RANSOM by Jay McInerney

 Refinished Fr 7/29/23

This is one of my paperbacks that I bought at The Book House, Rock Hill, Mo. on Th 10/19/95 and finished Fr 2/28/97. I got the wrist tattoo finished at Black Moon. 

Christopher Ransom is living in contemporary Kyoto and he is trying to 'find himself' through martial arts. His father is a hack television producer and wants Chris to return home. Ransom is friends with a man who runs a cowboy bar and at this bar he meets DeVito who hates Ransom on sight. The novel is about how DeVito tries to force Ransom into a death match. Also, Ransom's father has hired an actress to make Chris believe that she needs his help to escape the Yakuza. It's all a ruse and she's trying to get him to return to the US on orders from his father. 

The death match happens and Chris is killed. Literally he is cut in half and it was a total surprise.

I really liked the book and I'm surprised that it's not more well known. 'BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY' is McInerney's biggest book. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"Ransom, Jay McInerney's second novel, belongs to the distinguished tradition of novels about exile. Living in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, Christopher Ransom seeks a purity and simplicity he could not find at home, and tries to exorcise the terror he encountered earlier in his travels—a blur of violence and death at the Khyber Pass.Ransom has managed to regain control, chiefly through the rigors of karate. Supporting himself by teaching English to eager Japanese businessmen, he finds company with impresario Miles Ryder and fellow expatriates whose headquarters is Buffalo Rome, a blues-bar that satisfies the hearty local appetite for Americana and accommodates the drifters pouring through Asia in the years immediately after the fall of Vietnam.Increasingly, Ransom and his circle are threatened, by everything they thought they had left behind, in a sequence of events whose consequences Ransom can forestall but cannot change.Jay McInerney details the pattern of adventure and disillusionment that leads Christopher Ransom toward an inevitable reckoning with his fate—in a novel of grand scale and serious implications."

  

TIME TUNNEL by Murray Leinster

 Finished Su 7/23/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I bought at the Warehouse Book Sale on Fr 9/29/07. I think this was the old Sears warehouse on the southside of town. 

From the back of the paperback:

"One end was in 1964-the other in 1804. People could go both ways. So could...things. For instance, brand-new "antiques" for the 20th century, and marvels of modern industry for the Napoleonic era." 

People in the present (first published July 1964) are using a time tunnel to sell 'antiques' that are in mint condition. This seems like a tremendous waste of what could have been possible. However, this theme of selling 'antiques' is very similar to PK Dick's, 'THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE'.

It's a short novel and an easy read. Not too memorable but I'd like to read more by Murray Leinster.

THE WATER IS WIDE by Pat Conroy

Finished We 7/19/23

This is a memoir that was written as a novel. In 1969 the author, Pat Conroy went to work at an all black school on an island off the coast of South Carolina. 

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"The Water Is Wide is a 1972 memoir by Pat Conroy and is based on his work as a teacher on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, which is called Yamacraw Island in the book. The book sometimes is identified as nonfiction and other times identified as a novel.

Yamacraw is a poor island lacking bridges and having little infrastructure. The book details Conroy's efforts to communicate with the islanders, who are nearly all directly descended from slaves and who have had little contact with the mainland or its people. He struggles to find ways to reach his students, ages 10 to 13, some of whom are illiterate or innumerate, and all of whom know little of the world beyond Yamacraw. Conroy (called Conrack by most of the students) does battle with the principal Mrs. Brown over his unconventional teaching methods and with the administrators of the school district, whom he accuses of ignoring the problems at the Yamacraw school."

I really liked the book and it provided a look at various shades and varieties of Racism in the Deep South near the end of Desegregation. Sometimes blacks believed in the separation of the races because, "If The Man is happy then things will go well and if he isn't, then things could go very bad".

There was an organization in the book that aided municipalities in the implementation of of desegregation. The group would get both sides together to find the most efficient way to ease the pain of desegregation and attempt to end Jim Crow policies. I had never heard of this and I wonder if such outreach programs actually existed. 

THE KINKS KRONIKLES by John Mendelssohn

 Refinished Fr 7/14/23

In two days...

This is one of my ancient trade paperbacks. I originally finished this on Th 7/13/06 (nearly 17 years to the day) and it was in my work bag for about a week. And, then I refinished again on Sa 11/5/16.

John Mendelssohn was a writer for Rolling Stone and Creem magazine. He was an early fan of The Kinks and even wrote the liner notes for a few Kinks albums. 

