The author sent me a copy of his novel to read and review:
Can any novel or film be busier than Rick A. Allen’s first novel? I doubt it. Okay, Star Wars books and films are busy, but they come up for some air now and then. In Allen’s novel, every page is loaded with action...sometimes a little corny but always moving forward. It’s a space opera’s space opera. It includes action on six of the eleven planets of The Nodal Community. What’s that? It’s a union of planets light years apart that try to help each other by sharing the latest technology. By the way, Earth is part of the Nodal Community but doesn’t know it yet. If you liked all the unusual aliens that roamed around in Star Wars movies, you will love the warped vision of aliens in Allen’s novel. In Star Wars we meet Pau’ans, Clawdites, Tusken Raiders, and the Gamorreans to name a few (look them up, they’ve all been in the Star Wars films). And my personal favorite (Jabba the Hutt’s pet) is the Kowakian monkey-lizard. This being said, the author did an amazing job keeping the main characters down to about six humans and four aliens. Even with all the characters involved, I had no problem remembering who was who.
In Star Riders, the reader meets in order of appearance: a Shren, a very tall alien with long white hair covering his body; the Emdannen species, short Meerkat-like looking aliens who “make their homes in the ground and build downward not upwards”; the Throngans, “They’re black-furred, they run on four legs, walk on two, and have a pair of short arms between the legs.” Haha, I mentioned that the author has a warped mind! And lastly, we have a Pallun, a very large bison-like alien with huge lips and one nostril. You are probably asking yourself...how do aliens from all those planets communicate? They have tharsh plants! If you are having a mixed alien meeting...then make sure there are tharsh plants in the room. The tharsh plant enables everyone to understand each other. Good stuff. The little co-hero, Moovik (a emdannen), reminded me of Rocket, the raccoon-like bounty hunter in the 2014 and 2017 Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
The novel was not without its flaws. Besides some corny lines, the prose was kinda fledging (normal for a first-time author) and the story, while very busy, was too easy to predict. The novel missed an opportunity to garner an attention-grabbing effect because things happened too fast. The author needs to calm down...slow the pace. The story is about one man’s attempt to find his brother, who is presumed dead during a multi-planet civil war over technology. However, let’s talk about the Star Rider, itself. What is the Star Rider? It’s the real star of the novel. It’s a strange purple and yellow ship that lays black disks in a chain around suns. It somehow gets energy from those spots (no one knows for sure because we never meet the aliens piloting the ship). Nothing seems to hurt the ships (there are at least two), nor can you make it change its routine. It’s like the ships are building a galactic highway to connect the eleven planets of the Nodal Community. I’m sure we will find out in the ensuing novels. Good first novel...just curb your enthusiasm (sound familiar?)
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: Barnes & Noble asks, “What makes a science fiction story a space opera? Well, it needs to take place in space obviously, though not necessarily all of the time. Hanging out solely in an arcology on a climate-blasted Earth, or even in a domed city on Mars, doesn’t cut it. Actually, the more space the better; though there are certainly exceptions, a good space opera should span a galaxy or two, or at least a solar system. And an opera has to be grand and dramatic-battling empires, invading aliens, mysterious ancient technology, and grand, sweeping story arcs.” I agree with one exception: if any part of the story is spent on Earth, it’s no longer a space opera. It’s okay to mention Earth...just don’t spend any of time there.
I’ve been reviewing quite a few sci/fi novels lately. So, you already know my favorites, but one that I’ve never brought up is John Scalzi’s 2005 novel, Old Man’s War (see my review of 11/21/2010), which spawned five other related novels. A B&N editorial review says, “When John Perry turns 75, he does two things: he visits his wife’s grave and he joins the Colonial Defense Force. The CDF’s enlistment contract is incredibly tempting. When a person reaches retirement age, all they have to do is give up all their worldly possessions and promise never to return to Earth. In return, elderly recruits get to take advantage of the Colonial Union’s secretive therapy, which somehow reverses aging. In essence, the soldier’s exchange a few years of military service for a new life on one of the Union’s many colony planets. Without the faintest clue of what he’s really getting himself into, Perry realizes quickly that he has just signed up for ‘an all-expenses-paid tour of hell.’ With a brand new, tank-grown, super-modified body--green skin, cat’s eyes, built-in-cranial computers, etc.-- Perry and his ultra-human cohorts travel from planet to planet leaving dead aliens in their wake.”
John Scalzi won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel with Redshirts (see my review of 02/03/2016).
Friday, November 9, 2018
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
LIGHTS on the SEA
The author sent me a copy of his novel to read and review:
Wow, what an opening! A raging thunderstorm in the fictitious town of San Remo de Mar on the island of Brent knocks Harold and Mary Rose Grapes’ house off a hundred foot cliff into the ocean.Yes, that’s right. It slides all the way down into the ocean and sails off. Why didn’t the house sink? Because the house took some of the landscape with it and that was mostly porous volcanic rock, which floats. Sometimes I wonder how some authors come up with these ideas. Anyway, most of house took on substantial damage...but it floated on. The irony of the situation was that the house was scheduled to be knocked down the very next day. Why? Because over the last thirty-five years, the house was inching closer and closer to the cliff’s edge and was a threat to the beach below. As we follow the Grapes on their voyage, we find that they lost their only son, Dylan, in a similar storm thirty-five years ago.
