5 Books for 5 Moods

The past couple of weeks have been fortunate as far as book choices go. Most times you read a couple of reviews, flip through a few pages on Amazon and you’re still not sure it’s the right book for your mood. This time I got it right with a string of five books, some new, some not, one something I’d been meaning to read for a long time. It’s unusual to hit upon five in a row that all prove to be the right choice. Here are those that did it for me:

Continental Drift (1985) by Russell Banks

This is the book I had been meaning to read for the last several years. I’ve read a couple of other books by Banks, so to some extent knew what I was getting into. Continental Drift is about a luckless guy from New Hampshire who uproots his family from all and everyone they know and drags them to Florida trying to catch his dream. Like others before him, he falls prey to people looking to exploit, one of many looking for the chance to better themselves in a new setting. The story is built upon a marvelous cross section of characters that range from black and white, to old world and new, from the living as well as the dead. Continental Drift gives us a bleak perspective of opportunity in the America of the 1980s.

Long, Last, Happy (2010) by Barry Hannah

This selection of old and new stories was published shortly after the writer’s death. For a while there, Hannah was a blazing comet across the skies of American literature, a reputation ignited by his first novel, Geronimo Rex, published in 1972. He followed that with another novel before showing readers that his true power lay in short stories. Barry Hannah could do just about anything with words, leaving images on the page that you hadn’t thought were possible. The problem often arises that his beautiful sentences and use of language, along with his fascinating oddball characters never find the plot, or at least one that’s clear. For the reader with an interest in southern writing, Hannah shouldn’t be overlooked. He wrote a good many incomparable short stories that are taught in universities. Long, Last, Happy is a good sampling.

The Painter (2014) by Peter Heller

After reading Heller’s earlier book, The Dog Stars, his new book grabbed my attention at first glance. The author has written mostly non-fiction, but makes the shift to fiction without the least stumble. In the two books I’ve read, Heller tells a story of moral ambiguity, the main characters in each at battle with the laws, traditions and culture that have shaped them. The Painter is about a man successful in his painting but with less luck in his personal life, where violence seems to almost seek him out. Jim Stegner is trying to outrun his past but keeps bumping into reminders that threaten to undo him. The story is set in Colorado and New Mexico, a landscape that is as rugged as it is lyrical and Heller soars in his descriptions of fly fishing in creeks meandering along canyon walls under an overhang of lime-green cottonwoods. With short, abrupt sentences and paragraphs you would expect the story to flow with less grace. Not so with Peter Heller.

The Son (2014) by Jo Nesbo

Saw this book in the window of my tiny local library and checked it out mostly because I had never read anything by a modern Norwegian novelist, or anything set in the city of Oslo. From the first page this crime novel grabbed me up and didn’t let go. Jo Nesbo has a new fan and after the last page of The Son, I jumped up to order two more of his books. The son in this story is a young man serving time in prison for the crimes of others. He is accepting of his sentence until learning that his father’s suicide was not that at all. He escapes from prison (very cleverly) and begins working down a list of those who he believes killed his father. The question is, who will get him first, the cops or the criminals?

The Keillor Reader (2014) by Garrison Keillor

I have long been a fan of Garrison Keillor for two things in particular. It is a long custom of mine to begin each day with a cup of coffee and the latest online edition of The Writer’s Almanac. That has led me to read Keillor’s several compilations of poetry which have done a lot to re-shape my appreciation of a form that high school taught me to hate. By hook or by crook find a copy of Keillor’s splendid introduction to Good Poems for Hard Times (2005) wherein he explains what poetry really is and who it is meant for. The Keillor Reader is something just out and is a collection of his writings over the last forty years. There is so much humanity and warm humor in this writer’s stories that natural reaction is a smile that lasts for 358 pages. Never read any of the Lake Wobegon stories? This one’s for you. I took great enjoyment from this little snippet out of “The News from Lake Wobegon.” 