The book is a great trove of information about the early Kinks. The story ends too early because the book was published in 1985. 

Fun Fact: The Kinks did not begin in sleazy bars and trashy nightclubs, but they got their start at high society parties. Robert Wace was a rich young man who fronted the Kinks because he wanted to be a singer. One night he got booed, and Ray offered to take over. 

Mendelssohn would review each individual song on the early albums and it was great having Amazon Music Unlimited so that I could hear each album as I was reading the book.  

KATE VAIDEN by Reynolds Price

Finished Th 7/13/23

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read.

This is one of the best profiles of a woman that I've ever read.

***By far, one of the most compelling and interesting novels that I've read in a long time. I really liked this one! 

A 47 year old woman reviews her life and confronts the fact that she abandoned her child many years before. She lost her parents when she was about nine years old. I think her father learned of her mother's infidelity and he shot her and then killed himself. She got pregnant by her cousin and gave up the child to her aunt. 

Lots of indecision and it seemed like how people actually think. 

From a viewer's review at GoodReads:

"I had Reynolds Price's novel "Kate Vaiden" (1984) in mind for a long time before finally being persuaded to read it by an online review written by a friend.. I proposed the book to my reading group as a possible choice among several other books each of which portrayed an individual American woman. The group chose a different book, but I went ahead and read "Kate Vaiden" (the last name rhymes with "maiden") anyway. The novel is unusual in that Price sets the novel in the first person in the voice of his primary female character. Novels in which the author writes in the voice of a person of the other gender are challenging and rare. Two recent examples of women writing in the voices of men are Siri Hustvedt's "What I Loved" and Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer-prize winning "Gilead".

Some reviewers have questioned whether Price (1933 -2011)has the understanding and novelistic skill to project himself effectively into the voice of a woman. Kate is her own person and an individual character indeed. As a young woman of 17, she abandons her baby son conceived out of wedlock. Price spends much of the novel trying to prepare the reader for this event. I thought he made Kate's behavior understandable and believable. As the story progressed, I became absorbed with Kate and her travails. I felt for her as she made her decisions, some good and many rash. The novel kept me involved with the heroine and her world.

The novel is set in the rural upper South, in North Carolina and Virginia. Much of the book is set in Macon, North Carolina, where Price was born, with substantial portions set in Raleigh, Norfolk, Greensborough, and elsewhere. Most of the action of the book takes place during the Depression and WW II era, with these large events contrasted against the quiet voices of individual rural lives. The book proceeds through the post-Vietnam era into the 1980s, with glances at civil rights, feminism, the anti-war movement, and other great changes which occurred over a relatively short time span.

The book is narrated by Kate Vaiden as a woman of 57. She tells the story of her life, especially of her tumultuous adolescence, with the hope that it will interest her son Dan, 40. Kate abandoned Dan when she was 17 and, at least up until the time she sets down her story, has had no contact with him. The book is almost a picaresque novel as young Kate picks up and moves many times and leaves a variety of people, relatives, lovers, and friends in her wake. The novel is sad as Kate abandons many people who genuinely want to offer her love, and Price made me sympathize both with Kate and with the others. Many of these individuals are themselves frequent lonely and searching. The novel is also a young woman's coming-of-age story. Abandonment, loss, and loneliness are important themes of the book as many of the characters, including Kate, her mother, the father of her baby, Douglas, her would-be lover Whitfield and others are orphans. Many people close to Kate die in the book: her parents, her first lover, and Douglas.

Precocious sexuality receives much emphasis in Kate's story. Her parents, Dan and Frances, have an apparently passionate but doomed relationship. After their shocking death, Kate, raised by her mother's sister Caroline and her husband Holt, begins a sexual relationship with a slightly older boy named Gaston who dies during Marine boot camp. Kate blames herself. The book includes strong portrayals of this relationship which stays with Kate all her life. After Gaston's death, Kate is molested by her older cousin, Swift. She then begins a relationship with Douglas, an orphan who can be tender and loving but also who has a tendency towards drifting and violence. Kate cannot bring herself to marry Douglas, who also comes to a violent death. During the story Kate has many other sexual relationships with men and friendships with women but she allows them all to fall out of her life. Price emphasizes the importance of marriage and commitment, parts of life which are denied to Kate. Late in the novel, Kate has a conversation with a teacher, Rosalind Limer, who has unhappily remained unmarried through life. Kate explains to Miss Limer her rejection of some of her suitors. Miss Limer observes:

"I won't try to judge what I didn't get to watch. But steadiness is what men seldom have to offer -- not in life anyhow, not in this green world. We're not promised that, in the Bible or any other book known to me."

