeks after Bodhi’s birth, there is Jinx at Margo’s door. In leather pants, with a heavy history of heroin and opioid addiction, he is not the babysitter Margo is expecting, but he’s fully at ease taking care of Bodhi. And so begins the very unusual plan to make enough money for all of them to do a little bit better than survive. This was a very fun read with a bit of a serious underbelly to boot. Don't miss it.

La Louisiane

We are rolling into the second Christmas season without my dad. I do not know why this cocktail reminds me of the holidays or him, because he wasn't a man who much enjoyed a cocktail, and he wasn't one to take a lot of responsibility for holiday celebrations, beyond the turkey, which even when he didn't much cook he tackled that twice a year. But somehow it does. The heart is funny that way, often not makingmuch sense. In any case, it is time to get serious about celebrating all the end of the year holidays with family and friends, and this cocktail is not a bad place to start. 2 oz. rye whiskey (Rittenhouse) 3/4 oz. sweet vermouth (Antica Formula) 1/2 oz. D.O.M. Bénédictine 3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters 3 dashes absinthe (we subbed Herbsaint) Stir with plenty of ice for 45 seconds and strain into a chilled stemmed cocktail glass. Garnish with 1-3 cherries.

A Passionate Mind In Relentless Pursuit by Noliwe Rooks

This is a time limited biography of a woman I had never heard of who had tremendous influence in her time. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) was her parents’ 15th child and the first one born free. She fought for civil rights during the grim period between the end of Reconstruction and the post–World War II Civil Rights Movement. She founded schools, with an emphasis on educating Black girls, and she raised money to pay poll taxes and offered instruction on how to pass literacy tests for Black Americans trying to vote in the Jim Crow South. She served in the leadership of numerous civil rights and mutual aid organizations, from the NAACP to the National Council of Negro Women, and she advocated for the Black community as an adviser to three presidents. How did she do it? This is yet another example of what Eleanor Roosevelt did to lift up both African Americans as well as women in her time. In the early winter of 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt took a stand when she followed her friend, Mary McLeod Bethune into the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and sat beside Bethune, defying the racist Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama. That’s an account that’s easy to find anywhere, and it’s thrilling, but the story misses something: at one point, the conference’s organizer asked for “Mary” to come up to the platform. Bethune drew herself up and told the organizer “My name is Mrs. Bethune.” She heard the disrespect and she corrected it. The author identifies this as a personal work for her--she states that her grandparents knew Bethune and, in doing research for this book, her understanding of Bethune was totally changed. Bethune was more than an activist — she was also a dream maker and “the first lady of Black America.” This is a short read, but fascinating and again, if you didn't already love Eleanor Roosevelt, this will add on to the pile of miracles she performed.

Create Your Own Improv Quilts by Rayna Gillman

I have been quilting off and on for 50 years, but I am brand new to the concept of improvisational quilting. I do better when someone else picks out the pattern and I do my own version of it. If I really like the pattern I might do several versions. So the idea of starting with a concept, or even just starting, no concept is alien to me as a quilter. Then in 2024 I went to my first QuiltCon. My mind was blown. There was so much more to quilting than what I had explored and there were so many ways to explore it. I joined a Modern Quilt Guild and while I struggled to make meetings and also to make progress, I felt like I was on a new quilting path. At our guild's fall retreat a recommended reading list was developed and this book was on it. Finally, something that spoke to me and how I need a starting point in order to quilt. It is a relatively slim volume but one that is packed full of ideas and places to start with your own improv quilts.

She gives her idea of what exactly improve quilts consist of, how she approaches her own work, and walks through her creative process as a way of teaching the reader how to start. There are several chapters that are "start here" options, from string piecing to having a shape in mind and following it to starting small and seeing where it takes you. I would recommend this to someone who is hoping to make something totally their own but doesn't know where to start. Start here.