Harold and Dylan (eight years old) were building a ship at an old shipyard with freebie wood when the storm struck. The row boat they were using to get home capsized. “It took Harold mere seconds to resurface. Coughing up salt water, he tried to shout, frantically looking all around, but all he could see was blackness. He managed to grab a piece of lumber that had fallen out of the boat, but he didn’t see any sign of the boat itself. Or of his son." Harold was rescued by a fishing boat...they never found Dylan’s body. Mary Rose never forgave her husband, Harold. Harold never forgave himself. Not for nothing, didn’t the couple ever hear the term, out of sight, out of mind? I know that sounds callous, but it becomes a vital point when the Grapes meet an inuit family later in the story. Anyway the boat they were building (which was going to be their home) was taken apart to build the house on the cliff.
So as the storm hit their house thirty-five years later, the Grapes had some bad memories, “If anyone in San Remo unable to sleep because of the storm had looked out their window toward the cliff, they would have seen something truly unbelievable. A three-story house tilted at a thirty-five degree angle toward the sea, suspended as if by magic. The yellow house, along with a section of garden attached to the foundation, began to free-fall toward the white-capped sea. The impact was brutal.” As the Grapes tried to fix all the holes in their floating house, The prime question asked between them was, “are we sinking?” and the answer was always, “I think so.” Many problems occur during their housewrecked odyssey, but I will not say anymore...buy your own copy to find out what transpires. The author, Miquel Reina, already an established filmmaker and graphic artist, did a credible job on his first crack at a novel. His character development was first class, as was his ability to elicit empathy for his characters.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I’ve done a few shipwreck reviews before, but this is my first housewreck (don’t bother looking that up, there is no such word) review. I do have two shipwreck reviews in my blog archive. The first one is Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe (I’ll bet you didn’t know that novel was written 299 years ago!) and the second one was Yann Martel’s 2001 novel, Life of Pi. The Robinson Crusoe review can be seen on my 1/1/2016 blog and the Life of Pi review can be seen on my 3/18/2013 blog.
Pi Patel survives 227 days stranded on a small boat with a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker, while Robinson Crusoe survived two shipwrecks before ultimately spending 28 years as a castaway on a tropical island.
Wow, what an opening! A raging thunderstorm in the fictitious town of San Remo de Mar on the island of Brent knocks Harold and Mary Rose Grapes’ house off a hundred foot cliff into the ocean.Yes, that’s right. It slides all the way down into the ocean and sails off. Why didn’t the house sink? Because the house took some of the landscape with it and that was mostly porous volcanic rock, which floats. Sometimes I wonder how some authors come up with these ideas. Anyway, most of house took on substantial damage...but it floated on. The irony of the situation was that the house was scheduled to be knocked down the very next day. Why? Because over the last thirty-five years, the house was inching closer and closer to the cliff’s edge and was a threat to the beach below. As we follow the Grapes on their voyage, we find that they lost their only son, Dylan, in a similar storm thirty-five years ago.
Harold and Dylan (eight years old) were building a ship at an old shipyard with freebie wood when the storm struck. The row boat they were using to get home capsized. “It took Harold mere seconds to resurface. Coughing up salt water, he tried to shout, frantically looking all around, but all he could see was blackness. He managed to grab a piece of lumber that had fallen out of the boat, but he didn’t see any sign of the boat itself. Or of his son." Harold was rescued by a fishing boat...they never found Dylan’s body. Mary Rose never forgave her husband, Harold. Harold never forgave himself. Not for nothing, didn’t the couple ever hear the term, out of sight, out of mind? I know that sounds callous, but it becomes a vital point when the Grapes meet an inuit family later in the story. Anyway the boat they were building (which was going to be their home) was taken apart to build the house on the cliff.
So as the storm hit their house thirty-five years later, the Grapes had some bad memories, “If anyone in San Remo unable to sleep because of the storm had looked out their window toward the cliff, they would have seen something truly unbelievable. A three-story house tilted at a thirty-five degree angle toward the sea, suspended as if by magic. The yellow house, along with a section of garden attached to the foundation, began to free-fall toward the white-capped sea. The impact was brutal.” As the Grapes tried to fix all the holes in their floating house, The prime question asked between them was, “are we sinking?” and the answer was always, “I think so.” Many problems occur during their housewrecked odyssey, but I will not say anymore...buy your own copy to find out what transpires. The author, Miquel Reina, already an established filmmaker and graphic artist, did a credible job on his first crack at a novel. His character development was first class, as was his ability to elicit empathy for his characters.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I’ve done a few shipwreck reviews before, but this is my first housewreck (don’t bother looking that up, there is no such word) review. I do have two shipwreck reviews in my blog archive. The first one is Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe (I’ll bet you didn’t know that novel was written 299 years ago!) and the second one was Yann Martel’s 2001 novel, Life of Pi. The Robinson Crusoe review can be seen on my 1/1/2016 blog and the Life of Pi review can be seen on my 3/18/2013 blog.
Pi Patel survives 227 days stranded on a small boat with a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker, while Robinson Crusoe survived two shipwrecks before ultimately spending 28 years as a castaway on a tropical island.
ZOMBIE SCARE
Halloween short provided by Pat Koelmel, Rick’s Reviews guest contributor:
💀 ZOMBIE SCARE 👻
💀 ZOMBIE SCARE 👻
Flashlight in hand, Harley lay underneath his bed reading.
The story terrified him.
Yet he couldn't stop turning the pages.
“HARLEY!” screamed his mother as she entered his room. “Are you under the bed reading those horror stories about zombies again?”
Harley jumped at the sound of her voice, hitting his head on the bed frame. “Ouch, you scared me,” whined Harley.
“It’s no wonder,” said his mother. “Anybody would have the jitters reading about zombies getting their brains shot out.”
Harley crawled out from under the bed. “Are they true … the stories?”
“Of course not,” she said.