Kate achieves a modicum of financial security. She is an independent, tough, perceptive, yet vulnerable and highly fallible woman. I came to feel greatly for her through her mistakes and misfortunes. The book also offers a portrayal of small town life in the upper South in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. Besides Kate, one of the characters that Price portrays effectively is Noony, an African American woman slightly older than Kate who works for Caroline and Holt. Noony offers her own commentary on Kate and on her life. The novel is presented against a backdrop of religious themes, including sin, redemption, and what appears to be God's ever-present love even in harsh circumstances. This is a stunning novel."

I loved the novel and I'll read more by Reynolds Price.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER by Seth Grahame-Smith

Finished Tu 7/4/23

I bought this at the Rochester Library Book Sale on Sa 5/20/23. I took a chance on this book, but I'm really glad I got it. It is a great story with a crazy premise, but lots of trivia about the Civil War.

Vampires side with the South because they want to use the slaves as 'feed'. 

From the book's page at Amazon:

"Indiana. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness."

"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation."

 I was really shocked to learn the details surrounding The Dred Scott Decision.

THE SACRIFICE by Joyce Carol Oates

  ***Finished during the Power Outage of July 2024. My power was off  from Thursday to late Tuesday evening.

This is one of the books that were selected for the Contemporary Book Club in November of 2016. I recently read 'CHILDWOLD' by Joyce Carol Oates, but I couldn't finish the book. It just didn't move me, but this novel hit the spot. 

An involved story about a young black girl who claims that she was kidnapped and gang raped. It didn't happen and her injuries were caused by he step father. 

From NPR.ORG:

"With great energy and a cold eye for contemporary American race relations, here comes Joyce Carol Oates with a new novel that shows off her muck-raking credentials. The Sacrifice faces squarely an incident that took place in upstate New York nearly thirty years ago in which a young black girl named Tawana Brawley claimed that a group of white males, mostly police officers, kidnapped her and gang-raped her over a number of days.

A young minister named Al Sharpton got his first taste of national attention defending Brawley. But then a grand jury determined her claims had been a hoax; both she and Sharpton were slapped with a libel suit.

Oates sets her version of the story in the fictional town of Pascayne (read Passaic) in north Jersey, and the opening scenes throw us into a search by distraught mother Ednetta Frye for her missing daughter Sybilla. The fourteen year old girl's been missing for a couple of days and nights.

A resident of Pascayne's black section finds the girl in an abandoned factory near the "poisoned" river that flows through the city. Sybilla's covered with racial graffiti and excrement, tied up and hungry, and allegedly the victim of a gang-rape by a number of white cops. The Sharpton-like character, the Rev. Marus C. Mudrick (and his twin brother Byron, an attorney) enter about half-way through the book, and turn an unfortunately ambiguous — and for some people a still not entirely resolved — case into a full-blown violent racist fairy-tale.

Mudrick refers to himself in the third person, and presumes a great deal more than meets the eye. For example, when his less than rabidly anti-white brother Byron challenges his actions in the Frye case, Mudrick declares, "You don't understand, Brother. I am the peoples' leader. They look to me for hope, and I give them hope. 'The Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye' is but one chapter in the epic of Marus Mudrick's life."

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It's not the only chapter in Oates' rendering of this outrageous and daring story. She includes Ednetta's live-in boyfriend Anis Schutt, a man who lives on the edge, trying to suppress his own murderous rage at the police. And Ines Iglesias, a Latina detective who's struggling to make her weight on the Pascayne police force, whose commander inserts her into the rape investigation in order to humiliate her. Assailed by both sides, Ines wonders if she's going to become the "sacrifice" to public opinion, "the detective burdened with an impossible case and (unspoken) task of exonerating the Pascayne PD."

And there's a gentle and confused beat cop who ends up taking his own life; Sybilla's family, friends, and neighbors, a range of people from school teachers to gun-toters, some of whom want to help her, some who remain confused. In the middle of all this is Sybilla herself, stand-offish, fragile, off-putting, and entirely an enigma.