There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak

I have been a fan of this author since reading her fist book--her weaving of history from her homeland of Turkey into her stories, and the complexity of controversies there make for excellent reading. This one is tied to the Kurds and her Turkish homeland but starts in ancient Sumeria (which is more like Iraq, but includes home to Kurds). It is also tied to the universality of water, that it is constantly recycled and falls again, connecting us across centuries. It starts with King Ashurbanipal (mid-600s BCE), the legendary leader of the wealthiest empire in the world, last of the great rulers of the kingdom of Assyria.. He rules Ninevah, on the banks of a tributary of the Tigris River called Khosr, and amasses a mammoth library of more than 7,000 tablets written in cuneiform--the clay is long lasting, and so once the code was cracked, their history was both preserved and knowable. His favorite volume is the ancient flood myth The Epic of Gilgamesh. Then there is Arthur, born into staggering poverty in 1840's London. He cannot receive the schooling he craves but possesses a superlative memory. He’s fascinated by books and, above all, by Ninevah. Through a mix of luck, talent, and grit, he finds work at a printer’s office, which ultimately leads him to the British Museum. With his gift for decoding ancient stone tablets, he eventually makes his way to the Middle East to study them--he is almost thwarted in his quest to find the final tablet of the flood story by, you guessed it, a flood, this one man made. Arthur is based on real-life British Assyriologist George Smith [1840-1876], who was obsessed with and decoded the Epic of Gilgamesh. Finally there are Kurds in modern times--one in London and a Yaziki girl in Iraq who's village is about to be flooded by a dam--the story spans millennia, and there is the persistent presence a water and the power it holds. This is a great tale well told--even if you are not a student of ancient civilizations.

A California Christmas (2020)

It is time to start revving up the holiday cheer, and suspending belief whenever possible. This is the season of Santa Claus and elves at the North Pole, so anything is possible. is better than expected. Truthfully, it is not much of a Christmas film. Christmas is more a deadline than a feature, with the story being set in the run-up to Christmas. With good performances from the majority of there cast and a story that, though predictable, is well told, A California Christmas is an enjoyable Christmas-esque romcom. Here is the basic outline--a playboy who is more of a love them and leave them kind of guy than much of a worker is tasked by his CEO mother of their family company with the job of getting a stubborn farm family to sell their farmland so as their company can build a new warehouse. It is an all or nothing assignment, where if he doesn't get the task accomplished by Christmas, he is going to be sidelined and maybe also cut off . The task is made more difficult when he gets to the farm and is mistaken for a farmhand, a mistake he does not correct. He pretends to be the farmhand in the hope of getting closer to the stubborn daughter and lots of the comedy comes from him not knowing one thing about being a farm hand--they have both land to care for as well as animals. He gets some help not making a complete botched job of it by getting help from the real ranch hand--who is perfectly happy to live in hte upscale accomodations rented for him, while he stays in a broke down camper. The whole thing works out much better than could be expected, and while not strictly Christmasy, I would recommend for holiday viewing--streaming on Netflix.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

This is on Obama's 2024 summer reading list as well as on the short list for the National Book Award, so some very good recommendations indeed. On top of that, someone who I very much admire started talking to me about it at a party, and midway into the conversation, I realized that I had started it but not finished it, I had that much trouble with it (he, not so much--he was so enthused about it, and he is far closer to the age of the author, so it is entirely possible that I just do not get it). Cyrus, the son of an Iranian migrant factory worker in Indiana, lost his mother in an infamous 1988 air disaster, when a US missile cruiser mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in the final months of the Iran-Iraq war. This formative trauma has left a terrible legacy: when we meet him, in his late 20s, he’s a recovering alcoholic, struggling with fragile mental health and an unhealthy dependency on pharmaceutical sedatives; he is a troubled young man searching for a reason to live. he story is set in 2017 but the narrative intermittently skips back in time, revisiting Cyrus’s childhood in Indiana and his parents’ life in late 1980s Iran. Growing up as a bisexual Iranian in the American Midwest, he cultivated a sort of invisibility in order to get by. An aspiring but unproductive writer, Cyrus has a fixation with martyrdom, and is researching a book on the subject. To this end he travels to New York and interviews an older, terminally ill Iranian artist, Orkideh, at the Brooklyn Museum. They strike up a tender rapport, and Cyrus gradually begins to work through his issues. The story’s disparate elements are neatly interwoven, even if the plot device that sets up the resolution is a little far-fetched.

