August 2020
A variety of consuming culture is around us this summer: books, films, newsletters.
Here's what we discussed:
If It Bleeds - Stephen King
Salem's Lot - Stephen King
Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert
A Minute to Midnight - David Baldacci
Nothing Ventured - Jeffrey Archer
Beyond a Reasonable Stout - Ellie Alexander
Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty
My Own Country - Abraham Verghese
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Circe - Madeline Miller
The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware
Knockemstiff - Donald Ray Pollock
The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock
From Mary Lou in Maryland:
Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (2019). There is a rare recessive gene that, when carried by both parents, produces offspring with blue skin. The condition is called methemoglobinemia and was first found in the USA in a family in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky. In the 1930s President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) established the Pack Horse Library Project to create jobs for women and distribute reading materials in remote parts of Appalachia. These historical events form the background for Richardson’s novel. The Book Woman of the title is Cussy Mary Carter, named for the native French town of her grandfather who unwittingly brought the blue skin gene to Troublesome Creek. Her family is harassed and reviled for their blue skin in a culture where there is little tolerance for differences. Her mother has recently died. Her father is a coal miner, exploited by the bosses based on his unusual color. Over his objections, she gets a job as a WPA horse librarian. She rides her mule Junia (named for the sole female apostle) deep into the hills and coves, distributing worn books, magazines, and pamphlets to her patrons, many of whom are semi-literate. The poverty in the hills is extreme and her service goes far beyond the distribution of printed materials. Her life is endangered many times and happiness seems unattainable. Her kindness, strength, and resilience win our respect and eventually that of some of her neighbors as well. We are very much on her side throughout this engrossing novel.
Kathy Lynn Emerson, Making Headlines: A Biography of Nellie Bly (1989). This slim illustrated book tells the story of the pioneering female investigative journalist in the 1880s and 1890s. She began her career in Pittsburg, then went to New York, where she talked her way into a job with Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper. She had already made a name for herself when she persuaded the World to send her on a round-the-world trip in an attempt to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in 80 Days. The World’s coverage of this trip and the contest they run to guess the exact time of her journey made her famous far beyond New York. (Nellie Bly is one of the authors covered in my 8 Authors zoom class this summer, the only one I’d never heard of.)
Matthew Goodman, Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World (2013). When Nellie Bly left New York on November 14, 1889, neither she nor The World knew that the New York magazine Cosmopolitan had launched their female journalist, Elizabeth Bisland, on a competing trip later the same day. Bly sailed by steamer east across the Atlantic, while Bisland traveled west by train. Bisland seemed to have an advantage in weather and geography and The Cosmopolitan challenged The World to a race. Bly remained unaware of her competition until near the end of her race. The two women were very different in background, personality, and preparation. Bly grew up poor in the coal country of Pennsylvania, while Bisland was from a Southern plantation family who moved north during reconstruction. Bly lived in a poor NYC neighborhood while Bisland and her sister lived on the fashionable side of 5th Avenue, where they ran a popular salon. Bly traveled with one dress, one coat, a deerstalker hat, and a hand grip. Bisland traveled with an extensive wardrobe in a steamer trunk and a Gladstone valise. Despite these differences, each woman was committed to beating the fictional record of Jules Verne’s novel. The book is full of historical and cultural background, both of the post-Civil War US and British imperialism. It didn’t matter that Nellie and Elizabeth spoke only English, as all the ports and cities where they changed forms of transportation were outposts of the British Empire. This history-based account reads like a novel.
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (2014). This is the best World War II novel I have read n a very long time. It relates the stories of two flawed but exceptional children as they grew up struggling to survive while war ravages Europe. In 1934 Marie-Laure LeBlanc is going blind at the age of six. She goes daily with her father to the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, where he is the locksmith and keeper of all the keys. There she hears the story of a cursed jewel deep in the vault called the Sea of Flames. She also learns about the collections in the museum and becomes especially interested in seashells. Her father builds a model of their neighborhood to assist her in learning to navigate the city with her white cane. She learns to read braille and is enamored with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In 1940, they flee Paris for St. Malo. Also in 1934, snowy-haired eight-year-old Werner Pfennig is living with his sister in an orphanage in a coal mining town near Essen, Germany. He is undersized and timid and he asks unanswerable questions. He scavenges bits of machinery and soon he figures how to make a radio receiver. In 1940 his unusual aptitude is discovered and he is taken to a special Nazi school, Schulpforta, and trained to track the radios of the Resistance. The experiences of Marie-Laure and Werner from 1934 to 1944 reveal the hardships and brutality of the war in personal terms. The novel is rich with imagery and the structure is complex.
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