Grant, Ron Chernow

Grant by Ron Chernow is a book that my father was reading the last time I visited him and he seemed to really be enjoying it.  I listened to the audio version read by Mark Bramhall.

Started: 6/28/2018

Completed: 9/10/2018

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  My father

Review:

My thoughts of Grant mostly involved him being a disgraceful drunk who stopped drinking in order to join the Civil War and then he raised to President where his term was full of corruption.  This is a harsh and unfair assessment of the man.

He had a difficult life as a young man and was not really able to be an effective businessman as he simply trusted people too much.  He probably was encouraged to resign from the military due to drinking and definitely did not handle alcohol well (he was almost certainly an alcoholic).  It was interesting to me to learn that his best man was Longstreet and that Longstreet supported Grant in many ways throughout his life.

Grant's life during the Civil War was largely known to me, but the rich details of the book helped put flesh on the bones with which I was familiar.

I was broadly aware that Grant had started reconstruction, but I was unaware of his two terms as President and his strong efforts to help newly freed slaves.  His presidency was marked by corruption, but it seems that this corruption was due to Grant's innocence and not his complicity.  I had no idea how strongly Grant fought the KKK.

I learned of Grant's "round the world tour" during which he met with leaders of many nations all over the world and was a true diplomat.  I learned that Grant had pursued a third term and later campaigned for Republicans.

Grant's death surprised me (from cancer) at a relatively young age probably due to his love of cigars.

I was floored that Grant and Twain were close and that it was Twain who idolized Grant and not the reverse.

This is a long, good book.  It is a really good look at the man, his friends, his enemies, and those who took advantage of him.

Solar Bones, Mike McCormack

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack is a sweeping Irish story of one man's family history.  Written in the first person as a stream of consciousness, the book explores both life and death against the backdrop of industry in Ireland.  I think that I first read about it in this NYT book review, but I had thought it was somehow linked to Obama (it was not).  Who knows how I came to choose it, but nonetheless, I found it on the first table, in the first box, first book I saw at the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival and that is auspicious (it was in my "to read" list, so I had to make a donation to the Elementary school and read the book).

Started: 9/2/2018

Completed: 9/7/2018

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  The New York Times?

Words and phrases for which I sought help:

Angelus bell -- A ringing of the bells that came after Vespers to indicate it was time for 3 consecutive "Hail Mary" prayers.  The ringing often went to 100 times to distinguish the Angelus bell from other bells.

boreen -- a narrow country road.

Catherine Wheel -- also known as "breaking wheel" is a wheel (about the same as a wagon wheel generally with an iron rim) used by an executioner to break the bones of a person and execute them through a blow to the chest or neck (there is more to it, but I think that this is adequate to describe the horrific manner of execution).  St. Catherine was to be executed this way, but she touched the wheel and it broke apart, so she was beheaded instead.

drumlin -- a low oval mound or small hill, typically one of a group, consisting of compacted boulder clay molded by past glacial action.

etiolated -- pale and drawn out due to lack of light

hustings -- an election platform

iron maiden -- a torture device sort of like a sarcophagus with spikes on the inside.  The spikes rarely killed the person directly, but the person generally died of dehydration or "bleeding out."

nacelle -- A streamlined housing or tank for something on the outside of an aircraft or motor vehicle.

rood -- A crucifix, especially one positioned above the rood screen of a church or on a beam over the entrance to the chancel.

sheugh -- a furrow, ditch, or trench

Review:

This book left me out of breath.  The lack of a period pretty much anywhere left me wondering when I could breath.  This book was truly a book that embodies the concept of stream of consciousness.  There were nice, clever, and precise turns of phrase.  The characters were well developed and their actions were both predictable and surprising just like, well, normal people.  It was a fun read, though it was a hard read.  The book just keeps rolling along with the plot developing (to steal from the book) like concrete spilling into a form.  The plot seemed to roll everywhere at once and it is possible to envision that one sort of runs around the edges in a spiral grasping at plot points wondering what was missing at each point and knowing that there will be another shot as the spiral weaves outward.

At the same time, the concrete gradually fills the forms and pops up over your boots as you wait to use your float and smooth out the rough parts.  The inevitable problem, however, is that you really don't know what your are trying to smooth.  It isn't at all clear how the various tendrils of the story come together except by turns of phrase that come back and sort of weave themselves through the concrete like reinforcing wire.  Truly there, fundamental to the pour, but hidden in the totality of the result.

I think that I have strained this metaphor about as far as I can.  It is a good book.  It is very hard to put down.  It wore me out.  Read it.

The Terrible Twos, Ishmael Reed

The Terrible Twos by Ishmael Reed is a book I purchased at a library sale probably close to 20 years ago.  It has languished on my shelves having suffered from disorganized reorganizing and it was not until it popped to the top of my reading list that I realized for how long I had owned this book.  There was a time when I was interested in anything that looked at Santa Claus in a new way.  I have a feeling that I was also trying to understand racism, so the tag line from the New York Review of Books on the back cover likely also caught my eye, "...and few have been so stinging about the absurdity of American racism."

Started:  July 19, 2018

Completed: September 3, 2018

Recommendation: Not Recommended

Recommended by:  Nobody

Review:

Satire.  This book has some comedic elements, but it is mostly satire.  The satire, however, swings around, literally, an orange headed president who is out of his depth and oblivious to the harm he is enabling.  Sound familiar?  At least somewhat familiar?  Because of this, the satire in the book started to feel more like prophecy.  A prophetic and absurd vision that we are actually living about 40 years removed from the writing of the book.

Allegory.  This book has a fair amount of allegorical content, but it is a little difficult for me to pick up.  The racism I saw was blatant.  There was a fair amount of history of the various forms of Santa Claus packed in and surely there is allegory buried there that was below (above?) my field of view.

Racism.  The racism I saw in this book was brutal, forthright and honest.  The best part of the book, in my opinion, however, was the Spruce tree that took issue with being cut down for a Christmas tree and how it sought its revenge.  Built into the whole story of the Spruce is a little less overt racism and a little more clever description of how the underpinnings of racism and brutality can be undercut.

The story line seemed obtuse to me.  I never really got into the book.  I found no character sympathetic and it vaguely reminded me of reading Pilgrim's Progress.  It felt to me that the story line was meaningless, the characters were truly shallow and mono-dimensional caricatures.  I could not glean from the book what others who really enjoyed it did.  Given the reviews, it felt like it was over my head and that makes me sad, but I cannot really recommend it to anyone.