Book Review: Unfamiliar Fishes

 By Sarah Vowell

• Pub Date: 2011

• Where I bought this book: Last Exit Books, Kent, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I read a previous book by the same author and liked her writing style

*****

    It's the final decade of the 19th Century, and the United States is feeling mighty smug about itself.

    That whole Manifest Destiny thing is working out pretty well. The country covers the area between Canada and Mexico, from sea to shining sea, with just a few areas yet to be consolidated into several states. So it's time to look further out, build up its sea power with a big ole navy and widespread naval bases, and start becoming a world power.

    Look to the west. There's lots of oceans and countries to  acquire, starting with the Sandwich Islands. Indeed, it even has a foothold in those lands, called Hawaii by the natives, and it's sure the monarchy will enjoy being part of the Greatest Country on Earth. (r) If the islanders kick up a fuss, it can always remind Queen Liliuokalani what happened to King George III's forces back in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown.

    And the United States had been muddling around in Hawaii since 1820, when a couple of New Englanders set out to Christianize the population and stuck around, so they and their descendants could change the natives' culture and overthrow their queen.

    It's quite an agenda, and when you read the history books, you realize that before the dawn of the 20th Century, the United States had invaded the Philippines in a war with Spain that started with a bombing (or maybe just an explosion?) in Cuba. It had taken colonies in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines. It was well on its way to becoming a world power.

    Vowell sees 1898 as the pivot-point of that domination, when all of the United States' meddling and wannabe imperialism came together. Looking back at the islands' history and culture, its geography and politics, she gives a broad oversight about what happened in the 70-odd years the United States nosed around and took control.

    With her trademark caustic wit and satirical asides, she tells about how the Pilgrims and Puritans bring what they see as their superior culture -- particularly their religion -- to a land of lost souls. It's timely reading now, and you can learn how the recent firestorms and deaths are tied to the changes they brought to Hawaii's traditional culture.

Just as the sugar plantations changed the islands' ethnic makeup, they also profoundly altered the physical landscape. We were talking about Maui's central plain before the advent of commercial agriculture. (Gaylord Kubota, director of the Sugar Museum on Maui) says, "Isabella Bird, a traveler in the 1870s, described central Maui as a veritable Sahara in miniature. There were these clouds of sand and dust. That's what central Maui looked like before. . . . (Kubota shows Vowell a photo and points out) a visible line where the irrigated land stops. There the greenery ends, and the desert, complete with cactus, begins.

    The dry climate of the island was covered over. It helped feed the fire of the past month.

Book Review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

  By Shehan Karunatilake

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Point Books, Newport, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: The title, and it won the 2022 Booker Prize, which is always a good sign

******

    

 

   Even the dead in Sri Lanka continue to fight its wars, but only the ghosts see the irony in having the same enemies as the living. 

    This is one ghost's story of his country, which he loves, hates, and everything in between. As part of the living, he thought he was trying to change the wrongs, but his involvement failed to make anything better. He's not ever sure what better would have been -- because he sees the factions, parties, and terrorists as equal opportunity killers -- in life and after. 

    Maali is in the afterlife as the story opens, but remembers little about how he died -- or was killed, which he also suspects. He has seven moons to find out, and he spends the time reviewing and justifying his life, and the country's violent ways. 

    It's hard to determine his many roles in the violence, which surrounds him in death as it did in life. Because he is the narrator of this tale -- in both his ghostly self and as the main actors in his flashbacks -- he has a bias to make himself look good and the various sects who are the warmakers look bad.

    He's a photographer and a gambler, a journalist and a "fixer," who brings together outside reporters and members of the various militias, the military, the police, and the government men. 

    He's a gay man in a homophobic country, dating the son of one of its top officials. So his voice is sometimes self-suppressed -- and sometimes loudly outspoken and self-conscious.

    He's also wryly cynical and morbidly funny. He refers to the dead wandering the streets as a combination of the various gods and goddesses from the Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religions that are part of Sri Lanka. He calls others the Cannibal Uncle, the Atheist Ghoul, the Dead Child Soldier, and the suicides -- and wonders if they could collectively be known as "an overdose of suicides."

Outside in the waiting room, there is wailing. (A police officer) walks outside to console the weeping woman. He does so by pulling out his baton and asking a constable to remove her.

     The switching from Maali's past as a living being, to his current state as a ghostly presence, can sometimes be confusing. And the story also questions whether we are the same person, the same soul, as we move from life to death -- and perhaps, back to life again.

Book Review: Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life

 

•  Author: Bill Madden
• Pub Date: 2020

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Tom Seaver was my boyhood idol 

********

    I cheered when Tom Seaver won the 1969 Cy Young Award the same year the Miracle Mets won their first World Series. I cringed when the Mets spitefully traded Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds in 1977. And I cried when Seaver died at his California home on Aug. 31, 2020.

    All that I knew. As a result, much of this biography -- Seaver's early days in Fresno, the Mets being able to sign him because the team's name was picked from a hat, and his glorious early career as "The Franchise," the player who led the Mets through their Amazin' days -- was a trip down memory lane. 

    I even knew about some of his later days in baseball -- his only no-hitter with the Cincinnati Reds, his 300th win with the Chicago White Sox, and his being on the field in a Boston Red Sox uniform when the Mets won their second World Series in 1986. After all, as a youngster I grew up reading every story I could find about his life, and I stayed enamored of him even after he was no longer a Met, even after I was no longer living in New York.

    Still, I was surprised by what I did not know: How Seaver was sometimes considered arrogant and distant by some teammates in his later years, how some of his best friends were his catchers, how he idolized Gil Hodges and later Tony La Russa, and how he considered quitting after the Mets let him go to Chicago in 1983 because of sheer incompetence.