Just then a gust of wind whipped through a tree outside Harley’s bedroom window. The branches scratched at the window pane.
It sent a shiver down Harley’s spine. He asked again, “Ma, are the stories true?”
His mother sighed. Then she took a long, hard look at her son. “I guess you’re old enough to know the truth.” She nodded yes.
Harley’s stomach lurched.
“Now you understand the dangers that face us,” said his mother. “Why Dad and I have never let you go outside. We had to protect you until you were ready.”
“Ready for what?” croaked Harley.
She gazed outside into the darkness. “Survive out there on your own.”
Harley gasped. A cold sweat covered his lanky body. Then he trembled with both fear and anticipation.
Suddenly, he felt a hunger like never before.
His mother grinned. "It's time boy. Time you caught your own dinner."
His mother grinned. "It's time boy. Time you caught your own dinner."
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
TILT
The author sent me an autographed copy of his novel to read and review:
Is it too difficult to get one of the five major publishers to publish your novel? From what I’m reading...it is very tough. So thank God for the Indies, because I just read one of the best original sci/fi novels that I’ve scrutinized in a long time. How can an author get the reader to root for the citizens of Tilt (the planet's name) and it’s attackers (the Swarm coming from light years away) at the same time! Well, first time author Todd Simpson did it...at least for me. This scenario reminded me of the 1961 Twilight Zone episode named The Invaders, starring Agnes Moorehead, who hardly said a word during the entire show. It’s the classic catch-22 paradoxical situation: Do I side with the attackers or the citizens of planet Tilt? The citizens believe their planet is only 590 years old because that’s all they remember. The attackers, called The Swarm, said they were on Tilt 750 years ago. Who does the planet belong to? Are they telling each other the truth?
Why do the citizens of Tilt believe either a spark or a God (the Creationist) or a Reboot (the Continuist) started their planet? These two theories caused a lot of angst on Tilt. And what about the Central computer that controls life on Tilt? Where did that come from? Is it like Arthur C. Clarke’s computer, Hal, who controlled the spaceship, Discovery One, in 2001 A Space Odyssey? The Swarm turn out to be humans, just like the ones being grown by the Citizens of Tilt. Where did the citizens get human DNA? And what’s goo, the only food the citizens serve the human clones? And how and why do the citizens recycle some of the home grown humans? These are only a few of the question you will ask yourself as you read this brilliant novel. One of the few mistakes the author made was not having enough (just a few near the end of the novel) cliffhanger chapter endings. With all that goes on in this novel, it should have been a paramount goal. The other minor dislike for me was the somewhat annoying tech talk between tri-protagonists Ayaka, Millicent, and Brexton near the end of the novel (if you are rooting for the home team).
I personally had a soft spot in my heart for four of the cloned humans on Tilt...Blob, Grace, JoJo, and Blubber. There are many characters, but the reader doesn’t get confused as to who is who. You would think there should be a roster of characters in the front of book, but no...it wasn’t needed. I don’t want to tell you too much about this novel because I want you to go out and buy your own copy. I’ll leave you with these facts. The Swarm (a group of spaceships) were spotted many years ago and were heading directly for Tilt. The citizens of Tilt and the Central computer didn’t know if they were friendly or hostile. After many years, the Swarm is finally close enough to contact the citizens of Tilt. “A virtual screen popped up in front of Ayaka...the screen flickered slightly as the signal was locked on.” As you can imagine the citizens were shocked…"How was it possible that entities (Stems) that we had grown in our labs were broadcasting from a ship more than one light year distant?" A Stem is what the citizens called the DNA cloned humans on Tilt and the people on the spaceship looked exactly the same as Tilt’s Stems (were they?) “They were so similar that the odds of them coming from anywhere else were almost zero.”
The Swarm's opening salutation to Tilt was on video: “System FJ-426. Greetings. A Stem covered with strange cloths was looking directly at us and speaking - in English! We’ve been traveling a long time, and a long distance, towards you. We hope that we find you well, and that your experience on FJ - 426 is a pleasant one. It’s been many years since our last contact, and we are eager to catch up on new developments. With your permission, we’ll refine our trajectory to directly intersect with you, whereupon we can discuss topics of mutual interest. Please signal your consent. My regards. Remma Jain, Captain. Signing off.” Tilt’s Ayaka, Millicent, and the Central computer are stunned. “But...this is impossible,” Millicent said “We’ve only been growing Stems in the lab for a few hundred years (Tilt’s lab personnel believe Stems lack intelligence and speed). To my knowledge, we’ve never sent a Stem into space, let alone a Swarm.” Okay you got a review of the first 45 pages of this near brainiac sci/fi novel...I highly recommended.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: I have so many favorite sci/fi novels that it would impossible to rank them in any order of fondness, but here are three:
Larry Niven’s 1970 novel, Ringworld, winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards. The novel spawned eight other related novels. A expedition of some very strange characters are sent to investigate the gigantic artificial ring that is a million miles wide.
Arthur C. Clarke’s 1973 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards. A group of explorers are sent to study a thirty four mile long and twelve mile diameter cylindrical starship that entered the Solar System. Three other related novels were generated from the original Rama.
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel, Cat’s Cradle. The children of one of the developers of the atomic bomb, the late Felix Hoenikker, possess their father’s invention of Ice - Nine, which freezes water on contact. And you can guess what happens to the world’s oceans. Ouch!