The Burrito Pillow Case

There is a very long story involved in how I came to return to the Old Capital Quilt Guild 30 years after I left it, but let me try for the shortened version. I was an avid quilter before I had children, and I was in a fantastic Fiber Guild in Fresno prior to moving to Iowa. The classes that I took there launched me into a lifetime of seeing, doing, and appreciating artwork using fibers. So upon my arrival in Iowa, I joined to local guild. It wasn't quite what I had had but it was good and I was active up until the birth of my fourth child. After that the work-life balance was thrown off it's axis and my creative life came to a grinding halt. I did some quilting but I no longer had a group that I did it with. Fast forward to my mid-50's when I had and then survived an advanced cancer diagnosis and I was reminded in a very stark way that life can be short, and that it was time to make a few things before it was over, and through a series of wonderful inspirations from a co-worker, I was back to being in a guild again, this time a Modern Quilt Guild, but a year on from that, I rejoined my local guild as well. The very first thing I did was completely outside my comfort zone--agreeing to help teach a class in pillow case making to a group of kids who had never sewed. I have never taught sewing and never made a pillow case, but it all worked out, and I would do it again, and sometime before I retire I hope to have a lot more of these experiences. Here is a tutorial to make this fun pillowcase--which you can make in an hour, even if you have no experience at all: https://smashedpeasandcarrots.com/french-seam-pillowcase-set-in-under-30-minutes-tutorial/

A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

The New York Times released a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century and while I had a very good showing when it comes to what made that list, I am slowly, almost lackadaisically, working on reading some of the things that fall into the gaps, and this is one of them. The 43-story collection often rings autobiographical—the author worked numerous jobs, suffered from alcoholism, and lived in many of the cities found in the book such as El Paso, Santa Fe, and Berkeley—and brims with perceptive observations of working class life. The characters return in several stories, and the whole collection feels linked on a number of levels. There is a whirlwind of memories, characters, and settings, all of which ride on an undercurrent of dark humor, nearly every story in the collection is captivating in its constant motion and minute detail. The collection’s title piece, in particular, centers around a mode of transportation—the bus—and concerns a cleaning woman going through the motions of her work-week as she processes the loss of her late husband. The character analysis of both those one works for and those one works with are insightful and enjoyable. I listened to the collection while on some longer road trips, and it was a good way to enjoy the collection.

The End of Grieving

Well, it has been a year. We have had our last “first” holiday without my dad. He was at our table last year at our Thanksgiving celebration, although he arrived in a wheelchair van and struggled to stay awake, he told me again and again how grateful he was that he could be there with us. Life was not normal for him, so the ability to be in places he had been umpteen times was ever more important to him. The hardest part for him was that while his mind was sharp, his body was failing, and it was very hard for him to accept. Not long after Thanksgiving, he agreed to enter hospice, all the while saying he was not ready to die, but it was only a matter of days later that he did. According to tradition, it is time to set mourning aside at the one year mark and move forward with your life. On the one hand, I am 100% in agreement with this plan—never forget, but life is for the living. My dad is for sure alive in my youngest grandchild, who races through the house with glee in a way that I could envision my father doing over eight decades earlier, but it is the reminders and the memories now. I will never again argue with my dad about what we do and do not agree about. I can never ask him what he thinks about something or what he would do—I have to figure it out based on what I know. I wasn’t prepared for how sad it was going to be to let go, but I am making progress on that. Here’s hoping the hardest part is behind me.

A Fever In The Heartland by Timothy Egan

This is a highly readable and altogether horrifying chronicle of how the early-20th-century Klan resurrected itself following decades of dormancy; how it obtained millions of converts, not only in the South but throughout the country; and how, by the 1920s, it had infiltrated all levels of the U.S. government. But it is also a terrifying study of one particular Klan leader — a rapist and bigot who managed, in a matter of years, to acquire a vast popular following and to become the unelected boss of Indiana politics, all while formulating plans to propel himself to the White House. D.C. Stephenson, born in Texas, was a drifter with an amoral entrepreneurial streak, and he found himself in Evansville, Ind., in the early ’20s, a moment when the national Ku Klux Klan was rapidly expanding and seeking inroads in Northern states. Stephenson was hired by a Klan recruiter to infiltrate Indiana for the Ku Klux Klan. He fulfilled this plan with shocking speed. The Klan’s agenda of white supremacy turned out to be all too popular among Hoosiers, who began joining the terrorist group en masse. Many institutions — especially Protestant churches, whose ministers the Klan bribed — were quickly co-opted. Within years, the Klan had members at all levels of government, and controlled law enforcement. And this hate-filled reign might have continued if not for the decision of Madge Oberholtzer, who was raped by Stephenson in 1925, to speak out. Her bravery set in motion a trial and conviction that ensured that Stephenson would spend decades in prison. The Klan was humiliated in the eyes of the public, and its power in Indiana began to wane. Could it happen again--or worse yet--has it happened again? The current GOP candidate for president is an avowed racist, a convicted rapist, and a felon who has vowed to use the Department of Justice to exact revenge on those who he feels have wronged him, so the answer is yes, it very much could happen again.