    He had a falling out with the Mets over that fiasco, and the author notes that the Mets did little to alleviate the situation. The owners from the late '80 to 2020 often ignored the Mets' history and former players. When Shea Stadium was demolished in favor of Citi Field in 2009, Seaver and others lamented that it looked more like a shrine to the old Brooklyn Dodgers than the Mets. No memorials then existed for the franchise's star players.

    So, while it's a positive history, this is no hagiography. Still, it's a great read, with the workman-like sports writing and compelling insights of a newspaperman. Of course, because Madden's an older newspaper guy writing about an old player, some of the analysis isn't exactly modern.

    Statistics, for example. Whenever the author wants to show how Seaver was facing the best of the best players, he gives the hitters' stats from the old days -- BA-HRs-RBIs. No slashlines, no OBP, no WAR needed. He does the same with the pitching stats -- Seaver's prominence is always proved with wins, strikeouts, and ERA. Again, no WAR, no BABIP, no ERA+.

     And both Seaver and the author scoff at pitch counts. Seaver was appalled that starting pitchers today seldom go more than six innings. And while he acknowledges pitch counts are a legitimate measure, he says they were much higher in the good old days. Today, pitchers top out at 80 or 90 pitches per game. Seaver says he often threw 140 pitches a game. Teammate Nolan Ryan often threw 150 or more.

    Still, it's a fun book, and Seaver is overall a likeable guy who led a good life.

Book Review: The Wordy Shipmates

•  Author: Sarah Vowell
• Pub Date: 2008

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I heard the author on NPR once, and she seemed amazing 

*******

    You might not think that a history book exploring the lives of some of the earliest immigrants to the United States -- the somber Puritans who came to Boston in the 1600s because the religious figures in England were not strict enough -- would make for a witty, rollicking tale of adventure and petty in-fighting.

    But you would be wrong.

    Vowell's tale, complete with the letters and journals of the men -- and the few women -- who made an impact on the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is a joy to read. It's history come alive, as reported by a somewhat snarky, knowledgeable reporter who, with a wry grin sadly shakes her head at the goings on.

    She brings in popular culture -- from the Brady Bunch to Bruce Springsteen, to Thanks, an oddball situation comedy that lasted six episodes in 1999 -- to help show how we've gotten it all wrong and entirely misunderstand the point of the first English colonists and their relationships with each other and the native culture. When one of them, John Winthrop, spoke about building a "city on a hill," they also missed the point, much like candidate Ronald Reagan misinterpreted Winthrop and Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. in 1984.    

In the U.S.A., we want to sing the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues.

      So, Vowell aims to set us straight. Chockful of primary sources, she covers the Puritans' voyage from their leaving of England in 1630 to their first years in what they called New England. The title is acknowledgement that the Puritans weren't stuffy, ignorant people, (well, they tended to be stuffy, but ...) but serious men and women who knew their religion, had a specific interpretation of their Bible, and could argue and explain exactly what they wanted and why. Along with fighting evil and burning Indians, they wrote and collected books and created colleges of learning.

    And they did it their way.

Book Review: The Last Barracoon

 

•  Author: Zora Neale Hurston

• Where I bought this book: National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Washington. 

• Why I bought this book: While doing research on Hurston, I found I wanted to read her books. This was a good start.

********

 

   The protagonist in this book is known by several names -- his African name and his slave name, which is the name he adopted for himself. But it is only because of Hurston's persistence that he gets to tell his story, although the books wasn't published until 2018.

    And it's a story that needed telling. 

    It's a horrific, devastating story about the last newly enslaved men, women, and children who were captured in Africa and sold in America. It's how, despite all odds, Africans have survived despite bigotry, hate, and oppression.    

    He was known as Olulae Kossula -- the English spelling is a transliteration from his native tongue -- the name his mother called him and that he used in Africa. But in America he became Cudjo Lewis -- a combination of his African name and a corruption of his father's name.

    He was born in 1841in the West Africa town of Banté, a member of the Isha group of the Yoruba people. In 1860, a group of illegal slave traders came to his area, and -- with the help of some tribal enemies called the Dahomey -- captured him and a number of his neighbors. Bear in mind that Cudjo had no idea what was happening, and when shoved into the hull of a slave ship, had no idea what was happening to him.

    Ultimately, he was taken to the United States by the Meahers, Alabama brothers who enslaved people, and he was owned by Jim Meaher. After freedom, he lived in Africatown, which the former slaves built themselves on the land of their former plantation, which they had worked and saved to purchase.

    The story is told mostly in Cudjo's voice -- with his dialect and pronunciations as close as Hurston can transcribe. It is moving and compelling. It is overall horrifying, sometimes angry, often sad, and exhibits a loneliness that he felt near the end of his life. Some of its accuracy -- particularly how much is Cudjo's words and how much is the author's -- has been questioned and defended. But the overall story is factual.

    It tells of confusion and despair. It shows how men, women, and children are ripped from the only lives they've known -- their family, their culture, their liifestyle -- and dropped into a hellhole. They are not told what's happening, are literally treated like cargo, then dropped off in a strange land and told they must now work for strangers or be beaten and tortured.

    But it shows the utter joy that Black people experienced when they learned they were free.