Is it too difficult to get one of the five major publishers to publish your novel? From what I’m reading...it is very tough. So thank God for the Indies, because I just read one of the best original sci/fi novels that I’ve scrutinized in a long time. How can an author get the reader to root for the citizens of Tilt (the planet's name) and it’s attackers (the Swarm coming from light years away) at the same time! Well, first time author Todd Simpson did it...at least for me. This scenario reminded me of the 1961 Twilight Zone episode named The Invaders, starring Agnes Moorehead, who hardly said a word during the entire show. It’s the classic catch-22 paradoxical situation: Do I side with the attackers or the citizens of planet Tilt? The citizens believe their planet is only 590 years old because that’s all they remember. The attackers, called The Swarm, said they were on Tilt 750 years ago. Who does the planet belong to? Are they telling each other the truth?
Why do the citizens of Tilt believe either a spark or a God (the Creationist) or a Reboot (the Continuist) started their planet? These two theories caused a lot of angst on Tilt. And what about the Central computer that controls life on Tilt? Where did that come from? Is it like Arthur C. Clarke’s computer, Hal, who controlled the spaceship, Discovery One, in 2001 A Space Odyssey? The Swarm turn out to be humans, just like the ones being grown by the Citizens of Tilt. Where did the citizens get human DNA? And what’s goo, the only food the citizens serve the human clones? And how and why do the citizens recycle some of the home grown humans? These are only a few of the question you will ask yourself as you read this brilliant novel. One of the few mistakes the author made was not having enough (just a few near the end of the novel) cliffhanger chapter endings. With all that goes on in this novel, it should have been a paramount goal. The other minor dislike for me was the somewhat annoying tech talk between tri-protagonists Ayaka, Millicent, and Brexton near the end of the novel (if you are rooting for the home team).
I personally had a soft spot in my heart for four of the cloned humans on Tilt...Blob, Grace, JoJo, and Blubber. There are many characters, but the reader doesn’t get confused as to who is who. You would think there should be a roster of characters in the front of book, but no...it wasn’t needed. I don’t want to tell you too much about this novel because I want you to go out and buy your own copy. I’ll leave you with these facts. The Swarm (a group of spaceships) were spotted many years ago and were heading directly for Tilt. The citizens of Tilt and the Central computer didn’t know if they were friendly or hostile. After many years, the Swarm is finally close enough to contact the citizens of Tilt. “A virtual screen popped up in front of Ayaka...the screen flickered slightly as the signal was locked on.” As you can imagine the citizens were shocked…"How was it possible that entities (Stems) that we had grown in our labs were broadcasting from a ship more than one light year distant?" A Stem is what the citizens called the DNA cloned humans on Tilt and the people on the spaceship looked exactly the same as Tilt’s Stems (were they?) “They were so similar that the odds of them coming from anywhere else were almost zero.”
The Swarm's opening salutation to Tilt was on video: “System FJ-426. Greetings. A Stem covered with strange cloths was looking directly at us and speaking - in English! We’ve been traveling a long time, and a long distance, towards you. We hope that we find you well, and that your experience on FJ - 426 is a pleasant one. It’s been many years since our last contact, and we are eager to catch up on new developments. With your permission, we’ll refine our trajectory to directly intersect with you, whereupon we can discuss topics of mutual interest. Please signal your consent. My regards. Remma Jain, Captain. Signing off.” Tilt’s Ayaka, Millicent, and the Central computer are stunned. “But...this is impossible,” Millicent said “We’ve only been growing Stems in the lab for a few hundred years (Tilt’s lab personnel believe Stems lack intelligence and speed). To my knowledge, we’ve never sent a Stem into space, let alone a Swarm.” Okay you got a review of the first 45 pages of this near brainiac sci/fi novel...I highly recommended.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: I have so many favorite sci/fi novels that it would impossible to rank them in any order of fondness, but here are three:
Larry Niven’s 1970 novel, Ringworld, winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards. The novel spawned eight other related novels. A expedition of some very strange characters are sent to investigate the gigantic artificial ring that is a million miles wide.
Arthur C. Clarke’s 1973 novel, Rendezvous with Rama, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards. A group of explorers are sent to study a thirty four mile long and twelve mile diameter cylindrical starship that entered the Solar System. Three other related novels were generated from the original Rama.
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novel, Cat’s Cradle. The children of one of the developers of the atomic bomb, the late Felix Hoenikker, possess their father’s invention of Ice - Nine, which freezes water on contact. And you can guess what happens to the world’s oceans. Ouch!
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
HOWARDS END
I did enjoy E. M. Forster’s 1910 classic novel, but it was kind of a sleepyhead read. It’s written in a way that makes the reader reread a lot of paragraphs...and sometimes this literary critic still didn’t get the crux of what the author was saying. This has nothing to do with the author’s known love of symbolism, per se. Although I never did find out what the "wych elm tree" with pigs teeth stuck in the trunk (at the Howards End estate) was meant to represent. “Do you think that the tree really did cure toothache, if one believed in it?” “Of course It did. It would cure anything...once.” While Forster used less descriptive writing than most authors of his era, his prose was impeccable, although I would have preferred less circling of the wagons and more of let’s get to the point style of writing. Forster was known to like writing about social class differences and hypocrisy (posturing and deceit) especially from the rich man towards the poor man, and his humanist attitude is full-blown in Howards End. Every so often, the author tried his hand at the English dry sense of humour, but unfortunately it came off as deadpan. I am aware that I’m playing a cat and mouse game (love that idiom) with a big time writer, who also published two other bestsellers: A Room with a View in 1908 and A Passage to India in 1924, besides Howards End (all three were adapted into films). My friendly taunting aside, I liked this novel that Wikipedia said compared thoughtless plutocrats (the Wilcoxes), bohemian intellectuals (the Schlegels) and the struggling middle - class aspirants (the Basts).
