Tag: midwest

Midweek Miscellany: Reading Roundup

Job_Lot_Cheap_William_Michael_Harnett_1878.jpeg.jpeg — Does your book collection resemble this jumble as much as mine does? The painting (“Odd Lot Cheap,” 1878) is the work of the late 19th century American artist William Harnett (1848-1892). Although it’s been suggested that Harnett’s illusionistic paintings are devoid of inner meaning, don’t you find this one an implicit comment on the transience of all things, including our beloved books?

Although I’ve been blogging very little in this our year of the plague, I have (as I noted in my last post) been reading fairly steadily since 2020 rolled around. Because there wasn’t a dud book in the bunch (isn’t it gratifying, dear reader, when one is on a streak of reading good books?) I thought I’d share a quick recap of some of the excellent works of fiction that have come my way in this year. What I’m offering are quick impressionistic snapshots rather than in-depth reviews (Janakay is not by nature profound, and constant handwashing and unpacking make it so very difficult to concentrate right now). In making my list I noticed the emergence of a monthly sort-of pattern to my reading. One month was heavy on thrillers & science fiction while another tended towards “serious” novels; one month tilted to the classics and another to the contemporary, and every month included a comfort read, which generally coincided with a stressful key moment in my long-distance move! Have you, dear reader, in your great journey through the universe of literature, noted any similar tendencies or patterns in your own seasonal reading? Do you read classics when it’s cold and drippy outside or eagerly head towards light bubbly froth for those delightful days of lying on the beach? Or do you, like Janakay, indulge in counter-programing, saving all those serious literary chunksters for your lazy summer afternoons? Well, enough with the philosophical musings and on to my list!

As befitting a month associated with endings and beginnings, my January reading contained both old and new, as well as one of Janakay’s own very special little rituals. Are any of you, dear readers of mine, superstitious about books? (If so, don’t be embarrassed — do share your little kink. Janakay won’t tell!) I’m quite superstititious myself, especially about the first book I start in any new year (books I’m finishing don’t count). I regard my first new book in January as an omen for the upcoming year; if it’s a really good book, well, the gods have spoken, haven’t they? They have promised I’ll have a great year of reading ahead of me!

To increase my chances that my January ritual will have a favorable outcome I tend to go with a classic when a new year rolls around or, gasp, even reread something I’ve loved in the past (Janakay regards this as a prudent precaution rather than a cheat. Honestly, don’t we all load the dice, when we can?) This year, however, I decided to gamble a bit on Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, a modern fairy tale of two siblings, a wicked stepmother and the enchanted house they all longed to possess. I really like Ann Patchett’s work (I think I’ve read almost all of her novels) and I’d had my eye on this one since I read the advance notices. I’m happy to report that my gamble paid off; the novel was every bit as good as it was reported to be.

From contemporary I went to classic, spending the latter half of January with Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them. I had tried many years ago to read Corner, but had given it up after less than fifty of its three hundred plus pages; to put it mildly I had been totally unimpressed. How that Warner woman could dribble on! Had she no editor? Why was this book so different from her delightful Lolly Willowes? Whatever was Warner up to in this yawn-inducing tome? Was Corner a history or was it a novel? Either way, it was BORING and Janakay loathes being bored. Back on the shelf it went, to gather many layers of dust. Given my strong negative reaction, I naturally selected Corner for the “Abandoned Classic” category in the 2020 Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Books and Chocolate. And — please note, dear readers, Janakay conceals nothing from you, no matter how embarrassing — her initial reaction to Warner’s novel was quite mistaken! In fact, you might say that Janakay missed the boat on this one or, if you were being particularly unkind, conclude that she even fell off the pier! Oh, my good gracious me, how the years can alter one’s judgment! Even in my callow youth, however could I have abandoned this wonderful novel? The Corner that Held Them really is a masterpiece and absolutely one of the best things Janakay has read in years — she was absolutely glued to the pages and bereft when the story ended. Hopefully, I’ll be posting a review later on, before all the details have totally faded but . . . the weather is so very nice right now, Janakay’s new house has its very own hammock and there are a great many interesting new books to read (Janakay adores novelty) ….

I will absolutely, positively get around to writing my review . . . .

and, for particularly low energy days, an overwhelming temptation to browse in that most addictive of sources . . .

This is an old edition of a very popular work. Do you have a copy?