Know how we gittee free? Cudjo tellee you dat. Da boat I on, it in de Mobile. We all on dere to go in de Montgomery, but Cap'n Jim Meaher, he not on de boat dat day. Cudjo doan know (why). I doan forgit. It April 12, 1865. Da Yankee soldiers dey come down to de boat and eatee de mulberries off de trees close to de boat, you unnerstand me. Den dey see us on de boat and dey say, 'Y'all can't stay dere no mo'. You free, you doan b'long to nobody no mo'. Oh Lor'! I so glad. We astee do soldiers where we goin'? Dey say dey doan know. Dey told us to go where we feel lak goin', we ain' no mo' slave.

Book Review: A Parchment of Leaves

 

• Author: Silas House

• Where I bought this book: The 2021 Kentucky Book Fair, Lexington

• Why I bought this book: House is the new Wendell Berry

*********

   

    This novel is a stunning work of art -- the story, the characters, and the connection of place to person is a phenomenal achievement.

    House, an Eastern Kentucky native, knows the language of Appalachia and how to use it subtly, nobly, and to its best effect. He knows -- indeed, he is -- the characters, and you can feel their pain and their joys through his writing. 

    And he understands that connections that tie the characters to the story through the expressive use of  language.

    House can teach everyone a thing or two about Eastern Kentucky -- about its stalwart people, its sometimes sad but always provocative history, and its rich culture. 

     In Parchment, House tells a feminist story in the voices and actions of its women. The main character and voice is Vine, whom we meet as a young Cherokee tending to her garden along Redbud Camp, a small community in a hollow of the Eastern Kentucky mountains. Other strong women whose voice we hear are Esme, Vine's mother-in-law and the matriarch of the Sullivan family, and Serena, a midwife and iconoclast who forges her own trails in the sometime judgmental Appalachian communities where they live.

    They find strength in each other, in the strong family ties, and in the isolation in Appalachia. Individuality is necessary to survive, although it is often frowned upon.

    The Native Americans, such as Vine and her immeniate family, survived the slaughter and forced removal duirng the Trail of Tears by hiding out in Eastern Kentucky, where they were later joined by the Scots-Irish settlers. By the time of this novel, set in the early 20th Century, the groups formed an uneasy alliance.

     Esme's son, Saul, woes and weds Vine, bringing her back to the Sullivan homestead in a neighboring hollow, God's Creek. She must deal with his brother Aaron, who has his own desires for Vine, and on Esme's sometimes suspicious nature toward her. She also seeks to find her place in the new community, while keeping her inate goodness for all.

    It's a tall order, but House is an extraordinary writer who reaches high and achieves the stars.

Book Review

 New York, My Village, by Uwem Akpan

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It has a map

****

    My indelable memory of the Biafran War is the Catholic Charities "relief campaign" that used pictures of starving African children with bloated stomachs to raise money.

 

   That's it. I knew nothing about the reasons for the war, or even where in Africa Biafra was.

    So I was hoping this book would help me learn just a little bit about the war, and just as important, what happened and what is happening now. 

    It kinda did. But it also taught me the war has a long background, involves colonization and other crimes committed on the African peoples, and pretty much boils down to why any war is fought -- hatred, discrimination, jealously, and control.

    Briefly, and I hope I get this right: Biafra is a small province in the south of Nigeria. Northern Nigerian tribes, particularly the Hausa-Fulani, dominated. In 1967, representatives of the Igbo tribe in southern Nigeria, based in Biafra, claimed they controlled the south and proclaimed their independence.

    It did not go well. There's a reason you don't hear of Biafra anymore. It's no longer a country, and hasn't been since 1970.

    In this fictionalized account, Ekong Udousoro is a book editor, and he receives a fellowship to intern at a small publishing company in New York City. He is part of the Annang, who also lives in southern Nigeria, but have had little control to the dominant Igbo. Or as Ekong puts it, his group is a minority within a minoiry. 

    This book is an account of his months learning the book publishing industry, coupled with memories of the war -- which actually happened before he was born, but which has shaped his family, his village, and himself.

    But it's also about his family relationships -- which are confusing; his troubles and joys adapting to living in Hell's Kitchen -- ugh! far too much information on bedbugs and his problems with them; his relationships with his landlord, the man he is subletting his apartment from; the racism he confronts on the job and in book publishing; his difficulties getting along with his new neighbors, and much, much more.

    It's really too much. He covers too many issues, confusing us on many occassions, and spends far too much time on the damn bedbugs. (And even when you think he is done with that, they come back! I was ready to toss the book across the room at this point.)

    Still, at its heart, the book's theme is about how we complicate our lives by dividing ourselves in too many groups -- by color, ethnicity, religion, jobs, community, and so much more. In short, perhaps we are all minorities of a minority.    

Book Review

 Smart Baseball, by Keith Law

• Where I bought this book: Volumes Bookstore, Chicago
• Why I bought this book: I read a few opening pages of several chapters and liked them

*******

    Baseball is like physics. The concepts are getting more esoterical, and the math is getting harder. But that math is proving many of  the old beliefs to be myths, and those new statistics to be correct.

    Actually, the major flaw in this book is that it is five years old -- and this edition was updated in 2017. Thus, keeping with the physics analogy, it's operating in an earlier dimension from what is happening now. Still, Law says the major explosion in data and its uses came about as he was writing the book, and the future changes will be more incremental, not expotenial.

    Its major point is how the statistical analysis in baseball -- and the sheer types and amount of data that are becoming available -- is changing the very nature of the game. The old stats, easy to compile or calculate, and simple to understand, were just plain wrongheaded and at best useless. At their worst, they measured things that didn't matter, or left out large parts of the games.

    For instance: RBIs, once thought as an ultimate measure of a player's offensive worth, in reality favored players who had teammates who got on base in front of them. Wins and losses, once seen as being the definition of a starting pitcher's importance, instead gave one man credit based on what others did on the field.