The novel is set in the turn of the century England when automobiles and horse and buggies still shared the muddy road. The focal point of the novel wasn’t about who owned the Howards End estate (for me anyway), but how three different classes of people interacted. By the way, I don’t use an apostrophe between the d and s in Howards End because the author didn’t use it in his novel. Anyway, the wealthy family is represented by Henry and Ruth Wilcox and their children: Charles, Paul, and Evie. Business is pure capitalism to Mr. Wilcox...It’s a variation of “it’s my way or the highway.” They have several places to live, but Mrs. Wilcox prefers her inherited property, Howards End. Next, meet the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their younger brother Tibby. They are sometimes advised by Aunt Julie Munt. You never find out what happened to their parents, or how they get 500 to 600 pounds each per year. They live in an apartment they call “Wickham Place” in London and enjoy the operas and artsy things of London (they belong to the famous Bloomsbury Group). They meet the downtrodden Leonard Bast, who is trying to get to the middle class from the repressed class, at (of all places) the opera. Leonard is trying to bone up on the musical and literary world in order to move his station in life up one notch. Leonard has his umbrella taken by Helen Schlegel in error at the opera’s end and follows the sisters home to retrieve it. The Schlegels take a liking to Leonard, but he is too overwhelmed and self-conscious to stay for tea. Are you excited yet?
The Wilcoxes and the Schlegels met while touring Germany (the Schlegels father was German, but was naturalized in England). While in Germany, Helen falls in love with Paul, but the brief encounter falls apart when Helen visits Howards End later in the year. We will meet Leonard’s mistress (not married yet), Jacky, later in the novel. I only bring her up, because on page 48, the reader gets his first look at Forster’s descriptive writing. “A woman, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings and bellpulls - ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and caught - and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, but her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down the back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny rippled around her forehead. The face - the face does not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white.” Okay, so he is a descriptive writer after all (haha).
The story is too complicated to tell you any more. It is boring at times and full of surprises at other times. If you are working on building up your knowledge of early 1900s English novelists...then this is the kind of book you want to read. I highly recommend this novel, but have your sleeping cap nearby (haha).
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: Besides the three novels I mentioned that were adapted into film, there are four other E. M. Forster works converted to film: a 1945 short film, A Diary for Timothy; 1987’s Maurice; 1991’s Where Angels Fear to Tread; and 1998’s Plug.
As I said in the above text, E. M. Forster was known for surprises and symbolism in all of his novels. One major question is always: “Howards End, the place, is clearly of value for other reasons than its material actuality. It stands for something. How would you describe what it stands for?” Unfortunately, I thought about that throughout the novel and couldn’t come up with an answer (same as the wych elm tree).
Nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in 16 different years has to be an exercise in futility. E. M. Forster died on 6/7/1970 at the age of 91 in Coventry, England.
The novel is set in the turn of the century England when automobiles and horse and buggies still shared the muddy road. The focal point of the novel wasn’t about who owned the Howards End estate (for me anyway), but how three different classes of people interacted. By the way, I don’t use an apostrophe between the d and s in Howards End because the author didn’t use it in his novel. Anyway, the wealthy family is represented by Henry and Ruth Wilcox and their children: Charles, Paul, and Evie. Business is pure capitalism to Mr. Wilcox...It’s a variation of “it’s my way or the highway.” They have several places to live, but Mrs. Wilcox prefers her inherited property, Howards End. Next, meet the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their younger brother Tibby. They are sometimes advised by Aunt Julie Munt. You never find out what happened to their parents, or how they get 500 to 600 pounds each per year. They live in an apartment they call “Wickham Place” in London and enjoy the operas and artsy things of London (they belong to the famous Bloomsbury Group). They meet the downtrodden Leonard Bast, who is trying to get to the middle class from the repressed class, at (of all places) the opera. Leonard is trying to bone up on the musical and literary world in order to move his station in life up one notch. Leonard has his umbrella taken by Helen Schlegel in error at the opera’s end and follows the sisters home to retrieve it. The Schlegels take a liking to Leonard, but he is too overwhelmed and self-conscious to stay for tea. Are you excited yet?
The Wilcoxes and the Schlegels met while touring Germany (the Schlegels father was German, but was naturalized in England). While in Germany, Helen falls in love with Paul, but the brief encounter falls apart when Helen visits Howards End later in the year. We will meet Leonard’s mistress (not married yet), Jacky, later in the novel. I only bring her up, because on page 48, the reader gets his first look at Forster’s descriptive writing. “A woman, of whom it is simplest to say that she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She seemed all strings and bellpulls - ribbons, chains, bead necklaces that clinked and caught - and a boa of azure feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, but her arms were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was flowery, resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which germinated here yes and there no. She wore it on the back of her head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down the back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny rippled around her forehead. The face - the face does not signify. It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white.” Okay, so he is a descriptive writer after all (haha).
The story is too complicated to tell you any more. It is boring at times and full of surprises at other times. If you are working on building up your knowledge of early 1900s English novelists...then this is the kind of book you want to read. I highly recommend this novel, but have your sleeping cap nearby (haha).
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: Besides the three novels I mentioned that were adapted into film, there are four other E. M. Forster works converted to film: a 1945 short film, A Diary for Timothy; 1987’s Maurice; 1991’s Where Angels Fear to Tread; and 1998’s Plug.
As I said in the above text, E. M. Forster was known for surprises and symbolism in all of his novels. One major question is always: “Howards End, the place, is clearly of value for other reasons than its material actuality. It stands for something. How would you describe what it stands for?” Unfortunately, I thought about that throughout the novel and couldn’t come up with an answer (same as the wych elm tree).
Nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature in 16 different years has to be an exercise in futility. E. M. Forster died on 6/7/1970 at the age of 91 in Coventry, England.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
O PIONEERS!
When I reviewed Thomas Hardy’s novel, Far from a Madding Crowd (see my review of 1/26/2015), I asked the question, “Can anybody write better prose…” Well, Willa Cather’s 1913 novel comes close. Here are some samples: The crazy Norwegian, Ivar, who lived like a hobbit in the Nebraska hillside, is described as, “He was a queerly shaped old man, with a thick, powerful body set on short bow-legs. His shaggy white hair, falling in a thick mane about his ruddy cheeks, made him look older than he was.” How about a boy swinging his scythe (that’s how they cut the grass in those days) in a graveyard, “He was a splendid figure of a boy, tall and straight as a young pine tree, with a handsome head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set under a serious brow. The space between his two front teeth, which were unusually far apart..” or, “Milly was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompadoured, with creamy complexion, square white teeth, and a short upper lip.” or, two woman, Marie and Alexandra, talking to each other outdoors on a sunny day, “They made a pretty picture in the strong sunlight, the leafy pattern surrounding them like a net; the Swedish woman so white and gold, kindly and amused, but armored in calm, and the alert brown one, her full lips parted, points of yellow light dancing in her eyes as she laughed and chattered.” Okay, so now you know Willa could write.
Thomas Hardy’s above mentioned novel and Willa Cather’s novel share a similar plot. Both protagonists inherit a farm, Thomas Hardy’s Bathsheba from her uncle in the late 1800s England, and Alexandra from her father in turn of the 20th century Nebraska. The Nebraska area was populated with many recent immigrants; mostly Swedish, Norwegian, German, Bohemian and French trying their hand as first time farmers. Droughts and poor soil resulted in crop failure for most of them. Our heroine, Alexandra Bergson (about 12 years old at the time) promises her dying dad that she will not lose the farm, and, in fact, will find ways to make it highly successful. Her two older brothers, Lou and Oscar, want to give up and leave the area. Alexandra’s younger brother, Emil is on her side. Alexandra talks the boys into mortgaging the farm to buy up more land in hopes that the land will eventually become valuable...making them wealthy landowners. As the years and tears go by, Alexandra has made a success of the farm. Alexandra gives Lou and Oscar their own land and sends Emil to college. Life is good, but Alexandra is lonely. Her sorta boyfriend, Carl Linstrum, had to move with his family many years ago to St. Louis, because his father got a job in a cigar factory. Carl, now 35 years old, returns to visit Alexandra, but Lou and Oscar see him as a charlatan wanting to weasel Alexandra out of her money. Is it true? Or is it really Lou and Oscar who want her land?
Willa Cather treats the two romances in the novel almost as sidebar events. I never saw them coming until just before they developed. The courting of Alexandra by Carl almost never happened since he moved away so long ago and was on his way to Alaska to gold pan when he decided to visit Alexandra. He was fifteen years old when he left with his family to St. Louis and now he was thirty five. He only wanted to stay overnight, but Alexandra stretched-out his stay for months. The neighbors started talking and the two older boys objected to his continued sojourn. They eventually forced him out of town. Will Carl and Alexandra be reunited in the future? The second romance between Alexandra’s youngest son, Emil, and Marie Shabata (nee Tovesky) was purely on the sly since Marie was married. I didn’t anticipate the results of the romances... were they going to be tragic, hopeful, or a combination thereof? Throughout the novel, Willa Cather had a way of hiding things from the reader... then she would turn the crank on the jack-in-the-box and something unexpected would pop out. This is not your typical cowboys and indians novel like the ones that were typically being written by authors like Zane Grey or Owen Wister. Did Willa Cather title her novel after Walt Whitman’s poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! (yes, she did), first published in 1865 in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass? Yes, it was the days of Horace Greeley’s Go West Young Man, let the Manifest Destiny start.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: From the introduction and notes by Chris Kraus:
Considered one of the great figures of early-twentieth-century American literature, Willa Cather derived her inspiration from the American Midwest, which she considered her home. Never married, she cherished her many friendships, some of which she had maintained since childhood. Her intimate coterie of women writers and artists motivated Cather to produce some of her best work. Sarah Orne Jewett, a successful author from Maine whom Cather had met during her McClure’s years, inspired her to devote herself full-time to creating literature and to write about her childhood, which she did in several novels of the prairies; one of the best known is O Pioneers! (1913), whose title comes from a poem by Walt Whitman. A critic of the rise of materialism, Cather addressed the social impact of the developing industrial age in A Lost Lady (1923) which was made into a film starring Barbara Stanwyck. For One of Ours (1922), a novel about World War I, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
On April / 24 /1947 Willa Cather dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in her Madison Avenue apartment in New York City. She is buried in New Hampshire. She was 74 years old.
Thomas Hardy’s above mentioned novel and Willa Cather’s novel share a similar plot. Both protagonists inherit a farm, Thomas Hardy’s Bathsheba from her uncle in the late 1800s England, and Alexandra from her father in turn of the 20th century Nebraska. The Nebraska area was populated with many recent immigrants; mostly Swedish, Norwegian, German, Bohemian and French trying their hand as first time farmers. Droughts and poor soil resulted in crop failure for most of them. Our heroine, Alexandra Bergson (about 12 years old at the time) promises her dying dad that she will not lose the farm, and, in fact, will find ways to make it highly successful. Her two older brothers, Lou and Oscar, want to give up and leave the area. Alexandra’s younger brother, Emil is on her side. Alexandra talks the boys into mortgaging the farm to buy up more land in hopes that the land will eventually become valuable...making them wealthy landowners. As the years and tears go by, Alexandra has made a success of the farm. Alexandra gives Lou and Oscar their own land and sends Emil to college. Life is good, but Alexandra is lonely. Her sorta boyfriend, Carl Linstrum, had to move with his family many years ago to St. Louis, because his father got a job in a cigar factory. Carl, now 35 years old, returns to visit Alexandra, but Lou and Oscar see him as a charlatan wanting to weasel Alexandra out of her money. Is it true? Or is it really Lou and Oscar who want her land?