The novelist herself looks with eyes wide open on the terrors and torpor of inner-city life, sympathetically embracing almost every character she introduces, except perhaps when she focuses a bright light on the actions of the deceitful huckster Mudrick and his troubled brother, the former rather Dickensian in his hunger for public acclaim and power.

As you can tell, Oates barges her way into territory not many American writers — and certainly not very many white writers — have dared to tread. Some readers may find this material offensive, especially those already disgusted by some of Oates' comments about race on Twitter. In the eyes of her detractors, this is a writer who's been tone-deaf on the subject before, who might now seem to be blundering about in a larger medium, undoubtedly doing more harm than good.

I say the reverse is true. A tweet is the simplest of written forms; limited to 140 characters, even the most complex writer can say something that sounds downright silly. A novel serves as one of the most complex creations of language; contradictions bring a book to life rather than pull it down. Put into the context of our national trauma on police and unarmed victims — this raw and earnest work of fiction offers a mix of fiery drama and the cold bone truths of race as we all live it today.

THE MORMON MURDERS by Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith

 ***Finished during the Power Outage of July 2024. My power was off  from Thursday to late Tuesday evening.

Finished Fr 6/30/23

In October 1985 Mark Hoffman set off three bombs in Salt Lake City, Utah. Initially, the victims didn't seem to have anything in common, but Hoffman only wanted to create a distraction because he was deeply in debt.

Hoffman was a world class forger and was 'creating' documents that dealt with the history of the Mormon faith. 

Although the book is 'True Crime', I enjoyed the parts of the book that concerned the history of the Mormons. 

A reader review at GoodReads:

"Religion, belief systems, cults, and the soul are always interesting material to read about. What attracts people to a particular belief system which other equally intelligent and educated individuals may revile or despise even though the core of that belief may stem from similar foundations? Most religions, fortunately for their followers, were created before print journalism became commonplace. Newspapers and the printed word preserve the less agreeable aspects belief in magic and the occult (more commonly referred to as miracles) which necessarily form the foundation of all religions. Legends are created which become essential to the belief system of the church. Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith in The Mormon Murders reveal how the fear of discredit led to several bombings and killings in Salt Lake City.

     Salt Lake City, by the late seventies, was known as the fraud capital of the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission called it the "sewer of the securities industry." It ranked third in the nation for business defaults. One enterprising young man sold $613 billion (or nearly 1/2 of the national debt) in fraudulent gold certificates (obviously at way below face value.) He used his Mormon background as authentication. Mormons, believing that God rewards the faithful, are brought up to be particularly trusting and to believe what they are told. Skepticism is frowned upon. It was in this environment of naive trust that Gary Sheets created Consolidated Financial Services, initially, a wildly successful investment corporation.

     The police were initially puzzled when Sheets' wife and business partner Steve were killed in separate bomb explosions. Only after a very respected and successful documents dealer named Mark Hofmann was severely injured in another bomb explosion did the pieces begin to fit together. ATF experts discerned almost immediately that Hofmann had to be the mysterious bomber b~cause they realized the bomb had been accidently set off by the bomber as he was arming it; and, the design of the bomb was identical to those which killed Gary Sheets' wife and Steve Christiansen.

      The plot began to unravel. Hofmann had been selling forged documents to church officials (including Christiansen, who was a deacon,) that purported to validate all the rumors of scandal surrounding Joseph Smith and the origins of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The "Salamander Letter" in particular, if legitimate would have been particularly embarrassing to the church. It revealed Smith as a wily con man fascinated by in necromancy, dowsing, and "gold-digging". Hofmann, the investigation disclosed, was an excellent forger who had mastered techniques for aging paper and recreating authentic-looking inks. (The details of research into his forgery techniques by forensic experts is a fascinating story in itself.)

     Church officials were in a terrible bind as the story unfolded and did everything possible to prevent the case from coming to trial. Hofmann had made thousands selling the fraudulent documents to the church which then placed them in a vault unavailable for inspection. Hofmann had also persuaded rich Mormons to buy these "anti-Mormon" documents. They would donate them to the church claiming the appropriate tax-deduction. In these instances the church could honestly claim it had not "bought" the documents. The church was in a pickle. If the documents investigators sought as evidence turned out to be authentic it cast grave doubt on the origins of the church; if fraudulent1 church officials needed explain why they were in such a rush to purchase the documents from a con-man. Anyone who doesn't believe how a church can control a city should read this book. Church officials manipulated the trial in many ways to get the result they wanted."