    The great benefit of the old stats is that they were simple to understand, readily available, and intuitive. The new ones are a bit more difficult: Not everyone has access to or can understand the data, the calculations can be difficult, and they must be explained. 

    But they are immeasurable better: On-base percentage and slugging percentage are far superior to mere batting average, which leaves a lot out of the equation and can mislead about a player's worth. New pitching stats give a better indication of a pitcher's performance, unlike, say, the save, which is worse than useless and ruined the game for the last 40 years. (Law's takedown of the save and how it was used is a major reason I bought this book.)

    These new stats are here to stay. They give greater insight in what players do and what they can do. The collection of information is staggering, and still being evaluated. They have lead to a revolution in the use of fielders. They may be able to predict -- and thus prevent -- injuries. 

    Teams are hiring entire staff -- many with doctorates in analytics -- to think about, gather, and use the numbers now available. Coaches, managers, and front-office staff are becoming better attuned to hard data. Players are recognizing the benefit to their games and careers.

    It's time for the fans to come along, and learn to accept -- and even love -- the numbers. Dump the save. Embrace WAR. 

     

Book Review: Buck O'Neil's America

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski

    Buck O'Neil is a story teller.

    Joe Posnanski is a listener.

    Together, they created a book that is many things -- a pleasant read, a learning experience, an emotional tour through the United States from the eyes of a Black man who experienced the best of the country and the worst of its racism.

    In the end, it's an uplifting story, one of hope and happiness migled with meloncholy. It shows the heights Black men reached while leaving the tantalizing potential of what could have been.

    One scene, which occurred in 2005, has O'Neil and Willie Mays taking a tour through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. They are talking about Oscar Charleston, who from 1915 through the 1940s was a center fielder and manager in the Negro Leagues, and who many consider the greatest player ever.

"How good was Oscar Charleston, Buck?" Mays asked the old man standing next to him.

"He was you before you," Buck O'Neil said. 

Mays nodded as if he had heard that before, and he looked again through the chicken wire at the bronze statues of mostly forgotten men who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues. They had played at a time when Black men were banned from the Major Leagues. Segregation was an unwritten rule and mostly unspoken.

    Throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2006, O'Neil was the living, breathing embodiment of Negro Leagues baseball.

     He wasn't the greatest to ever have played the game, but he was pretty damn good. He was a first baseman and manager, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known as a fast runner and a decent hitter, who twice led the Negro American League in batting. In his later years, he became the representative of a group of men who were finally getting their recognition as players equal to those in the Major Leagues. O'Neil played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues museum.

   But mostly, O'Neil was chosen because, as he told Posnanski at the time, "I'm alive."

    In 2005, O'Neil, at the age of 94, planned to tour the country as the Major Leagues began to promote the history of the Negro Leagues in an effort to right some wrongs. Posnanski, then a columnist at the Kansas City Star, asked to tag along. O'Neil's response was, "Don't be late."

    This book is the result. It's a road trip story, the tale of a youger white man and an older Black man traveling the country, talking baseball and life and jazz, another of O'Neil's passions. Mostly, O'Neil talked. Posnanski listened. and took notes.

    One of the stories told has O'Neil talking with Monte Irvin, perhaps the only man to be a star in both the Negro Leagues and later in the Major Leagues. They sound just like what they were at the time -- two old men talking, kinda lamenting how things had been.

"I'm not complaining," Irvin said. "I mean, I lived a good life. Better than most guys in the Negro Leagues. I got to play in the Major Leagues. I got to play in the World Series. I'm not complaining. It's just that people used to tell me how good I was, and I would tell them, 'You should have seen me when I could really play.'"

"I saw you, Monte," Buck said.

"And?"

"You could really play."

"That's all I was saying," Monte said, and he smiled too.

    The book is not a biography, but there is a lot in there that tells you about the man Buck was -- and also makes you want to search out more about him and his life. While on the tour, and right up to his death in 2006, O'Neil still felt he had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to do it.    

    So O'Neil told the stories of the Black men who played the game, and the lives they lived. He was proud of his playing days. He knew he and his teammates could have played alongside the white guys on any Major League team. He rejected the notion that the players were a ragged-ass bunch of clowns playing pickup ball. He knew they were professionals who worked hard and played hard, and who were as good as -- often better than -- any of their white contemporaries.

Book Review: The Pine Barrens

The Pine Barrens, by John McPhee

Reading this 52-year-old book is not a step back in time. Rather, it's like reading Wendell Berry writing about his beloved Kentucky, showing how the land centers us in a place, and how that place helps to define us.

Joxer the Mighty says he could be a Piney, too

McPhee's 1967 book helped bring attention to the diverse environment of the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey. Partly as a result, Congress designated more than one million acres as the Pinelands National Reserve, strictly limiting development in the fragile area.

The Pinelands is a forest of sandy land flanked by the populous East Coast and the Philadelphia metropolis. Its soil also is acidic and nutrient poor, so early settlers passed it over in favor of richer land in other directions. Small industries developed here and there, but by the time of the civil war, larger factories could do the work cheaper and closer to the markets. The Pinelands mostly reverted to its natural state.

Small crossroads towns popped up where a few independent families stayed on. The population shrunk to a few hardy settlers who remained.

McPhee captures them in a beautifully written narrative. His eye for detail, his ear for language, and his sense of culture is extraordinary. He wrote not as a native of the barrens, but as one who had taken the time to learn and understand the people who live there. He gained the trust and respect of a enigmatic people who, for good reason, are normally suspicious of outsiders.

