WALDO by Paul Theroux

 I read almost half of the novel, but gave up on Th 9/4/25. The tone seemed to be way off and I couldn't get into the novel. 

A young man leaves a juvenile detention center and tries to become a writer. That's the basic storyline, and it just didn't have any 'reality'. 

It's Theroux's first novel and I don't think he had the hang of it yet. I loved 'PICTURE PALACE', but this was a real disappointment. 

From KIRKUS: "Paul Theroux is twenty-five years old with a savage eye and a sharp ear. Walde, his first novel, is the journey of an adolescent from a glass-door even in a detention school to a glass writer's cage suspended over a nightclub audience. It's short trip in miles but it takes him much too far. He leaves home (a grandmother he loves, stridently squabbling parents) and picks up Glovis, a wealthy, married woman who in return for certain attentions sends him to college, supports him and finally procures him a writer's job. This consists of an interview which turns into a soap-opera carnival act. Waldo's journey ends with the terrible truth that stories are ruthless, they devour and exploit and distort, and eventually Waldo sacrifices Clovis for a story.... Theroux records remarkably the choking platitudes mouthed by administrators, parents, wardens, teachers, plus all, young and old, who are trapped in their own small minds. He is imaginative, and just by bearing down hard on realistic situations creates a world reflecting all the macabre horror, humor and sadness of people trying to wring something out of experience. Not everybody's book -- but the talent is there."

ORDINARY PEOPLE by Judith Guest

 Finished Tu 9/2/25

This is one of my ancient hardbacks that I had never read. It's an engaging suburban melodrama that was published in 1976 and made into a film that won 'Best Picture' in 1980. I wanted to stream the film, but it's not available for free.

It's about a family that is dealing with the death of a teenage son. Set in the northestern suburbs of Chicago- Evanston, Lake Forest. 

From KIRKUS: "rdinary people on any street where you live, people you might know, people you'll know better at the end of this straight, unassuming, encroaching first novel. A family, or what's left of it--the Jarretts, after the circumstantial whim which took the life of their eldest boy in a boating accident and left Conrad, less ""perfect,"" but much nicer with a sense of guilt he couldn't shake and still can't, even after trying to commit suicide, hospitalization, and now his return home. Home being the place where you keep your distance--from an indifferent, inaccessible mother and perhaps a too protective father who have to come to terms with other difficulties. This finds Conrad attempting to deal with everyone's unease, particularly his own, but slowly connecting (at school, with a girl) until someone he knew in the hospital--one of those two who's going to try again--kills herself, shattering his precarious stability. This has none of the sentimental overindulgence of Rose Garden, the obligatory referral and potential market (young people will also like this). Where it does succeed, and succeed it does, is in communicating a sense of life both felt and experienced without ever trespassing beyond actuality. Ordinary People is an exceptionally real book."

I really liked the book and would read definitely read more novels by Judith Guest.

PICTURE PALACE by Paul Theroux

 Finished Sa 8/30/25. This is an ancient paperback that I bought at 'John's Place' (I've completely forgotten this store) on We 11/25/92 and finished on We 2/3/93.

I really loved the book and I'll read more by Theroux. In fact, I noticed three of his novels on the shelf in the living room and I'll be back to them soon. 

From KIRKUS: "Paul Theroux is such a masterful entertainer, such a smoothly arresting stylist, that it seems ungrateful to complain when he uses his blinding dazzle to keep us from looking beneath the surface. But let's say it up front: this new Theroux charmer--the slowly unpeeling autobiography of pioneer photographer Maude Coffin Pratt--is foolish almost as often as it is delicious or insinuating. Maude at 72 is famous--for her uncompromising portraits of blacks, louts, and celebrities; for her eccentric, tough-old-broad Yankee grit. So opportunistic ""archivist"" Frank Fusco has moved in with Maude on Cape Cod, determined to assemble a Pratt Retrospective from the crates of photos in Maude's abandoned windmill. The unearthing of old prints, of course, triggers brooding memories (""the picture palace of my mind""), memories that come in two entwined varieties. The public triumph: talking back to imperious Stieglitz, ""doing"" the top literati, finding that a camera can be a weapon. And more important, the private torment: ""I was a photographer for love. Orlando was the reason for my camera."" Orlando? Homely Maude's beautiful brother Ollie, object of a fierce incestuous passion that is the source of all her artistry: ""It's the wounded who take to art."" If that seems a trifle simplistic, wait till young Maude comes home and sees Orlando and lovely sister Phoebe doing what Maude has only fantasized; she goes blind (temporary) and later nods knowingly about blissful suicide pacts when Ollie and Phoebe die in a boating ""accident."" Only when a fiagrante delicto photo of O. and P. turns up in the windmill (Maude took it but forgot) does she realize the real reason for the boat suicide: ""I had killed them with a picture""--they died because they knew that she knew. If this melodrama schema were the most blatant flaw here, one might swallow it, just to enjoy the rich camera talk, the expert narrative timemaneuvers, the buoyant atmospheres. But Theroux's blueprint also calls for some contrived set-ups right out of TV sit-com, a final irony (no one recognizes Maude at her own retrospective) right out of Hollywood shlock, and a cutesy celebrity parade (""Those are my loins,"" pants D. H. Lawrence, making a heavy pass) right out of your garden-variety historical romance. Tongue-in-cheek? Perhaps. But Theroux writes far too well (even the most objectionable sequences offer line-byline pleasure) to settle glibly for breezy pastiche when a bit more concentration could probably have truly pinned down Maude Pratt, her art, and her heart."

