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Book of the Week: The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes

Sometimes personal history can intersect wtih true crime. When I was a child in Ann Arbor, Michigan, there was a serial killer in the area. He murdered seven young women. I remember reading about it in the newspapers. I remember seeing police cars in the area. I remember my parents discussing it. I remember being at a Greek coffee shop and my mother whispering to me that the man at the counter eating the egg lemon was a famous psychic who had come to help with the case.

It was interesting to read this account of that time as an adult. These murders happened in the late sixties. When I read the book, I thought about how much more advanced our forensics methods are today. These killings went on for two years. The police in the book are depicted as hardworking, dedicated, frustrated professionals. A footprint would be washed away by the rain. They would swap a body with a mannequin dummy and stake out the area, waiting for the killer to return, only to lose him in the woods. The newspapers called the police The Keystone Kops. They just did not have the right tools then for this type of investigation.

It was different in the sixties. People did accept rides from strangers. They wandered at night. In one of the cases, the victim had just mailed her family information about the killings, a map where the bodies had been found. She wrote on the map her assurances that she was being careful. But then right after she mailed it, she met John Norman Collins, who asked her if she wanted a ride on his motorcyle, and she said yes. Collins was eventually apprehended and is now serving a life sentence for these murders.

I thought the book was very well written. These were dramatic, lurid crimes, and it would have been easy to have written something sensationalistic about what happened. Keyes writes about the community. He gives a heartfelt, honest account of how it was in that time and place. You wouldn't think it would be fun to read this book, but I found it surprisingly heartfelt and well researched.  I thought it was fascinating to go back and fill in the details with an adult brain.

Book of the Week: Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong Self-Defeating Thinking Habits by Wayne Dyer

I really liked this book. I found it charming, which I knew I would, the minute I saw that there was an exclamation point and the word "begone" in the title. It's a book of spiritual precepts. It's about identifying more with the big picture of things rather than with perceived limitations. I liked it that it was a book where you could think and make decisions, but it didn't feel like a workbook to me. I was afraid that this was going to be one of those books where you have to take a moment and write about your favorite place, and I understand the value of that, but when I pick up a book to read, I generally like to just read, and with this book, I could do that.

I wanted more stories. Wayne Dyer is a very engaging storyteller, and I really enjoyed the moments when he applied his principles to his own experiences. I found the book to be comforting and inspiring. It does invite you to look at things in a different way. When I was reading the book, I found that I would wake up in the morning with ideas that I needed for a creative project. New clients and clients that I had worked with long ago contacted me. I also heard from a high school friend and a friend from fifteen years ago. It was all interesting to note.

It's a book that's written in a very straightforward fashion, but I think that if you do apply the principles, it is a very meaningful read. I'm hoping that I can continue applying the lessons it taught me.

Book of the Week: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

This is a book that I read endlessly while I was young. It was one of those books that comforted me. It was a book where I felt I knew the characters, and they were people that mattered to me. It was a book where I was so happy that it was long and that it had illustrations. I think one reason why I loved the book so much is that, despite their idiosyncracies, these were characters who loved each other and who sincerely tried to help each other through challenging times. I also liked it in the book that people's destinies often seemed to fit their nature. There wasn't a cookie-cutter checklist to their lives. The  decisions they made often reflected their spirit.

Jo was my favorite. She was the writer. She was the one who loved to read. She longed to be true to herself, and she was devoted to her family. Katherine Hepburn played Jo in one of the film adaptations, and she seemed to me to capture the spirit of this character. I'm trying to erase from my memory banks that June Allyson was also cast as this character in a later version of this book.

I don't know how many times I have read this book. Much of it feels burned in the brain. Some of it is silly: Amy and the limes, the burned dress and the single glove, the clothespin on the nose. Much is precious: a beloved piano, a sacrifical hair cut, the wonder of a man named Professor Baer. I think it is a book that I will soon have to read again.