Some of the gentlest of people -- botanists, canoemen, campers -- spend a great deal of time in the pines, but their influence has not been sufficient to correct an impression, vivid in some parts of the state for fifty years, that the pineys are weird and sometimes dangerous barefoot people who live in caves, marry their sisters, and eat snakes. Pineys are, for the most part, mild and shy, but their resentment is deep, and they will readily and forcefully express it.

Later, McPhee brings us to the largest crossroads town in the Pinelands, where the natives show disdain for the image outsiders have of them. The owner of the local grocery store shared her thoughts.

Live in caves and intermarry, hah. No one ever lived in caves that I heard of. I don't know anyone around here except one family that's intermarried, and I've lived here all my life. 

The book is full of little tidbits like that.  It's historical, folk-lorical, and metaphorical. It intersperses interviews with and descriptions of the Pineys with details of the Pinelands ecology, history, and geography. It's a little book -- barely 150 pages -- but it packs a lot of detail.

Book Review: The Incomplete Book of Running

The Incomplete Book of Running, by Peter Sagal

Reading this book is kinda like having a guy tap on you the shoulder and say, "let's go for a run." And while you run, he also talks. A lot. He talks like a runner, veering from topic to topic at random. He tells stories happy and sad, discusses his bowel movements, and relates tales from the numerous marathons he had run.

He keeps going on and on, as you pound out the miles. All the while, you're nodding your head, laughing or expressing sorrow at his predicaments.

He's faster than you, but that's OK. He challenges you, but knows instinctively when to slow down so you can catch your breath for a couple of seconds. If you need to walk for a bit, he's more than willing. 

Peter Sagal is the host of the NPR show, Wait, Wait. ... Don't Tell Me. He's also a marathoner, and a pretty good one at that. He has qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon several times, and his personal best time is ... well, I won't tell you that, because it's one of the better stories in the book, and I don't want to ruin it for you.

The book covers a year in Sagal's running life, along with enough personal information to put it all into perspective. He goes backward and forward in time, letting you know how he got into running, how it continued -- more or less  throughout his life -- and how it often kept him centered during the times of trouble.

In short, the book is just like running -- sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always inspiring. Runners will see themselves. Non-runners will recognize their running friends.

This Year in Books: 2019 Edition

My Best Books of 2019

I like to begin the year reading a favorite story about one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Roberto Clemente died New Year's Eve 1972 when he boarded a plane to take supplies to Nicaragua, which had been recently devastated by an earthquake. The plane crashed, killing the 38-year-old Clemente, the pilot, and three others.

Fifteen years later, writer W.P. Kinsella, working off the idea that Clemente's body had never been found, wrote "Searching for January," in which a tourist sees Clemente coming ashore in 1987. In a touch of magical realism, they discuss what happened and what might have been.

Ready for breakfast and the yearly reading of Kinsella's work.

OK, that's a long intro/aside to my first Year in Review blog post, featuring the best books I have read this year. According to my Goodreads profile, I read a book a week, which, according to one estimate I have seen, means I read about 50 pages a day. Sounds about right.

Anyway, of those, I have selected eight as my books of the year. Why eight, you ask? Why not, I respond.

So here were go.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Robinson. This novel, about a WPA project that paid women to ride mules into the hollers of Eastern Kentucky, became one of my favorite of all time. The writing is extraordinary, vivid, and sensitive. Richardson reaches perfection in her use of dialect -- just the right amount to give flavor to the speech of the people, but never too much. In addition to her keen ear, Richardson has a keen heart and mind in creating and letting her characters live their lives. Full review.

The Bees, by Laline Paull. Paull gives us a hive of honeybees that are feminist, pro-labor, and loyal, and presents them to tell a story of love, hope, and commitment. It's a book not about bees, but about us. It's about how we are locked into a caste at birth and struggle mightily to escape. Full review.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan. With powerful and explosive writing, Edugyan tells the tale of George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados in the 19th Century. From that beginning, she follows Wash through the United States, Canada, and England, as he tries to escape slavery and live the life of a freeman. But melancholy and a haunted, hunted existence follows him. Full review.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. This is today's story of what happens in the years of The Handmaid's Tale and its government of Gilead. It is told in various voices, from a top aunt in the organization to members of the resistance. They include children, who only know Gilead after the revolution, as they are taught little about the previous life. It's an inspiring tale from a top-notch writer. Full review.

Elevation, by Stephen King. This is an unusually short Stephen King book, but it's also the ultimate Stephen King book. It has great characters in a great story that's well written, with a little supernatural sprinkled in. It's a short novel packed with intensity and issues. Full review.

Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver melds past and present into a sentimental yet unsparing tale, exploring how our present determines our future and influences interpretations of the past. In her literate prose, with a gift for the narrative of empathy and understanding, Kingsolver touches on what moves us all -- our family, our homes, our beliefs, and our hopes for the futures. Full review

Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry. In the long, extraordinary history of great Irish writers, Barry is finding himself among the elite. Night Boat tells about  two old Irish drug dealers and wanderers, who have made it good, then lost most of it. As they wait in a Spanish port for one character's daughter, Barry tells their story in writing that is ravishingly beautiful. He makes every word count, and causes you to use your five senses to take it all in. Full review.

Music Love Drugs War, by Geraldine Quigley. Quigley introduces us to a group of young friends and acquaintances in Derry, Northern Ireland, at the start of the 1980s. Most of them are in their late teens and on the cusp of adulthood, but unsure of their futures. They live in a city where jobs are scarce, the violence can be thick, and the hope can be slim. Their pleasures lie in drugs, music, and each other. Their fears and realities lie in the violent struggle that has engulfed Ireland for 400 years. Full review.