The Plated Table, Iowa City, Iowa

It is hard to put a finger on what exactly to call this place. They opened in a beautifully renovated space that used to be a very good lunch place that they have transformed into an elegant combination of a wine shop with imported tinned seafood for sale, a caterer that makes a different meal for pick up and finish cooking at home, and an event space where you can have a fancy meal in an eqully fancy space. I was recently at a fund raiser that they put on and in order to attend the dinner I had to pass up on the soft opening of a restaurant that we invested in. We do not do this as a rule, and we love the much anticipated experience of being the first feet in the door. So it was hard to say no to that, but we did. We were not disappointed. The menu was delicious from start to finish, with quality ingredients, good champagne, and a wonderful overall meal. I would recommend it highly, and hope to come back for a future event. Give it a try for an evening of wine or better yet, a full meal.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

I read this because it is short listed for the 2024 Booker Prize, and it was not my favorite book that I read on that list. The author is an excellent one, and her previous book is on the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, so it is entirely possible that I did not get this book and that others might enjoy it more than I did. This is a bit of a spy thriller, but the tension level is not what you would expect if you are a reader of that genre. Bruno Lacombe, in his youth an ally of the 1960s revolutionary intellectual Guy Debord, is now self-exiled to a cave complex in the limestone regions of southern France. The caves vanished inhabitants obsess him (as they do me, if the truth be told) and that is a side note in the book. Since the Neanderthal extinction, “the wedge between human beings and nature” has become “far deeper than the wedge between factory owners and factory workers that created the conditions of twentieth century life”. The left, he believes, needs to properly understand this--this is not my personal obsession. Mine has to do with the deep and ancient motivation that man has to make art, and how that connects us across cultures and across millennia. Meanwhile, shadowy French authorities have decided that Lacombe and the Moulinards – the post-Debordian eco-commune he mentors by email – need to be steered out of their less than utopian rural domesticity and towards some act of serious terrorism, so they can be dealt with. So they hire Sadie Smith, a freelance American spy-cop, to infiltrate and provoke an outrage. The situation Sadie finds on the ground is confused and intersectional, centered on a real-life green issue: the diversion of local water supplies into vast “mega-basins” to support corporate agribusiness projects at the expense of the local farmers and the environment. Actors within and without the Moulinard commune, less in bad or good faith than in something shifting constantly between the two, all have their motives for protest or intervention. Suffice it to say the agitation gets somewhat bogged down and the spy is not the charmer you might hope her to be. I am interested to talk with someone who loved this book to see what I missed.

Your Body, My Choice

This is the mantra that flooded X after the 2024 election, and while I hate almost everything about it, the thing I love is that it makes it crystal clear that the agenda is NOT "pro-life" or even "pro-birth" (because afterall, the GOP agenda is about not supporting life after birth), it is about power and control over women. Period. Any talk of when life begins and what various religions might and might not support or prohibit is just a distraction, a way to put a pretty bow on an ugly message, which is that men who are attracted to the GOP messaging want to have power and control over women. No wonder it is causing trouble in people's homes. Nobody wants to be a slave to anybody, and the impulse to control people is in itself very unattractive. But at least now it is out there on the table for all to see. This is what you voted for and this is what you want. Is it any wonder that many of us are upset to find out that over half the voting public wants this?