But, despite these considerable temptations, Janakay will heroically summon her energy and get busy writing a serious review! (at some point)

Before leaving January entirely, the month’s comfort read deserves a mention, being an early novel by Rumer Godden, The Lady and the Unicorn. Any Rumer Godden readers out there? Godden is one of Janakay’s favorites for those times when she’s in the mood for a well-written novel, an exotic setting and at least one psychologically interesting character. Godden’s technique is traditional (which is fine with Janakay) and she can be surprisingly perceptive on issues of class and race, an important trait when writing about the British Raj, which Godden so very frequently does. The Lady and the Unicorn centers on the three daughters of an Anglo-Indian family and their struggle to establish themselves in a world that regarded them as neither British nor Indian. Although the novel’s strong supernatural element distracted a bit from Godden’s sharp social observations, the ghost story was fun and was skillfully incorporated into the main story line. All in all, The Lady and the Unicorn was a great way to pass an afternoon and a welcome distraction from packing boxes.

Maxi says “Finish packing those boxes or you’ll never get moved!”

February was a discovery month, bringing several new and wonderful novels in translation, thanks largely to Dolce Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge 13. This was especially gratifying as Janakay is just the teeniest bit parochial in her reading, mostly sticking as she does to anglophone writers. Participating in Doce Bellezza’s challenge, however, demonstrated just how much Janakay has been missing in her rather narrow approach. What treasures are contained in even the sketchiest sample of Japanese writing! Looking for a terse and elegant story of doomed love, set in one of the most poetic and deeply atmospheric novels I’ve ever read? Try Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country. More into a contemporary tale of the ultimate non-conformist? You couldn’t do better than Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, a chronicle of the deeply weird life and times of a very contented employee in one of Tokyo’s many “Smile Marts.” (I’d been intending to read this one for over a year. I’m happy to report it was definitely worth the wait). I also spent a few pleasant hours in which I finally got around to reading Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen, which I had come to regard as a permanent resident on my TBR list; while a little sentimental for my taste it was definitely worth the time I spent reading it.

A wonderful cover, n’est pas? You can almost feel the cold. This is one of those rare cases in which the cover art so beautifully conveys the mood of the novel

Another wonderful case of cover matching content!

71My7NN+yCL._AC_UY218_.jpg — A fun read; rather western in style & approach but providing plenty of insight (IMO at least) into young Tokyo life

And then, of course, there was Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters, another book I had tried but abandoned several years ago. What a loss that would have been, never to have read it, especially since I had the added benefit of DB’s wonderful commentary. All of these great novels deserve far more than my brief nods, and Janakay was fully intending to share her thoughts and opinions with you, but, well, life intervened. Movers were a’ comin’ and she simply had to clean out her basement (a word of unsolicited advice, dear readers! Never, ever go twenty-eight years without cleaning out your basement!)

To a lesser extent, February was also short story month. Although I do respect the genre I ordinarily tend to avoid actually reading short stories, as I regard them as a bit of a tease — just when I’m getting interested, poof! They’re over! This year, however, I began seeking them out, as they seemed to lend themselves to my currently fractured attention span (so difficult to concentrate, don’t you find, with all this constant hand washing and disinfecting?). One of my rewards was re-discovering Daphne DuMaurier’s fantastic novella Don’t Look Now. Have any of you read it? If not, why are you wasting time on my blog? Click off instantly and read it now. Afterwards, settle in for a wonderfully creepy afternoon of watching Nicholas Roeg’s 1974 film version, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland making their doomed way through a darkly beautiful and sinister Venice.

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If February was short stories & Japanese novels, March was packing boxes and saying good-byes; physically it was a long distance move and literature-wise a much quicker journey to some fun and distracting reads. I was particularly happy to (finally) sample the work of the very talented sci-fi writer N.K. Jemisin. Behind the curve as usual I had totally missed her acclaimed Broken Earth series, so I was particularly happy to read The City We Became, the first book in a new trilogy. Aside from being an unusual and gripping story, City’s view that cultural and ethnic diversity are necessary for our very survival made Janakay positively weep with gratitude, being such a refreshing respite from the jingoistic blather that seems so omnipresent these days. If you’d prefer an interior journey through a dark and twisted psyche to humanity’s struggle against an alien threat, I can happily recommend Flynn Berry’s A Double Life, loosely based on Britain’s Lord Lucan murder scandal. For a noir thriller with an interesting take on class, race and gender, check out Christopher Bollen’s A Beautiful Crime, an elegant tale of intrigue set mostly in Venice, (Janakay adores Venice, even though it’s been years and years since she visited). I also dipped a toe into some grimly funny Scandinavian fare, with Helene Tursten’s An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good (Janakay was looking for inspiration and did find it there, although — reluctantly — she draws the line at offing those annoying neighbors of hers). As a bonus, it has an absolutely wonderful cover:

