Manitou Canyon by William Kent Krueger

 

"Sift. Sift all that comes to you. The answer is what is left in your hands after everything else has slipped through your fingers.....As my niece has said, finding is never about seeking. It is about opening yourself to what is already there."

         -Henry Meloux, advice to Cork, from the novel

Well, check off book 15 in the Cork O'Connor series. My followers know I am a huge fan! This one gets a 5 rating, as have almost all the others. After a couple of 500+ page tomes, this one was a refreshing, face-paced mystery, just over 300 pages. Krueger has a beautiful writing style, especially when describing the natural landscape of Minnesota and surrounding lands. Short chapters and cliffhangers make these novels true page turners. I've gotten to know and love Cork O'Connor and his family. Have gotten to experience his 3 children growing up while Cork and family have gone through many rough and frightening times. I will be so sad when and if Krueger ends the series.

In this O'Connor adventure, Cork, former sheriff and now private investigator, is hired by Lindsay and Trevor Harris, grown grandchildren of John Harris, who has mysteriously disappeared in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. After a massive search has turned up nothing, they are still concerned that their grandfather is out there and in trouble.

Without spoiling the plot, I will just say that Cork and Lindsay, who accompanies him, disappear as well and end up in grave danger. Perpetrators are a Native terrorist group called the Warrior Cohort who seem to stop at nothing to get their point across to "white folks" (developers) who seek to destroy land they hold sacred.

Helping in the search for Cork and Lindsay are several who care about Cork, including his son Stephen, Daniel (future son-in-law), Rainy Bisonette and Rainy's grandfather, Henry Meloux, the aged and wise Mide, quoted above and one of my favorite characters.

I will just say I loved the ending with its implication of sweet things to come. On to #16, Sulfur Springs!

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

"Likewise, the Charles Dickens one, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat's ass. You'd think he was from around here."    

        -Demon, referring to Catcher in the Rye and David Copperfield 

Maybe you have figured out by now that I am a sucker for stories of kids trying to survive tough circumstances. I taught fifth grade and that is about the age at which Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon, begins his story. In contemporary southern Appalachia he survives an abusive stepfather, foster care, child labor, poor schooling, athletic success and addiction, among other obstacles. The novel is inspired by David Copperfield which I sort of wish I had read, or reread, beforehand. (I probably read it but ages ago!) 

This was the second 500+ page novel I have read recently, and it got a little tiresome partway through. I gave it a 4 rating because Kingsolver's writing is excellent, and I felt she portrayed Demon realistically. When the young man became addicted to opioids after they were prescribed due to an injury, I was reminded of The Empire of Pain The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe, which our Page Turners read last year. That nonfiction book opened our eyes to the deviousness and callousness of the pharmaceutical companies that pushed those addictive drugs which ruined many people's lives and may still be doing so. 

Looking for Alaska by John Green

 

"It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating. Meriwether Lewis's last words were, 'I am not a coward, but I am so strong. So hard to die.' I don't doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind."

                     -Miles, from the novel

Our group selected this book, a young adult fiction, as our representative from the "banned books list." I can't say I enjoyed it very much for a variety of reasons. I will give it a rating of 3 since I felt the writing was skilled, in a debut novel at that. There just wasn't much in the characters or plot to which I could relate. 

High school junior Miles Halter is sent from his home in Florida to attend the Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. There he makes friends with some unique characters including Chip Martin, nicknamed "The Colonel." Also in the circle are Takuma Hikohito and Alaska Young, a girl with whom Miles, or Pudge as he has been tagged, is enamored. Miles loves reading biographies and is obsessed with the last words of famous people. He is seeking the "Great Perhaps," a concept of peace within oneself, a philosophy of poet Francois Rabelais.

When Alaska is not cooking up pranks for the group to play she is dwelling on the labyrinth, or maze of life proposed by Gabriel Garcia Marquz in The General in His Labyrinth about Simon Bolivar. She definitely has some emotional baggage. I had never heard of that book or the poetry of Rabelais so I was left a little confused by the references.