Book Review: The Water Dancer

The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates brings some powerful writing to evoke the abject horrors of slavery. 

His descriptions of the denial of the basic humanity and dignity to those enslaved are anguished and compelling. He doesn't just tell, but he shows their stories through a range of characters who represent the Tasked, those existing under the yoke of slavery; the Quality, the owners and their family, who perpetuate yet remain enfeebled under the system; and the Low, the vast majority of poor whites who are among its most voracious defenders because it allows them to appear to build themselves up while tearing others down.

The novel depicts a daily horror show of the trepidation, fear, and devastation of a people bought, sold, and beaten as part of a system that degrades and humiliates them and their families. Its shows how the hope of freedom elevates the meaning of the word to its truest sense -- allowing one to live and love without qualm.

It is a gem of a novel, important for both its revelations and its story of hope.

But yet.

It's not perfect. Weaving in and out of the tale is the thread of magic realism -- the idea that it takes something beyond reality to end this evil and to bring people home. I think it subtracts from the efforts of  those who consistently laid their lives on the line to present the notion that supernatural assistance was required.

Another flaw is more prosaic: it felt at times to be a disjointed narrative, lacking a clear trail from

event to event, causing readers to stop in their tracks to re-evaluate.

Still, it's a fine book. The characters are strong, courageous, and human. They are male and female. The tale is clearly driven by its main black characters, which is as it should be because it is their story.

Through Coates, a student and scholar of African-American literature, history, and philosophy, the characters come alive through stirring words and vivid actions. Some are figments of Coates' imagination; others are drawn from historical figures.

All are remarkable, and present an evocative tale of a shameful time when white people sold and abused their fellow humans simply because of the color of their skins.

Book Review: Red at the Bone

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson packs a lot of story into fewer than 200 pages.

The opening that describes a coming-out party for Melody, a 16-year-old black girl -- wearing the same dress that her grandmother Sabe, then 16, also wore, but that her mother Iris, then 16 and pregnant, could not -- sets the stage for a tale of family in the black community.

But it's much more than a family tale -- it's story about ancestors and descendants, about friendships, and about class and race. It's a story about love and marriage and sexual orientation. It's a story about connections and feelings of isolation, It's a story about hopes and fears, about bigotry and hate, about the past and the future.

We learn that the family survived the 1921 Massacre in Tulsa and began a new history in Brooklyn, but never forgot the past.

"Every day since she was a baby I've told Iris the story," Sabe tells us. "How they came with intention. How the only thing they wanted was to see us gone. Our money gone. Our shops and schools and libraries -- everything -- just good and gone. And even though it happened twenty years before I was even a thought, I carry it. I carry the goneness. Iris carries the goneness. And watching her walk down those stairs, I know my grandbaby carries the goneness too.

Woodson tells these stories through various voices weaving their way through time. Characters come alive as their stories mesh and reveal family history and secrets. Their relationships defy time and space. They come together and sometimes feel left behind.

She uses tight, yet emotional and compelling language. She ties the generations together, allowing each to share with the long ago, but to develop their uniqueness in the now.

Book Review: Going the Distance

Going the Distance: The Life and Works of W.P. Kinsella, by William Steele

Kinsella's life was successful, yet uneven. The same can be said for this biography.

For starters, it was filled with too much minutia. I do not need to know about every date Kinsella went on in high school, nor every address where he lived.

Instead, I would have liked more information about the reviews and responses to Kinsella's works, especially the debate about the fiction he wrote in the voice of indigenous people. The view that Kinsella was guilty of cultural appropriation grew throughout his life -- particularly as he became more popular for his other works -- but was treated as an afterthought in the book, spread out amidst the pages, rather than as an idea that should have been evaluated as a specific criticism of a portion of his work.

Perhaps the structure of the biography dictated how it was handled. Instead of categorical breakdown, it was written in a strict chronological order.

Still, the book presented a wealth of information about Kinsella's life and writings. He set his goal on being a writer at an early age, and despite feeling hampered and discouraged throughout those early years, made good on his goal. The book also showed how incidents in Kinsella's upbringing on an isolated farm outside of Edmonton, Canada, affected his prose. He used other experiences in his life in his stories and novels, but denied his works were biographical. Again, this issue could have been explored in a chapter, instead of interspersed in the book.

Kinsella, who died of assisted suicide in 2016, also had a disjointed private life. He hated most of his early government jobs, because he hated government and bureaucracy. He became a university professor for a span, but for the most part, he hated teaching. He hated all forms of religion, but his description of religious people could mirror a description of himself.

"... (T)here is a smugness about every one of them, a condescending sense of superiority, which the more they try to hide it, the more it shows."

The book is at its best when it explores Kinsella's growth as a writer. That may be because the growth went along Kinsella's timeline -- for the most part, he got better as he grew older and more experienced.

He was a prolific writer, often having five or more stories and books in process. He often would expand his short stories into novels -- a criticism by people who thought he was unduly padding out his stories -- but one that I would argue produced some of his best work. Shoeless Joe, for instance, started out as a short short, then a novel, and later became the movie Field of Dreams.

Steele spends a lot of time describing how the book traveled its path and grew into a cultural touchstone. He also discussed the impact it had on Kinsella and his life as a writer.

Kinsella's death in 2016 came as a shock, but his health had long been poor, and he went out as he wanted. He spurned life-extending measures that would have caused much pain and suffering, and choose to end his own life.