    

‘I wish to be cremated… I wish my ashes to be placed in the green bowling ball that Raoul also gave me, which somebody can hollow out (I’m told), and then seal it up, and I would like the ball to be dropped into Lake Wobegon.’

Book Bag

Books are piling up again and the problem of where to put them doesn’t get any easier. Maybe getting rid of some plates and bowls and stacking books in their place would work. One solution would be to change my habits and buy the desired books in either Kindle or iPad format, but that’s not going to happen. Too much pleasure in the feel and smell of a new book in the hand. Suppose I’ll just have to find ways to create new stacks that don’t impede movement around the house. The best idea yet is from my friend R who wants a company called Piney Woods put up a prefab ‘book’ cottage across the driveway and solve both our problems.

Over the past two weeks three or four bundles of books have arrived at the door, each bundle providing a few gratifying hours of reading. Three of the books I read front to back right away, and others I placed around the house to be picked up at random times to browse a page or chapter. Likely one or another book will eventually get a review of sorts later on, but for now the intention is only to introduce a few titles and relevant points. Seven books on the list and here they are…

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller (2011)

Last month I read the earlier work, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and was bowled over by the author’s style and her fascinating stories of growing up in Africa. Fuller’s latest book tells a story that is much about her mother—a riveting character—and how she came to live in Africa. Again, the author captures the reader with a wealth of stories impossible anywhere else. This one I have read only a few chapters of, and at this point can’t say much about. The strength of this book is Fuller’s ability to make characters so real you feel them sitting next to you.

Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller (2004)

Perhaps some translation is necessary here: ‘Scribbling’ is African slang for ‘killing.’ The book’s extended title includes …Travels with an African Soldier and that is an accurate description of what this book is about. Fuller returns to Zambia to spend some time with her parents, and during that time meets an African man living on a banana farm nearby. K is a former soldier who fought in several of Africa’s wars of independence, but is finally living the life of a farmer in Zambia. This one too is still in the reading stage, leaving me unable to say more. The unfamiliar stories of life in Africa amaze from the first paragraph of page one. Crocodiles, mud, rain, snakes, drought, insects, stultifying heat…welcome to the African bush.

The Affair by Lee Child (2011)

Such a hardcore fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, I have read each of the fifteen books the week of their release. Number sixteen is The Affair and this one too came to me only days after its release, pre-ordered months in advance. There is an element of mystery to all the Reacher stories, but more important is Child’s character of a moral man with the muscles and the smarts to right most wrongs. A Jack Reacher novel fits immediately into the ‘page-turner’ genre and is all about finesse, brawn and doing the right thing. Always and forever an exciting read.

Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke (2011)

Burke is the master of south Louisiana settings, but is more often these days turning his attention to south Texas. About Burke and any one of his thirty books, for the sake of brevity I will say only this: If you enjoy reading and you’ve never read a book by James Lee Burke, go to the bookstore today.

Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks (2011)

An on and off fan of Russell Banks, I found the title of this new book captivating, and buying it was far, far from a mistake. Two characters tell a story set on the west coast of Florida and each is fascinating. Sex offenses as they relate to underage victims is an extremely volatile subject but Banks carries this one off leaving the reader unquestionably in sympathy with the protagonist. How does he do that?

Gilgamesh, a new English translation by Stephen Mitchell (2004)

This is a story set in man’s earliest civilization, the 2750 BC Sumerian city of Urak, situated in present day Iraq at the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The translation is what makes this version outstanding. The poetry is elegant and the tale wholly relevant to creation literature. In a story that precedes biblical literature, Gilgamesh is filled with Christian corollaries. It is the oldest story in the world, and in that sense alone is engaging.

The Gentlemen’s Hour by Don Winslow (2011)

Included here only because it arrived in the post late Wednesday afternoon and is one I've been eagerly awaiting. Winslow is an up and down kind of writer who can dazzle with one book and disappoint the next. Anyone familiar with his earlier book, The Dawn Patrol will jump for this new one which has the same characters and setting. Never read Winslow? Try California Fire and Life or The Power of the Dog.