I really loved this novel {released in 1978} and it was beautifully written. However, some of it was pretty confusing. I was lost during the 'blindness' sections of the book. Was Maud really blind or was it psychological? The sexual attraction to her younger brother would be a sticking point for a lot of readers, but it did not bother me.  

THE CRUSADES by Henry Treece

 Finished Fr 8/22/25

This was one of my ancient hardbacks that I've never read. The flyleaf informs me that I bought the book at Barnes & Noble. 

I really am glad that I read the book and although it's non-fiction, it read like a novel.

First Crusade began in 1095 by Pope Urban II and lasted for two centuries.

From the dust jacker: "The Crusades can be accounted a military failure, but they were a cultural phenomenon that introduced a new age of 3xploration and nation states, shattering the feudal establishments of medieval Europe." 

The Pope was worried about the rise of the secular state by Charlamagne in France. The Church leaned into the gospel of Revelation. 'The End Is Near' and who will be there to defend the Holy Land when Jesus returns"? 

Odd Fact: The West learned about paper from the Saracens and this led to the publication of Bibles so that the commoners could own 'the good book' themselves. 

From the book's page at Goodreads: "In November of 1095 Pope Urban II launched a holy war against the infidel. In 1464 a demented pontiff led an imaginary band of crusaders as far as an Adriatic port. Between these dates Europe was infected by a strangely persistent fever of mass idealism. Though outward zeal often cloaked the most cynical of motives, this universal spirit seized upon thousands - noblemen and peasants, warriors and scholars, ascetics and lechers, vagabonds and kings. Written by a prolific author of numerous histories, novels, drama, criticisms and verse, The Crusades provides a lively and authentic account of two hundred years of war, sacred journeys and the quest for riches. Henry Treece reanimates many renowned figures of the period---Charlemagne, Haroun-al-Raschid, Peter the Hermit, Richard the Lion-Heart, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond, Saladin, Mourschid, Henry Dandolo, Frederick II, Louis the Oious and Genghis Khan---as well as providing an illuminating narrative of one of Christianity's darkest periods."

Because the story begins with the reign of Charlamagne, here's a link to 'the founder of Feudalism'. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne

DIVORCING THE DICTATOR: America's Bungled Affair With Noriega by Frederick Kempe

 Finished Tu 8/12/25

This is one of my ancient hardbacks that I had never read. It was a fascinating book and it read like a novel. 

The story of Manuel Antonio Noriega- a guy who truly played both sides against the middle. He aligned with the Americans because 'he was against communism' and the US turned a blind eye to his insane traffic in illegal arms, drugs, and technology. The US government gave Noriega $200,000a year for support for the Contras and America would turn a blind eye to his illegal activities. Everybody knew what was going on, but didn't no how to stop him. It took a US invasion of the country to end his reign.

Omar Torrijos was technically the head of Panama, but Noriega ran things from behind the scenes. He was like Joseph Goebels or Dick Chaney. He came across almost as a 'leftist'- kind of a playboy and 'man of the people'.

An interesting book and a departure from my normal 'literary or genre' ficiton.      

JITTERBUG PERFUME by Tom Robbins

 This is one of my trade paperbacks that I had never read. I don't know why I put it off because I really loved the book. There was a beautiful turn of the phrase on nearly every page. Just a wild and crazy tale about Evolution, Sex, History, beets, the perfect taco, and Perfume. This book was truly something different. 

The plot in a nutshel:

"The book follows two interweaving storylines, one in Ancient Eurasia and one in the present day. The story connects dueling perfumers in Seattle, Paris and New Orleans to a bottle of incomparable perfume created by two unlikely but defiant lovers of the past who seek immortality."

A link to the novel's page on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitterbug_Perfume#:~:text=The%20book%20follows%20two%20interweaving,the%20past%20who%20seek%20immortality.

FREAKY DEAKY by Elmore Leonard

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first completed on Fr 11/4/98 at FitClub. I refinished on We 7/23/25.