Looking for Alaska is described as a coming-of-age novel with themes of grief, guilt and hope, as well as showing the impact one person's life can have on another. It is probably appropriate for mature high school students, but I could almost understand attempts to ban it, especially if certain parts are taken out of context.

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Our group met today to discuss Looking for Alaska. Our average rating was 3.3 with most voting 3 or 4. We started with a rousing discussion about "book banning." And, in fact, we hardly consulted the discussion questions from the publisher. We didn't need any incentive to discuss this novel!

I have no wish to reveal too much but some of our people thought the ending was better than the silly teenage antics of the first part because it was very thoughtfully written, addressing emotions all humans experience in their lives.

FYI there is another book with the exact same title about the actual state of Alaska!

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

"...one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in human experience for every single person in a city the size of New York to feel with assurance that their experience is unique. And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it."                  

        -Professor Abacus Abernathe, from the novel

I love this novel! I had checked it out from the library on Overdrive and it took me so long to start it, I was at risk of losing it before I could finish. And after I had been captivated by the plot and characters! At over 500 pages, I had a lot of reading to do in a few days but I made it! 

The story reminded me of Huckleberry Finn and, more recently, This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. I had never heard of the Lincoln Highway which the reader learns was the first transcontinental road. 

In 1954 18-year-old Emmett Watson has just been released from a work farm where he was sentenced for manslaughter. He is returned to his home in Nebraska and his much younger brother Billy. The two are orphans and the family property is being foreclosed on, so they decide to take the Lincoln Highway west to start a new life. 

Two of Emmett's former inmates show up---Duchess, a charming but devious one, and Wooly, a sensitive, caring type---and they have some different plans for the 4 of them. I cannot begin to tell you all the adventures they have, and I wouldn't want to. Amor Towles has done an incredible job of it through multiple narrators.

Billy is attached to a book called Professor Abacus Abernathe's Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers and Other Intrepid Travelers. The book includes many references to the Odyssey, which in a way, is what Emmett and Billy are on---even including the introduction of a vagabond named Ulysses. Billy is able to meet the author, who is quoted above. 

I rate The Lincoln Highway a 5 out of 5. I could even see reading it again in a few years. Maybe the second time I could read more slowly and savor the intricacies of the plot and Towles's wonderful writing.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

 

"But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn. He managed to forget that Carmen was a soldier in the organization that had kidnapped him."

    -from the novel

I can't remember who among our group of Page Turners suggested this novel. I didn't think I was going to like it at first but I ended up being intrigued by its unique plot. I have given a rating of 4.

To start, there is a birthday party being held for an important Japanese businessman, Katsumi Hosokawa, in the home of the vice president of an unknown South American country. In attendance are many international VIPs and a famous opera star, Roxane Coss, and her accompanist who have been hired to provide the entertainment. Suddenly a group of guerillas, La Familia de Martin Suarez, "crash the party"! When they discover El Presidente, whom they planned to kidnap, is not in attendance, they decide to hold all the guests as hostages. The people are detained for months while the terrorist generals refuse to negotiate except to allow most of the women to leave. They keep the singer. Fortunately, it did not seem they were badly treated.

There were so many interesting characters besides the ones already mentioned----Gen, Hosokawa's aide and interpreter, a priest, a Red Cross mediator who is allowed to come and go and the host Vice President Iglesias. Plus the reader gets to know several of the soldiers, two of whom are young women.

I was struck by this review from New York magazine:

 "The author has taken what could have been a variation on The Lord of the Flies scenario and fashions instead a 'Lord of the Butterflies,' a dreamlike fable in which impulses toward beauty and love are shown to be as irrepressible as the instincts for violence and destruction...In more ways than one, Bel Canto is about finding beauty in unexpected places."    

 I will find out soon what others of the group think about this unusual story. More then...