Willa Cather treats the two romances in the novel almost as sidebar events. I never saw them coming until just before they developed. The courting of Alexandra by Carl almost never happened since he moved away so long ago and was on his way to Alaska to gold pan when he decided to visit Alexandra. He was fifteen years old when he left with his family to St. Louis and now he was thirty five. He only wanted to stay overnight, but Alexandra stretched-out his stay for months. The neighbors started talking and the two older boys objected to his continued sojourn. They eventually forced him out of town. Will Carl and Alexandra be reunited in the future? The second romance between Alexandra’s youngest son, Emil, and Marie Shabata (nee Tovesky) was purely on the sly since Marie was married. I didn’t anticipate the results of the romances... were they going to be tragic, hopeful, or a combination thereof? Throughout the novel, Willa Cather had a way of hiding things from the reader... then she would turn the crank on the jack-in-the-box and something unexpected would pop out. This is not your typical cowboys and indians novel like the ones that were typically being written by authors like Zane Grey or Owen Wister. Did Willa Cather title her novel after Walt Whitman’s poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers! (yes, she did), first published in 1865 in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass? Yes, it was the days of Horace Greeley’s Go West Young Man, let the Manifest Destiny start.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: From the introduction and notes by Chris Kraus:
Considered one of the great figures of early-twentieth-century American literature, Willa Cather derived her inspiration from the American Midwest, which she considered her home. Never married, she cherished her many friendships, some of which she had maintained since childhood. Her intimate coterie of women writers and artists motivated Cather to produce some of her best work. Sarah Orne Jewett, a successful author from Maine whom Cather had met during her McClure’s years, inspired her to devote herself full-time to creating literature and to write about her childhood, which she did in several novels of the prairies; one of the best known is O Pioneers! (1913), whose title comes from a poem by Walt Whitman. A critic of the rise of materialism, Cather addressed the social impact of the developing industrial age in A Lost Lady (1923) which was made into a film starring Barbara Stanwyck. For One of Ours (1922), a novel about World War I, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
On April / 24 /1947 Willa Cather dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in her Madison Avenue apartment in New York City. She is buried in New Hampshire. She was 74 years old.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Hillbilly Elegy
This is a long dissertation on what it’s like to be a poor white living in a Rust Belt town in Appalachian Kentucky. This somewhat boring (although funny and sad at times) memoir by J. D. Vance shifts back and forth from his family’s original homestead in Breathitt County, Kentucky to the move north to Middletown, Ohio, where they will try to improve their family’s social position. But as you will find out...that’s not an easy task. The average person calls the people of Scots-Irish descent hillbillies, rednecks or white trash. And the name calling is mostly justified. By author J. D. Vance’s own admission, “We do not like outsiders or people who are different from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most important, how they talk. To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.”
First of all, I should have told you that this entire book is narrated by J. D. Vance. Tediously, he will tell the reader how he rose above his childhood, did a tour with the U.S. Marine Corps, graduated college at Ohio State and later graduated with a law degree from Yale University. After all these accomplishments, he will remind the reader that he is still a hillbilly and proud of it! And he doesn’t sugar coat his youth. “The fact that hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups - some of whom are clearly more destitute than we are - suggest something else is going on. Indeed it is.” They have too many problems for me to enumerate in this review...go get your own copy. Further on, Vance says, “It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.” This Vance guy talks like a lawyer (Haha).
Vance further states that one hillbilly problem is: “Too many young men immune to hard work.” Author Vance, himself, wasn’t immune to work, but his poor upbringing was his albatross. Living at many different addresses (since his mother was married five times) coupled with his mom’s drug addiction didn’t give Vance a firm base to start life. Luckily, he had grandparents that he could go to for solace and housing in between mom’s bouts with drugs. He lovingly calls them papaw and mamaw throughout the book. During that part of his life, he says,”I earned my first bloody nose at five and my first black eye at six. Each of these fights began after someone insulted my mother. Mother jokes were never allowed, and grandmother jokes earned the harshest punishment that my little fist could administer.” The hillbilly rule is that it’s okay to start a fight...only if a man insults your family. This last rule was unspoken but clear.”
Family arguments usually depended on who Vance’s mom was married to at the time, “Mom and Bob’s (husband number ?) problems were my first introduction to marital conflict resolution. Here were the takeaways: Never speak at a reasonable volume when screaming will do; if a fight gets a little too intense, it’s okay to slap and punch, so long as the man doesn’t hit first; always express your feelings in a way that’s insulting and hurtful to your partner; if all else fails, take the kids and the dog to a local motel, and don’t tell your spouse where to find you…” Is that priceless advise or what? Vance talking (in general) about hillbillies, “Why didn’t our neighbor leave that abusive man. Why did she spend money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom? It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America.”
