Nov/Dec 2018

Would like to thank everyone for festive holiday party at the Sandusky Yacht Club! Here are the books that we discussed:

Maverick - Cary Ashby
The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse - Alexander McCall Smith
Fear - Bob Woodward
David Baldacci
Circling the Sun - Paula McLain
The President is Missing - James Patterson and Bill Clinton
The Great Bridge - David McCullough
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean - Edward Kritzler
Answer to Job - Carl Jung
Maisie Dobbs series
How to Write a Sonnet
Nomadland - Jessica Bruder
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders
Somewhere in Time - Richard Matheson
The Great British Baking Show
Death by Dumpling - Vivien Chien
Dopesick - Beth Macy
Always Cedar Point - H. John Hildebrandt

From Mary Lou in Maryland:

Booknotes Laura November – December 2018


Alexandra Fuller, Quiet Until the Thaw (2017). The author was born in England, spent most of her first 25 years in South Africa, and then moved to Wyoming. This novel is set in South Dakota in the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are cousins, raised by their grandmother, Mina Overlooking Horse. She teaches her grandsons Lakota culture and history and wisdom. The title is taken from a Cree poem explaining the name of a woman who never speaks in winter. Rick Overlooking Horse doesn’t talk much even as a boy. As a disabled Vietnam veteran he renounces all use of the White Man’s currency, establishes his home in a secluded corner of the reservation, and trades by barter. He steeps himself in Oglala culture, studies the animals and plants around him, breeds horses, trades in herbal medicines, and gains a reputation as a Medicine Man and Elder. In contrast, You Choose Watson evades the draft, goes north to Canada, drifts east, becomes a drug dealer, and eventually returns to the Rez. He turns politician and serves briefly as Tribal Chairman before being ousted for incompetence and corruption. The social and political upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s are a glaring background for the Lakota concepts of the timelessness of history and the continuity of all things. Mina and the two cousins are fully characterized. The prose style is lean and poetic. This is a fascinating and philosophical novel.

Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (2004). This 750-page historical biography was the inspiration for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical that opened on Broadway in 2015. Chernow’s detailed presentation of the life, character, accomplishments, and failures of this formerly under-appreciated Founding Father provides a whole different perspective on the leaders and events of the nation’s formative years. The biography reveals how much of the US economic system and governmental structure were the product of the fruitful intellect of General Washington’s chief aide de camp, the main author of the Federalist Papers, and the first Secretary of the Treasury. None of this is dull stuff. In Chernow’s narrative, Hamilton’s personality and private life are as much a part of his story as his public writings and accomplishments. This biography essentially refutes our common understanding of the nation’s early history and the men who shaped it.

Susan Holloway Scott, I, Eliza Hamilton (2017). This is a fictionalized autobiography of the wife of Alexander Hamilton. It begins in 1777 when she is 20 years old and meets her future husband when he was a dashing Lieutenant Colonel working as General Washington’s Aide de Camp. Eliza describes their courtship, their married life together during the Revolution, and their many separations and relocations while Alexander was deeply involved in the formation of the nation, the development of the constitution, and the establishment of its financial systems. They had 8 children and Alexander was a devoted father. After his death, his political enemies (Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe) did all they could to wipe out all signs of his accomplishments. After she recovered from the initial shock, Eliza sent the remaining 50 year of her life documenting her husband’s legacy. The novel is essentially a love story, but its strength is its portrayal of the society and culture of the time.

Bill Clinton and James Patterson, The President is Missing (2018). This is a fast-paced and suspenseful thriller, as good as any Patterson has written. The White House and political detail is as accurate as only President Clinton could make it. The two authors obviously had fun with this project. The central issue of the novel is the security and vulnerability of our electronic
infrastructure, essential to our national security, our economy, and our individual safety and wellbeing. It is a very scary novel.

Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House (2018). Truth is scarier than fiction. Investigative reporter Woodward describes the chaos and disfunction in the White House in scrupulous detail. The title is from Trump quotations that real power is fear. With this as a fundamental motivating concept, his penchant for creating chaos is an inevitable result. White House staff are frustrated with his short attention span, his refusal to accept briefings on complex issues, and his insistence on following his own notions, despite contrary expert advice from all quarters. He has fixed ideas that are impervious to fact or persuasion. The staff live in fear, or at least severe anxiety, over what he may do or say next. The country and the world have a great deal to fear from this manner of “leadership.”

Barbara Hambly, The Emancipator’s Wife (2005). This is a historical novel of the life of Mary Todd Lincoln. Using the established facts about Mary Lincoln’s actions, temperament and health issues, Hambly’s research into medical practices of the mid-19th century leads her to hypothesize that Mary’s condition was worsened by addiction to medications containing alcohol and opium. To present this theory of Mary’s condition, Hamble creates the character of John Wilamet, a former slave who first meets Mary in Washington in 1862 and later encounters her as a patient in a mental institution where he worked. The novel begins with an account of Mary’s 1875 trial for insanity, brought by her only surviving son. Partly through Mary’s recollections while committed to an Illinois asylum, the novel backtracks to events of her childhood and early life as a Southern Belle, with an unusual and “unwomanly” interest in her father’s political discussions, especially the moral, political and social issues related to slavery and plantation economy. Hambly also chronicles Lincoln’s courtship, the couple’s impoverished early marriage years, Mary’s support for his political career, and Mary’s growing isolation as Lincoln becomes totally emersed in the trials of the Civil War, and finally the assassination. The historical events are presented in terms of Mary’s experiences. Mary suffered severe trauma from the deaths of her sons and painful injuries in a carriage accident in 1863. Her health and mental stability declined as a result. Cultural and medical beliefs and practices of the era about the inferior and unstable female constitution merely worsened her conditions. She had an extremely difficult life.

From the Any-Book Book Bunch in Oklahoma:

Books

Coben, Harlan. The Woods. Connelly, Michael. Dark Sacred Night (A Ballard and Bosch Novel) Gabaldon, Diana. Outlander (Book One) Grunes, Barbara, and Virginia van Vykt. Cookie Advent Calendar Cookbook. Ishiguro, Kazuo. When We Were Orphans. Kerrison, Catherine. Jefferson’s Daughters – Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America.
Koontz, Dean. The Crooked Staircase: A Jane Hawk Novel.
Lagercrantz, David. The Girl in the Spider's Web; The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye.
Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn.
Paris, B.A. Behind Closed Doors.
Van Heugten, Antoinette. The Tulip Eaters.
Warner, Ana and Curt and Dave Boling. The Warner Boys: Our Family’s Story of Autism and Hope.
Westover, Tara. Educated: A Memoir.

Other Books:

Stoppard, Tom. The Coast of Utopia.

Television:

Luther; The Wire. (Idris Elba)
Maigret. (Rowan Atkinson)