Book Review: Girl in the Picture

The Girl in the Picture, by Denise Chong

For many of us of a certain age, it is the defining picture of the Vietnam War: several children, followed by soldiers, fleeing down a road. In the middle, a young girl, naked, her arms held out from her body, crying, with a look of absolute fear and pain on her face, running with them.

Her name was Kim Phuc, and we now know that she and her family were running from a napalm attack on her village in South Vietnam. Soldiers from South Vietnam, at the behest of the United States, had dropped napalm during an attack meant to clear out Viet Cong guerrillas. But the napalm missed its target in the nearby woods, and instead landed directly on the village full of women and children.

This is the story of the aftermath: How the war affected people in Kim's village, and in greater Vietnam. How the war -- and specifically the attack on Kim's body -- affected her life.

Kim and her family suffered. She suffered from the injuries of the burning, from the literal and metaphorical scars it left. (As described in the book, napalm is a horrible tool of war. It's a burning gel that sticks to the body, and attempts to pull it off just spread it around.) Meanwhile, her family's successful eating establishment was destroyed by taxes and fees the new communist regime in Hanoi enacted, and by the incompetence and greed of corrupt local officials who demand more and more.

Meanwhile, the government began to use Kim's story as propaganda. It forced her to interrupt her studies -- she at one point dreamed of becoming a doctor to help people -- and otherwise exerted control over her life and her decisions. And while the government sent Kim abroad -- to Russia, to East Germany, to Cuba -- it always kept a close eye on her.

Written 10 years ago, this remains is a wonderful, insightful book. It introduces us to another culture, and explains the differences between people from the north and those from the south. It's a great help to Americans, who, says author Chong, all-too-often see Vietnam not as a country, but as a war.

Book Review: After the Miracle

After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets, by Art Shamsky

These were the good Mets. Unlike the bad boys of the 1986 Championship team, the '69 Mets were beloved across the country. 

They were young. They were happy. They played with joy and excitement and persistence. They were noble in defeat and celebrated in victory. At a time of political division -- over a war, over the direction of the country's youth -- a team from New York City was the epitome of togetherness.

That's because, says author and team member Art Shamsky, they were teammates who loved and respected each other. Each player accepted his role, and no matter how big or how small that part may have been, was appreciated for carrying it out with aplomb. Shamsky, for instance, may not have liked the fact that he platooned in right field with Ron Swoboda, but both reveled in each other's play.

Shamsky credits several people for this, including manager Gil Hodges, who believed in the team before it believed in itself, and then led them to the top with love and discipline; and pitcher Tom Seaver, who despite his superstar status, performed his role with humility and dignity.

Harrelson, Koosman, Sherman, Shamsky,
 Swoboda, and Seaver at a restaurant during the visit.
(Photo, from the book)

The book, while a celebration of the team and its youthful exuberance, carries notes of sadness 50 years later. Several team members have died, and two of its stalwarts --  Seaver and shortstop Bud Harrelson -- have signs of degenerative brain function -- Seaver from Lyme disease, and Harrelson from Alzheimer's.

Shamsky begins the book with his plan to bring a small group of former players out to celebrate with Seaver in his Napa Valley home in Calistoga, Calif., where Seaver owns a winery. He invites Harrelson, Seaver's former roommate; Jerry Koosman, the lefty counterpart to Seaver; and Swoboda, whose legendary catch saved Seaver's victory in Game 4. Shamsky's co-author, journalist Erik Sherman, went along.

Once the planning of the trip is set -- although Seaver's wife, Nancy, cautions that Seaver's health might force a last-minute cancellation -- Shamsky reverts to the 1969 season, going over games and memories from spring training to the last out of the season, and the ensuing on- and off-field celebrations. The remembrances are highlighted with interviews, stories, and quotes from former players and fans, adding color and grit to the memories.

After that pleasant reflection, Shamsky returns to the trip to Seaver's house. It's another happy occasion, with the conservative Koosman and the liberal Swoboda indulging in some banter about politics, and the group of five recalling their glory days. But it's a sad meeting as well, with the former teammates knowing their days are ending. The melancholy continues as Shamsky explores  how diseases have ravaged the minds of Harrelson and Seaver, causing the former ace to show a flaw in remembering the day's events while eating at a local restaurant.

Without a hint of frustration, the ever-courageous and self-assured Seaver shrugged and told (us) once more, "You know, I've got a little bit of the Lyme disease going on." He then graciously picked up the check, gave his regard to all of the people he knew at the cafe like he was the mayor of Calistoga, and walked us back out to the parking lot -- where the conversations continued on and on. We knew we would never all be together like this again. We were in our seventies, scattered around the country, and Tom could no longer travel.

It was the lengthiest of good-byes. Nobody wanted to leave.

You may shed a tear at the end. But overall, it's a book about days of happiness and youth, and the brotherhood of teammates.

Book Review: Say Nothing

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, 

by Patrick Radden Keefe

    The Irish keep a reputation for having a touch of the Blarney, but those from the North tend to be a wee bit more reticent. This is where "the tight gag of place" takes over, as the poet Seamus Heaney puts it.

Patrick Radden Keefe

Where to be saved you only must save face

And whatever you say, you say nothing

    Patrick Radden Keefe explores this phenomenon, along with the North's reputation for minimizing what they euphemistically call "The Troubles." This description held for more than 30 years, despite people being dragged from their homes and beaten or shot to death, and despite more than 3,000 casualties from the late 1960s into the 1990s.

    His book begins with a tale epitomizing this duality: The abduction of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10. As her children look on, she is taken from her Belfast flat in 1973, kidnapped and shot. Her body is buried, and is not found until 2003.