In April, it was back to more serious, albeit still contemporary, fare. As you may surmise from my most recent post, I’m a big fan of Emily St. John Mandel. Do any of you share my enthusiasm? After it became sadly evident that our current pandemic was not, suddenly, just going to “disappear” (and Janakay absolutely draws the line at injecting herself with bleach or swallowing light beams or whatever), I seriously considered re-reading Mandel’s Station Eleven, one of my highlight books from a few years ago. I decided, however, that until we see how Covid-19 plays out, I couldn’t emotionally handle Mandel’s story of a vicious, highly contagious disease that ended current civilization (isn’t it spooky, how great writers have their fingers on the zeitgeist?). I settled instead on Mandel’s latest, The Glass Hotel, published at the end of March. Somewhat to my surprise (Mandel’s incredibly talented, but how many great books can anyone, even Hilary Mantel, produce in one lifetime?) Glass Hotel was very nearly as good as its immediate predecessor. Admittedly, the novel has no feel-good characters (it’s based loosely on Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme), so if you want warm and fuzzy, you’ll need to look elsewhere. What it does have is beautiful writing, a wonderfully complex structure that uses shifts in time and point of view to reinforce and enrich the story, and an utterly believable, complicated and heartbreaking cast of characters, all of whom are, morally, some shade of grey. I was hooked in from the beginning and absolutely couldn’t put it down for the two days or so it took me to read. The only downside was that I had to wait for its impact to fade a bit before I could start another novel, because I knew that nothing I could read would be anywhere nearly as good. Have any of you read Glass Hotel? Or any other Mandel novel, for that matter? If so, I’d love to hear your opinions. I’d also be interested in hearing how you handle that period of time after you’ve read a novel that just blows you away. Do you read non-fiction? Play solitaire? Immediately go on to the next novel on your list? Do share your secret of survival!

After a few days of absorbing Glass Hotel and letting its impact fade, I settled in to enjoy another contemporary novel, this time by Lily King. Although I’d avoided reading Euphoria, King’s highly touted previous novel (I believe it was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), I was curious about her work and decided to give her latest novel, Writers and Lovers, a try. Writers’ ostensible subject is the story of Casey, a thirty-something wannabe writer and part-time waitress; dealing with grief over her mother’s death, Casey struggles with her novel, works in a restaurant and becomes entangled with two very different men. Writers‘ real subject (IMO at least, don’t know if the critics would agree) is the creative process and the demands that it places on its devotees. I enjoyed the novel, without being overwhelmed by it; I was particularly taken with Casey’s criteria for determining a real bookstore and picked up several useful titles to add to my TBR list! (Knut Hamsun’s Hunger; Thomas Bernhard’s Woodcutters and, what I’m far more likely to actually read, Shirley Hazzard’s The Evening of the Holiday.) Prompted by an excellent review, I then sneaked in a quickie read of Camilla Bruce’s You Let Me In, a debut novel accurately described by The Guardian as a “smart, creepy fairy story” with a twist. If you, like Janakay, love Gothic horror and ambivalent endings, not to mention nasty malevolent fairies with a taste for human blood (not to mention hearts), then waste no time, dear reader! This is your book! Janakay’s one regret is that she didn’t save it for Halloween.

Well, that’s it for my round-up! What about yours? I’d love to compare lists!

Monday Miscellany: Nature on the Move

Magee Marsh, a prime stopover for migrating birds, located on the southern shore of Lake Erie. The boardwalk extends over almost seven acres and provides eye level viewing for some spectacular birds!

I’m afraid my blog has been distressingly free of any new content for — my heavens! — can it be a week now? Say it ain’t so, Joe! Well, it does happen, especially when we get just a teeny bit preoccupied, which does make all those good intentions fly right out the window! The distraction last week was SPRING! And not just toasty weather, nice new green leaves and flowers, but SPRING Migration! This may not mean much to all you normal people out there, but for birders (even for halfway, fairly frivolous birder types such as myself) spring migration is a very big deal indeed, especially if you live in a northern location where for the rest of the year the birding can be rather dull.

Migration’s most fundamental attraction is simply visual — birds are beautiful to look at, especially during the spring when they’re wearing nice new feathers and bright colors. The reason is obvious; they’ll soon be staring in their own version of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” as they’re migrating to summer mating and nesting areas. There’s also the simple fact that there are birds to look at, after a long winter during which there are few to be seen. During migration you not only see more birds, but you also have the chance to see bird species that are passing through your area as they travel to their summer home somewhere else. Spotting a species that you don’t normally see, or that you see only rarely, is like winning a lottery prize, albeit a non-material one.