Lies and Wedding by Kevin Kwan

I read a review that stated "If you liked Crazy Rich Asians, you will enjoy this", and while I did not read the book I did watch the movie, and if there is a correlation between them, that would be an accurate perception. There is a similar vibe, with conspicuous transnational consumption and love against the odds. The basic template is familiar-- Hong Kong-born Arabella, the Countess of Greshamsbury, has made it her mission in life to arrange advantageous dynastic marriages for her three English Chinese children. She is particularly keen on landing a princess for her only son and heir, a hot wannabe artist named Rufus. In Arabella’s path lie three formidable obstacles, none of which she yet knows about. Her global chain of luxury hotels is mortgaged to the brink. Decades of unchecked family spending have emptied the Gresham trusts. And Rufus has long since consecrated his heart to the girl next door: Eden Tong, daughter of the Gresham family doctor and a kind and conscientious physician herself. She is also the only not-rich person in the entire book, which makes her by default its heroine. The story unfolds over a predictable but enjoyable trajectory, a romantic comedy that ends well, and it is light and enjoyable.

The Quilted Jacket

I cannot say enough great things about the workshop that I took with Sandra Lee Designs to learn how to make a quilted jacket. Sandra is a phenomenal teacher, and I would travel again to take a class with her, she is just so talented and so fun, and at the end of the day, everyone in the class ends up with a beautiful jacket because she knows how to make that happen. I got into this because I had so much fun at my first QuiltCon that I knew I had to go back, and ideally I wanted to go back with the woman who taught me that any amateur with a credit card and some foreplanning could attend this spectacular event. So sign up again I did. I say it was her idea and she says it was mine, but somewhere along the road to going back we agreed that we should each make a jacket that would scream "We are going to QuiltCon" to those in the know. I think it was her, because basically, I cannot sew. Not in the third dimension at least, and that is definitely a skill you need to pull of the quilted jacket. So when I caught wind of this class, I knew I had to make it work for me to attend, and I am so glad I did! I brought a quilt that I had made 30 years ago that was so damaged I did not feel up to the task of repairing it--so I cut it up, sewed it back together, and voila! A jacket emerged!

Held by Anne Michaels

This was short listed for the 2024 Booker Prize, and as so often happens to me, I like some of the books that were long listed better than those that make the cut. To be fair, I am pretty sure there is beauty here that I just did not get--it is written by a poet, and that is very evident in the structure and cadence of the book. I am just not someone who much appreciates poetry--my spouse and I have put it on our list of things to do when we retire, but at this point, we still work full time. The scenes in the book loop back and forwards from 1902 through to 2025. Locations shift from a battlefield in first world war France to North Yorkshire, London, Belarus and various war zones. John was grievously wounded in the first world war. Alan is a war photographer. His partner, Mara, is a nurse in a field hospital. Her father, Peter, makes exquisite hats. Sometimes, the reader is able to understand how these characters and their stories connect but often the links are not explicit, and often, I struggled to find the common thread. As you would expect from a poet, it is lyrical and flows nicely, but it just was not story telling that resonates with me.

Gin et Gingembre

I have been remiss in posting cocktails, it is true. This one is a keeper, and well worth laying in a bottle of the Domaine de Canton (which is a flavorful liquor all on it's own). 2oz Gin 1oz Domaine de Canton 3/4 oz mint simple syrup 1 oz lemon juice Shake with ice; strain into coupe; garnish with mint sprigs. Enjoy!

The Safekeep by Yael Van der Wouten

I read this because it was short listed for the 2024 Booker Prize, and if it weren't for how spectacular a book James is, this would be my choice to win. The book is set in post-WWII Netherlands and it deals with the reckoning with what happened. Isabel is the main character, and she is emotionally complicated and very buttoned down and inhibited--she is a figure seething with resentments and desires that she keeps, rigidly and violently, in check. She lives in the house in which she grew up and in which her mother died, in a small town 15 years after the end of the war, obsessively cleaning and polishing the tableware and other objects that her mother loved while ruling tyrannically over the meek local girl who is her maid. When her socially confident and womanizing brother – who has been promised the house as his inheritance, making Isabel’s residence there tenuous and time-limited – leaves the country for several weeks, he brings his new girlfriend, the vivacious and flamboyant Eva, to live with Isabel, threatening to loosen or to sever the tight coils into which she has wound her existence. Both Isabel and I did not see what was coming from Eva, and it is a really enjoyable twist in the plot that comes to a satisfying conclusion.