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I predicted the rating would be below 3 but I was wrong.  The group average was 3.4. There were actually 10 ratings of 4 or 5 and only 4 votes of 1 or 2. Not many were on the fence---we either liked it or we didn't! 

Almost everyone enjoyed at least a few of the characters. Those who knew more about opera seemed to like the novel more. Some found the novel tedious, but when we thought about it, being a hostage WOULD by definition be tedious. Some found it unbelievable. Several, like me, didn't like it at first but then it "grew" on us. We liked how people in a bad situation kept looking for the bright side.

As always, the discussion rated a 5!

A Catered St. Patrick's Day by Isis Crawford

 

"...But I do believe that hypocrisy and/or willful blindness are wonderful tools when used correctly. In fact, I can honestly say that if more people engaged in those practices, life would be a great deal smoother."

                  -Sean Simmons, from the novel

           

This quote is one I don't buy into, if I understand it correctly. The character it is spoken to didn't agree either. This novel is pretty short on profound ideas and memorable quotes.

The book was a gift a few years ago. With St. Pat's Day approaching I decided to pull it off the shelf and give it a try. At first, I thought of it as "fluff" and didn't know if I wanted to continue. After several chapters I became more interested and needed to see how it would end.

An assumed murder at the beginning of this mystery was pretty far-fetched---a guy is drowned in a barrel of green beer outside a pub. It turns out he has lost a lot of people's money in a very bad investment so there are many suspects. 

The Simmons family runs a cafe called A Little Taste of Heaven but they do some sleuthing on the side. An influential acquaintance hires Sean, a former investigator, and daughters Bernie and Libby, to find the killer when her nephew is arrested for the "beer barrel" murder.

Though not a literary masterpiece by any stretch, the novel was entertaining enough. The sisters are catty at times and share some sisterly jibes which adds some humor to an already pretty silly premise. I am rating this one a 2.5. 

Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

 

"Kindness, empathy, humor, humility, passion and ambition all marked him [Lincoln] from the start. But he grew, and continued to grow, into a leader who became so powerfully fused with the problems tearing his country apart that his desire coalesced into a single indomitable force. That force has not only enriched subsequent leaders but has provided our people with a moral compass to guide us. Such leadership offers us humanity, purpose, and wisdom, not in turbulent times alone, but also in our everyday lives."

     -Doris Kearns Goodwin on the leadership of Abraham Lincoln

I read Team of Rivals by this author several years ago and enjoyed it. I don't read a steady diet of nonfiction, but I do love American history. The subtitle of that book is "The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln," my favorite president.

I saw the author in a TV interview with Rachel Maddow where this, her latest book, was mentioned. Goodwin writes about each of 4 presidents who served ably during turbulent times, including Lincoln and also Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

The book was dense with information but fascinating---almost a page-turner in many places. The format is brilliant. Goodwin takes each of the four presidents chronologically, describing their youth, early influences and obstacles, and their developing ambition and leadership skills. Then one by one, she places them in a position early in their presidencies where they face circumstances perilous to America's economic and/or political future. 

It was no surprise that Lincoln's biggest trial was the Civil War and preservation of the Union. One outstanding accomplishment of Theodore Roosevelt was the Coal Strike of 1902 which was news to me but SO interesting. One had to guess that FDR's claim to fame was either the Great Depression or WWII. Goodwin covers both with an emphasis on the Hundred Days, starting with saving the banks and then passing an amazing amount of legislation to help the American people who were struggling financially. Lyndon Johnson was the biggest surprise to me. I remembered him in his fall from favor over the Vietnam War, but Goodwin showcases his earliest time as president after Kennedy's assassination when he capitalized on the nation's sadness to get Congress moving on legislation that Kennedy had wanted, particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like FDR, he got many important bills through in a short amount of time.

Goodwin's last section, the Epilogue called Of Death and Remembrance, she begins with Johnson with whom she worked post-presidency and ended with Lincoln who seemed to set the standard of leadership for the other three. (See quote above) I learned so much about these four men and how they positively affected, in some cases even saved our country! I rate the book a 5.