There’s a more serious note, at least for me, however, that underlies the visual beauty and the enjoyment of being out of doors and that’s an almost mystical sense of how various creatures and processes make up the great web of life. Did you know that a North American warbler, for example a Blackpoll, weighs less than a ballpoint pen and is only about 5 inches (15 cm) long? Yet in the fall that tiny thing (and keep in mind that a Blackpoll is one of the larger warbler species) flies over 1800 miles non-stop, crossing parts of the the Atlantic Ocean to reach its wintering grounds. The journey is so tough that the bird’s body starts to literally consume itself, feeding off muscle and even organs that the bird doesn’t need as it flies, such as its digestive system (remember the warbler’s not eating after it launches itself over open water). Warblers and other song birds can only sustain their flights for so long; for them it’s literally reach ground before their bodies consume themselves or die. And, of course, many of them do. A storm; unusual weather patterns; a strong wind from the wrong direction; a housing development where a feeding stop used to be; gulls or migrating raptors looking for a snack and … well … you get the idea. The individual bird perishes, but the species goes on, at least until we finish paving the world over with concrete. When I see a migrating warbler I sometimes think of the moment when that warbler reaches the Atlantic, or the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Erie and, without knowing the outcome, strikes out into the unknown, simply hoping to reach a good spot on the other side of those vast and terrifying depths. If that isn’t a metaphor for human existence, I don’t know what is.

Blackpoll Warbler 2 — A Blackpoll Warbler at close range during spring migration. This particular Blackpoll has stopped to feed and rest before the next leg of its journey over Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes. The Blackpoll began its spring trip in South America; if it’s lucky, it will reach northern Canada or Alaska, where it will breed and raise young. While fairly common, Blackpolls (like nearly every other bird species) are rapidly declining in number.

Well, enough of the heavy stuff! One more factoid and I’ll shut up and let you enjoy photos. Did you know that birds, like airplanes, follow regular travel routes? These “flyways” usually occur along coastlines, rivers and mountains; if a species is lucky some nice nature group, like the Audubon Society, will have located a refuge providing food and a rest stop along its travel route. (The Audubon Society has a great website showing flyways for several common North American species).

I spent my week of non-blogging (and rather limited reading, I must admit) at Magee Marsh, a nature refuge on the southern shore of Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes along the northern United States (four of the Great Lakes form part of the border between the U.S. and Canada).

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Although it’s not on a flyway, Magee Marsh is a critical stopping point for migrants that come to Lake Erie and need food and rest before they’re strong enough to attempt a crossing. Essentially the Marsh, which is one of Lake Erie’s last bits of undeveloped wetland, is a giant bird hotel that provides shelter, food and water for the birds, and a boardwalk trail for the birders. Both groups appear happy with the arrangement.

Here are some of the things I saw at Magee Marsh last week:

Blackburnian Warbler 3 — A Blackburnian Warbler. It’s not difficult to see why one of the old fieldguides refers to it as “flame throat.”

Canada Warbler 3 — A Canada Warbler, an enormous favorite with just about everyone.

Bay-breasted Warbler 9 — A Bay-breasted Warbler. They’re even prettier when you can see one at a different angle.

Northern Parula 2 — A head-on view of a Northern Parula. It looks pretty fierce from this angle, but no need to worry — it weighs less than an ounce (28 grams).

Magnolia Warbler 8 — A Magnolia Warbler; many of these turn up regularly during spring migration.

Over 300 different bird species pass through Magee Marsh each year. Although warblers are certainly the main attraction, many other wonderful things also rely on the Marsh to survive during spring migration:

Rose-breasted Grosbeak 7 — A Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It’s not a warbler but I don’t mind, do you?

An American Woodcock. This photo doesn’t really convey the beauty of the bird’s subtle colors and patterns.

American Bald Eagles are some of Magee Marsh’s permanent residents; in spring you can usually see at least one nesting pair.

For a wildlife refuge, Magee Marsh is easily accessible from several midwestern cities, including Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit. It’s easy to stay in one of several small towns withing driving distance. I usually pick Port Clinton, a small town that’s primarily centered on sport fishing (it styles itself “the Walleye capital of the World” and who’s to say it isn’t?). Port Clinton has a sprinkling of older houses and an impressive array of yachts; it also doesn’t really come alive until late May, after spring migration is over and birds and birders have left.

Port Clinton was founded in the 1840s and grew slowly; it’s still pretty small. This is one of its relatively rare older buildings.

A glimpse of one of Port Clinton’s wharves. The summer sports fisherman aren’t here yet.