A great read and deals with the marginalized people from the anti-war movement of the 60's a decade their heyday. Nobody in the novel is without massive faults. The story is about a group of grifters who try to blackmail a rich and drug addled hippie. I'd read almost anything by Elmore Leonard.  

Review at 'nytimes.com':

"How dearly Elmore Leonard loves a scam, a con, a slippery scheme. How fond he is of the schemer, especially the schemer who thinks big. What a master criminal Mr. Leonard would make if he got tired of writing thrillers and changed professions. The plot of ''Freaky Deaky'' races along, constantly changing course and doubling back on itself, like a cunning fox in front of the hounds.

The setting is contemporary Detroit. The cast of characters includes a recycled Black Panther turned man Friday to a millionaire, a pair of student revolutionaries left over from the 1960's, assorted narcotics dealers and kneecappers, and Chris Mankowski. A straight-arrow cop no one will ever nickname Lucky, he's already in trouble with the novel's opening sentence: ''Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb.''

After six years on the bomb squad, nagged into it by his girlfriend, Chris has requested a transfer. Now ''a guy by the name of Booker, a twenty-five-year-old super-dude twice-convicted felon,'' is sitting in a green leather wing chair with several sticks of dynamite planted in the cushion. Along with Chris, who's always puzzling over its shifting boundaries, we've entered Elmore Leonard's ethical and moral ''gray area.''

Booker's life, arguably, isn't worth saving. Chris should attempt to disarm the bomb anyway, even if he gets blown to bits. He makes what most of us would agree is the right decision, one a reviewer shouldn't reveal. Let's simply leave it that Mr. Leonard's spectacular 26th novel starts out with a bang.

Tricky stuff, dynamite, as we soon learn from Skip Gibbs, ''a thirty-eight-year-old kid'' originally from Indiana, who still uses such Midwestern locutions as ''I like to died.'' Skip is a demolitions expert for movie companies these days. That's after serving a long prison sentence for blowing up a Federal building, back in the time when blowing up Government buildings was a political act. Alas, the forces of law and order didn't see it that way. Neither does Skip, any longer. ''Sweet-heart,'' he tells Robin Abbott, his fellow street fighter and assistant bomber of long ago, ''that whole show back then was a put-on. You gonna tell me we were trying to change the world? . . . Where's everybody now? We've come clear around to the other side, joined the establishment.''

''Some have,'' Robin observes grimly. Having served time for the same bombing, she's had eight years to figure out who blew their cover after she and Skip got arrested, jumped bail and went underground. Their betrayer must have been Mark Ricks, fellow student radical turned theatrical producer, or Mark's brother Woodrow (Woody) Ricks, a physically repulsive specimen known even in his college days as ''the Poor Soul.'' The Poor Soul inherited $50 million from his mother. Robin wants to redistribute the wealth.

Brother Mark ended up with pocket change, relatively speaking; he wants a chunk of Woody too. So does Donnell, former Black Panther and self-appointed houseman to ''Mr. Woody'' who keeps his boss in a booze-and-drug-sodden stupor. In fact, so many people want a piece of Woody, a hilarious and awful grotesque, that the line winds all the way around the block. Even Chris ends up in the particular gray area where Woody's money exerts its magnetic pull, as does Ginger, the red-haired actress who replaces the nag as Chris's girlfriend.

He's not a great deal better off. It's understandable that Chris's father thinks that his son should try dressing better and maybe changing his after-shave.

In short order the stage of ''Freaky Deaky'' is crowded with as many rogues as ''The Beggar's Opera,'' from Juicy Mouth, a black hit man with a gray tongue as big as the sole of a shoe, to Skip and Robin, once again a dynamic duo. Fortunately for Chris and for Woody, the world's weirdest person, the lot of them aren't any longer on brains than they are on scruples.

''All these ones here,'' a cop named Wendell says to Chris about Juicy Mouth and retinue, ''they got their game going, living on the edge. . . . We get a feel for that kind of action, huh? Know when to step outside, so to speak, let them do their own kind of freaky deaky. You remember that sexy dance? . . . Man, we had people shooting each other over it.''

Wendell could be talking about Elmore Leonard, who steps back from his characters just enough to marvel at their gyrations, as everyone tries to shake down everyone else. He's got a feel for their kind of action. His ear is the best in the business. No one writes better or funnier dialogue, whether the speaker is stoned-out Woody, joylessly intoning ''Boy-oh-boy,'' or Donnell trying to strike a deal with Juicy Mouth:

'' 'You out of work, you out of finances. I have a man for you needs to be vamped on. Tell me what you charge to bust his leg. . . .' '' 'Yeah, I'll bust his legs good.' '' 'Just one.'

'' 'I'll give you a deal for the same price. I'll put him away.' '' 'Juicy?'

'' 'I'll take him out someplace. . . . Nobody ever see him again.'

'' 'Juicy? How much just for the one leg?' ''