Book of the Week: My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin

My Year of Flops began as a column for the AV Club. Rabin creates case files with funny titles and then talks about a film that has failed both critically and at the box office. He often gives a historical perspective to the film. He gives a very specific accounting of how he views each work. Although many of these columns were originally published on the AV Club website, there are new pieces for the book. Rabin has also added additional interviews of key people involved in these projects that accompany some of these reviews. In each case, Rabin hands down a judgment: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. There's a great deal of humor involved in this work. There is also a lot of empathy. Rabin seems to sincerely want to figure out what went wrong, if anything. Sometimes he just concludes that it was a film ahead of its time and strongly encourages us to watch them now. Sometimes it's just an all out disaster. This is definitely a book that I would call a labor of love. It was really fun to read. It made me laugh out loud sometimes. I will definitely want to read more of his work.

Book of the Week: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

I thought that this was a very interesting memoir in its approach. This is a book about a particular aspect of a person's life. In this case, Martin tells us from the outset, that he performed stand-up comedy for eighteen years, was incredibly successful for the last four, and then walked away. Right away, he has my interest. He has laid out his story, and now I want to know the details.

It was interesting to me to see how Martin handled his personal life in telling his story. He talks of his relationship with his family and how he resolved his issues with them over the years. He speaks of anxiety attacks. He mentions marriages. But the fulcrum of this book is always the work, how he started as a comic who literally started out doing his act wtih no one in the room (the theory was that passerbys would hear his voice and venture in) to the real problem of figuring out how to do vital comedy with thousands of people in attendance.

Martin's prose felt effortlessly gorgeous, and it was illuminating in the end to read Martin's gracious acknowledgements to his many friends who read the book and gave him feedback while it was in process. It made me wish he would enlist their support again and write more volumes. I want to read more about his career in film. I want to hear about his interest in art. I want to hear about his work as a musician. I would really like to read more about Steve Martin's life and work.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

 

Book of the Week: Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest

There are some books that come highly recommended and that you begin with great hope and, for some reason, it is not the book for you. This was my situation with Your Voice in My Head.

The book is a memoir about loss. In the book, Emma Forrest writes about two important people to her: her doctor, a man who helped her through bulimia, cutting, and suicide attempts, and her lover, a man she calls GH or Gypsy Husband. Both men left unexpectedly. Dr. R. did not tell his patients that he had cancer. He truly believed that he could recover. GH spoke of having a baby together and creating a family together and then one day flipped the switch and was no longer interested. Emma is left to her own resources.

I ultimately found both depictions of the relationships problematic. In the case of Dr. R, the meat of this story takes place after he has died. He cannot help her with the loss of GH.  Forrest does write about their previous work together, but it feels less immediate, because the book is essentially about how she gets out of this current sadness.  Forrest would often end chapters with testimonials from other patients about how Dr. R.  saved their life. but  these were one paragraph moments. They were big picture generalities. I liked the abstract notion of paying homage to this doctor who evidently was a great help to many people, but it didn't affect me deeply, because i felt like I was always skating on the periphery.

I also wanted deeper reflection on the relationship with GH.  To me, after the relationship ended, there were too many instances of the narrator meeting someone and asking them if GH was sincere when he was with her. Their answer is always the same, "Yes, he really loved you. Then he changed his mind."

 I wanted there to be a progression in the book, where Forrest would think more about the intersection between romance and reality. The highly charged nature of this romance to me seemed destined for a short fuse, unless there was some sort of a transition. She does not seem aware of the fact that they would have needed to have made a shift. She seems to mourn the loss of that phase without realizing that it naturally has a time stamp to it.

Many people love this book. It is being made into a movie.This is the type of book where the reader needs to descend into dark depths and then work the way out until she reaches that light at the end of the tunnel. In this one, I didn't buy the ticket. I watched from outside and chattered to myself.

NOTE: In rereading this piece, I thought that I have to mention that GH is widely assumed to be Colin Farrell. I didn't want to mention it, but it feels strange not to say anything about it as well.

Book of the Week: Still Life by Louise Penny

This is the first book of a mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Gamache, a Canadian investigator. The book is set in Three Pines, a small community where everyone believes they know everyone's stories. The story starts with a murder, a retired school teacher, Jane Neal, is found dead in the woods. Chief Inspector Gamache is brought in to solve the case.