And what’s an outing of any kind without an end of the day stop at an Irish pub? McCarthy’s is conveniently located across from a popular wharf.

Love & Fate in Tom Drury’s “The Driftless Area”

Isn’t this a wonderful cover photo? Don’t you wonder who she is, and what she’s thinking, that woman of great but unconventional beauty, lost in her thoughts, so suggestive of mystery? And the title — the “driftless area” — whatever could it mean? It’s embarrassing to admit — but, dear reader, I hold nothing back from you — that I had never heard of Tom Drury, the author, when I bought this book, a purchase based strictly on the title and the cover art. Unbeknown to me, however, at least until a month or so ago, Drury is considered a “writer’s writer,” described by the New York Times, no less, as “a major figure in American literature, author of a string of novels without a dud in the bunch.” Oops! My bad! To add to my humiliation, only a few weeks ago the Guardian included The Driftless Area in its “Top Ten Books Set in the American Midwest.” At least by that point I had actually begun reading the novel, which had been gathering dust on my shelves since its purchase in 2013. All I can say is — thank heaven for Challenges! Had I not listed this as one of my selections for the 2019 TBR Challenge, The Driftless Area might still be sitting, forlorn and unread, in my upstairs junk room. And that would be a personal loss, for it’s a truly wonderful book.

The wonder, as far as I’m concerned, begins with the title, which is not only poetic but geologically precise. The Driftless Area (or Zone, as it’s sometimes called) is a relatively small area in the American Middle West that extends over parts of several states (for the precisionists among you, it covers extreme southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa and western Wisconsin). Because the ice age glaciers that smashed into the center of North America and created those flat-as-a-pancake midwestern corn fields missed the Driftless Area, the region has hills, caves, some of the oldest rivers in the world, sink holes, and rare bird and animal species that aren’t found elsewhere in the Midwest. I don’t often wax rhapsodic about book titles, but Drury’s is a gem. Not only does it give you the novel’s precise physical setting, it also hints at the strangeness and mystery of the story you are about to read. And, on yet a third level, it’s a subtle comment on the way some of these characters navigate or, more accurately perhaps, drift through their lives. A title like this sets the bar pretty high for the novel to come. Fortunately, Drury is such a skilled writer he carries it off.

One of the pleasures offered by Driftless is to be drawn very gradually, almost imperceptibly, into the very peculiar world that Drury describes. Conversely, this quality makes the novel difficult to review — aside from the fact that you don’t want to give too much away, it’s just a very difficult book to characterize. On one level, it’s an ultra-realistic story set in a small town in the rural midwest; on another level, well, it’s not. The blurb refers to Driftless as a type of “neo-noir” revenge drama, which it is, but — that’s not all it is (although that part of the novel is quite well done). Although I think the professional reviewers might differ from me here, I found that Driftless operates on what I can only call a metaphysical level. As one of the characters explains to another, there’s an “idea *** that time doesn’t exist;” that “everything that happened or will happen was here from the start” or that different versions of it were. In other words, what seems to be chance might not be; that in the Driftless Area the seemingly random course of events might actually be precisely and irrevocably charted.

Oh, dear — haven’t I made this novel sound terribly, terribly serious? Portentous even? Well, it isn’t either. The events revolve around Pierre Hunter, a mid-twenties graduate of Iowa State, who’s taken his science degree and cello, and returned to his small home town of Shale, where he tends bar at a speakeasy called the Jack of Diamonds. Pierre isn’t a slacker, exactly — he’s far more complex than that — but he lives his life stripped of the pretenses that most of us navigate by and that quality leads to unintended consequences. One of which is Stella Rosmarin, the beautiful, mysterious solitary who saves Pierre’s life and becomes his lover. Another is Shane, an itinerant criminal who tries to rip him off and ends up losing a small fortune in ill-gotten gains. Drury is a master of terse, elegant dialogue that can be extremely funny in a very dry way. He also has a wonderful knack for creating characters; even his minor ones tend to linger in the mind (one of my favorites is Pierre’s boss, a former Silicon Valley type, who worries that the Jack’s red vinyl chairs might be “too busy.” The locals who patronize the place, on the hand, are impressed by the air conditioning).

In conclusion, dear reader, I enjoyed this book immensely. Do I recommend it without reservation, with enthusiam, to you? Well……………… do you enjoy the Coen Brothers? Do you like your reality straight-up, or do you prefer it mixed with a hint of the strange? Can you accept that sun needs shade, that life needs death, that, as Pierre puts it “everything that succeeds creates the conditions for its own demise”? If your answer to at least a couple of these questions was a resounding “yes,” then go for it! You’ll love this book as much as I did.