    We don't immediately know what happened to her.

    Keefe delves into the murder, its background, and the history and social order of the communities in which it took place. What comes out is a descriptive narrative of The Troubles, especially from the Catholic/Nationalist/Republican perspective.

    Keefe acknowledges his book is not a comprehensive account, because it omits the Protestant/Loyalist viewpoint, and focuses on IRA activity, violence, and politics. But this is OK, because Irish Republicanism and its fight for independence has always been the driving force behind the Irish civil rights movements, and the resulting violence from both sides.

    I know the history of The Troubles and have family and friends from Northern Ireland on both sides of the dispute. But this book hit home in presenting just how pervasive the violence was, and how instinctive the battle for Irish freedom is. Indeed, that is the heart of the book.

    Keefe investigates McConville's disappearance and murder by interviewing dozens of people involved in The Troubles, and reading about and piercing together their stories. He gets a jump start after learning of an oral history project, whose records were kept at Boston College. Originally, the project planners pledged to ensure those who participated  -- both IRA men and women and those from the Loyalist paramilitary organizations -- secrecy and anonymity until they were dead. But that idea fell apart when the Police Service of Northern Ireland got wind of the project and served warrants seeking information on the murders of McConville and similar people known as "the disappeared."

    I originally thought Keefe had used the oral interviews for his book. But no; most of them were subsequently destroyed. Keefe actually did the legwork and interviews himself, tracking down family members of the victims, including McConville's children, and those who volunteered for the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries.

    But one key figure refused to speak with Keefe: Gerry Adams, the longtime president of Sinn Fein, often described as the political wing of the IRA. For various reasons, Adams long has denied being a member of the IRA, a statement few actually believe.

    Keefe is harshly critical of Adams, blaming him for ordering the murder of McConville, claiming she was a British informant. Adams has denied having anything to do with her death.

    Keefe's also criticizes Adams for adamantly denying that he ever was a member of the IRA, whose volunteers were committed soldiers in a war, killing or sending men to die for love of country. Adams then turned around and negotiated a peace agreement that maintained the status quo, Keefe writes. Thus, he left those soldiers with neither the peace of mind of having their efforts validated, nor the comfort of acknowledging their commitment. In essence, Keefe suggests, Adams absolved his own behavior while betraying those who had volunteered to be soldiers for Ireland.

    As one former IRA volunteer said of the predicament of those who followed in their forefathers' footsteps and fought what they considered to be the good fight for a just and rightful cause:

Think of the armed struggle as the launch of a boat ... getting a hundred people to push the boat out. This boat is stuck in the sand, right, and get them to push the boat out and then the boat sailing off and leaving the hundred people behind, right. The boat is away, sailing on the high seas, with all the luxuries that it brings, and the poor people that launched the boat are left sitting in the muck and the dirt and the shit and the sand.

    But here, Keefe, ultimately if cautiously, defends Adams: "Whatever callous motivations Adams might have possessed, and whatever deceptive machinations he might have employed, he steered the IRA out of a bloody and intractable conflict and into a brittle but enduring peace."

This Week in Books, 8th Ed.

Rambling through a bookstore

One of the joys of wandering among the shelves of an old bookstore is a lack of people. Oh, perhaps you see the occasional fellow book fiend studying the titles, but for the most part you are alone with your thoughts and your fictional friends.

Then there is the Book Loft of German Village, a rambling independent bookstore in neighborhood near downtown Columbus, Ohio.

The entrance to the Book Loft

The stacks of fiction
 along a narrow hallway

A staircase lined
 with promotional photos

Most bookstores are large and airy, inside one large room. This one is not.

Many bookstores -- especially those of the chain variety -- are enclosed in modern glass and steel. This one does not fit that description.

They are in suburban shopping malls, surrounded by large parking lots. Usually, you'll find similar stores in similar buildings nearby -- a Panera, an office supply store, and most likely a Starbucks.

But the Book Loft is tucked away in an urban neighborhood. The entrance is a garden, and the store itself resembles a bunch of older homes that were renovated and smashed together. Yes, there is a coffee shop next door, which is part of a small, local chain, Stauf's Coffee.

The Book Loft boasts 32 rooms. Outside are tables full of books on sale, along with the racks of remainders. I arrived with my daughter in the early afternoon on a sunny weekend, when the Ohio State Buckeyes were thankfully playing out of town -- the university and the 100,000-seat stadium is about five miles away along city streets.

So after a vegan lunch, we made our way over, entered through the garden gate, and strolled up the walk.  It's a wonderful place, with surprises up every flight of stairs and around every corner. Each room has a theme, but you are likely to find random stacks of books in random places, so you have to meander all over the place, just in case you might miss something.

The fiction section takes up several rooms, and arranged along narrow hallways lined with bookcases. I found several novels that just came out, one that isn't scheduled to come out until next month (I said nothing, and bought it), and a sports book I've been seeking for a while.

Last Night in Montreal, by Emily St. John Mandel. Because I read Station Eleven and loved it.

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin. It asks the question, how would you live if you knew the day you would die. Sounded intriguing.

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas. The story of a young black girl who really wants -- needs -- to become a rap star. It's been on the TBR list for a while.

After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the '69 Mets, by Art Shamsky. The Mets. 1969. 'nuff said.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. Doesn't everyone want to read this?

Akin, by Emma Donaghue. Another of my favorite writers, and I mistakenly thought it wasn't due out until next month, so it was a bonus when I saw it.

The Institute, by Stephen King. He has his own bookcase -- not just a mere bookshelf -- in my library.