The fact that J. D. Vance admits (in the above statement) that the book to understand the plight of the hillbilly hasn’t been written yet is the reason why I really got nothing out of reading this book. Listen, I know that it topped the New York Times bestseller list for a long time (8/2016 - 1/2017) and that there are over 11,500 reviews on Amazon, but there’s nothing to learn from reading this book. Vance sums up hillbilly life: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos begets chaos. In stability begets instability. Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly.” That’s the answer?? He further says, “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and Sympathy begin?”
I will leave you with a funny parable Mamaw told a young Vance: A young man was sitting at home when a terrible rainstorm began. Within hours, the man’s house began to flood, and someone came to his door offering a ride to higher ground. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me”. A few hours later, as the waters engulfed the first floor of the man’s home, a boat passed by, and the captain offered to take the man to safety. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me.” A few hours after that, as the man waited on his roof-his entire home flooded-a helicopter flew by, and the pilot offered transportation to dry land. Again the man declined, telling the pilot that God would care for him. Soon thereafter, the waters overcame the man, and he stood before God in heaven, he protested his fate: “You promised that you’d help me so long as I was faithful.” God replied, “I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. Your death is your own fault.” God helps those who help themselves. This was the wisdom of the Book of Mamaw.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I really wanted to give this book three and a half stars, but Amazon only accepts whole numbers and this book was better than a three...thus the four star rating.
I’m really not a memoir reader. I just knew this book was a big seller and decided to read it without doing any homework on it’s subject matter.
The only memoirs I liked were: Lauren Bacall by Myself (published in 1978) and WIRED: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward in 1984 (which really wasn’t a memoir).
And if I’m having trouble sleeping, all I have to do is start reading Jon Meacham’s 2008 book American Lion, the story of our 7th president, Andrew Jackson. I’m falling asleep just thinking about it...zzzz.
First of all, I should have told you that this entire book is narrated by J. D. Vance. Tediously, he will tell the reader how he rose above his childhood, did a tour with the U.S. Marine Corps, graduated college at Ohio State and later graduated with a law degree from Yale University. After all these accomplishments, he will remind the reader that he is still a hillbilly and proud of it! And he doesn’t sugar coat his youth. “The fact that hillbillies like me are more down about the future than many other groups - some of whom are clearly more destitute than we are - suggest something else is going on. Indeed it is.” They have too many problems for me to enumerate in this review...go get your own copy. Further on, Vance says, “It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.” This Vance guy talks like a lawyer (Haha).
Vance further states that one hillbilly problem is: “Too many young men immune to hard work.” Author Vance, himself, wasn’t immune to work, but his poor upbringing was his albatross. Living at many different addresses (since his mother was married five times) coupled with his mom’s drug addiction didn’t give Vance a firm base to start life. Luckily, he had grandparents that he could go to for solace and housing in between mom’s bouts with drugs. He lovingly calls them papaw and mamaw throughout the book. During that part of his life, he says,”I earned my first bloody nose at five and my first black eye at six. Each of these fights began after someone insulted my mother. Mother jokes were never allowed, and grandmother jokes earned the harshest punishment that my little fist could administer.” The hillbilly rule is that it’s okay to start a fight...only if a man insults your family. This last rule was unspoken but clear.”
Family arguments usually depended on who Vance’s mom was married to at the time, “Mom and Bob’s (husband number ?) problems were my first introduction to marital conflict resolution. Here were the takeaways: Never speak at a reasonable volume when screaming will do; if a fight gets a little too intense, it’s okay to slap and punch, so long as the man doesn’t hit first; always express your feelings in a way that’s insulting and hurtful to your partner; if all else fails, take the kids and the dog to a local motel, and don’t tell your spouse where to find you…” Is that priceless advise or what? Vance talking (in general) about hillbillies, “Why didn’t our neighbor leave that abusive man. Why did she spend money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom? It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America.”
The fact that J. D. Vance admits (in the above statement) that the book to understand the plight of the hillbilly hasn’t been written yet is the reason why I really got nothing out of reading this book. Listen, I know that it topped the New York Times bestseller list for a long time (8/2016 - 1/2017) and that there are over 11,500 reviews on Amazon, but there’s nothing to learn from reading this book. Vance sums up hillbilly life: “Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chaos begets chaos. In stability begets instability. Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly.” That’s the answer?? He further says, “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children? How much is mom’s life her own fault? Where does blame stop and Sympathy begin?”
I will leave you with a funny parable Mamaw told a young Vance: A young man was sitting at home when a terrible rainstorm began. Within hours, the man’s house began to flood, and someone came to his door offering a ride to higher ground. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me”. A few hours later, as the waters engulfed the first floor of the man’s home, a boat passed by, and the captain offered to take the man to safety. The man declined, saying, “God will take care of me.” A few hours after that, as the man waited on his roof-his entire home flooded-a helicopter flew by, and the pilot offered transportation to dry land. Again the man declined, telling the pilot that God would care for him. Soon thereafter, the waters overcame the man, and he stood before God in heaven, he protested his fate: “You promised that you’d help me so long as I was faithful.” God replied, “I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. Your death is your own fault.” God helps those who help themselves. This was the wisdom of the Book of Mamaw.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
Comment: I really wanted to give this book three and a half stars, but Amazon only accepts whole numbers and this book was better than a three...thus the four star rating.
I’m really not a memoir reader. I just knew this book was a big seller and decided to read it without doing any homework on it’s subject matter.
The only memoirs I liked were: Lauren Bacall by Myself (published in 1978) and WIRED: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward in 1984 (which really wasn’t a memoir).
And if I’m having trouble sleeping, all I have to do is start reading Jon Meacham’s 2008 book American Lion, the story of our 7th president, Andrew Jackson. I’m falling asleep just thinking about it...zzzz.
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