Penny gives us a world of eccentric, small town people. There are plenty of motivations swirling around on who could have killed Jane Neal. Gamache is established as an investigator who takes pride in his work, who expects excellence from his staff, who wants to be a mentor, who, as a city person brought in for this case, wants to understand these people. It was a geniuinely fun read, and I am officially committed to this series. I want to continue to follow Gamache.

Still Life by Louise Penny

 

 

Book of the Week: Elegies for the Brokenhearted by Christie Hodgen

This was one of those books that I wanted to read forever, because the language was so lovely. I also really appreciated its structure. The novel is separated into sections, each an elegy to someone important in the narrator's life who has died. It's one of those books where, although you know the character's fate, you wish there was something that you could do to change the course of the pages. It's one of those novels where when you finish the section, you think, "How will there be someone as interesting, someone that I care about so much in the next section"? There is.

It's an emotional book. It's a smart book. Hodgen has created a qulirky world, but in the center of it, our narrator provides us an anchor. Mary Murphy tells the tale. The story starts off with her childhood and ends when she is an adult.  In her eyes, she is the least interesting person in her world, and in fact, in a way she is. She is surrounded by charismatic, unstable people, larger than life personas who she survives. But she gives the humanity to the book. She infuses those around her, who may have seemed like cartoons without her presence, with ballast. She is able to introduce them to us and to pay tribute to them in such a way that we understand their beauty, that we are truly sad at their passing.

The transition from one passage to another is ingenious, and it's part of the beauty of the book to see the connection between the subject of the section and the narrator and her story. So I will not say any details about who any of these people are and let you have the wonder of discovery as you read this book. This is one of those books that I will definitely read again. It's one of those novels where, when I see a friend who loves to read, I will very enthusiastically say, "Let me tell you about this book."

Book of the Week: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Other Small Acts of Liberation by Elizabeth Berg

I learned about Elizabeth Berg through Ann Patchett. When Patchett was asked who she liked to read, she named Berg as one of her favorite writers. So I had to try one of her books.

When I started this collection of short stories, I worried a bit. Is this going to just be about counting calories? Is it just going to focus on the rebellion of eating things that make no nutritional sense? The first few pages it read that way, but then it shifted and became something genuinely real and touching. Berg pulled off this magician's feat over and over again in these stories. You're lulled into what looks like the mundane and then it becomes specific and moving.

I read these stories while hanging out with a cat. Our landlord is gone, and I said I would hang out with the cat so that she wouldn't be lonely. So I would go down there and crank up the heater and tuck into this book while the cat danced around me and seriously considered my lap, but in the end couldn't make the trip. It was one of those great holiday experiences, being surprised over and over again by the simple reality of the human condition while a cat prances around you.

 

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Other Small Acts of Liberation by Elizabeth Berg

Book of the Week: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

I read this book after I heard Anthony Bourdain on the WTF podcast. I would call it a work memoir. It talks of Bourdain's entry into the world of adventurous eating and how that parlayed into him eventually becoming a chef. It's a very entertaining book, and it is also educational. The title is apt. Through reading this book, I do feel that reader really does get a sense of what it would be like to be a chef and what goes on in the kitchen. Some of it is inspiring. The amount of detail that one has to consider, the knowledge, precision, and sheer work that goes into being a chef was spelled out in very believable details. Some of it made me think about the nature of brilliance, and how it is often found in the eccentrics, the rebels, the square pegs of the world. There were words of the wise to the consumer. Never order fish on Monday, as that is the last date it can be used before being thrown out. Be wary of the specials, again, often designed with the idea of what leftover food needs to be used.

At the end of the book, Bourdain explains that the chapters were originally a series of separate pieces, and I would have to say that it did read that way. One thing that I missed about this book was a unifying drive from beginning to end. There were certainly great moments, and I enjoyed the read, but I wanted one great, big through-line that would build upon each other to tell the tale of this chef's work.  That would have made this book complete for me.