Book Barmy | Book Blog, Book Reviews

100 Years Overdue

Excerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mr. Webb Johnson returned a San Francisco library book 100 years late. There was no fine.

“Whew,” Johnson said.

The book, a collection of short stories published in 1909, had been checked out by his great-grandmother Phoebe Webb in 1917 from the old San Francisco Fillmore branch which, like his great-grandmother, is no longer around.

Head San Francisco Librarian Luis Herrera welcomed the book back and said the library was very glad to get it, finally. At the 2017 rate of 10 cents a day, the overdue fine would have come to $3,650. Fortunately for Johnson, fines on overdue books are now capped at $5. And under the library’s current amnesty program for overdue books, there’s no fine at all.

The amnesty program has gotten 2,000 overdue books back onto library shelves since it began Jan. 3. About 1,400 delinquent borrowers have had their library privileges restored. An additional 54,000 patrons with accumulated fines of $10 or more are still walking around with suspended library cards. Under the amnesty program, they have until Feb. 14 to turn in their books with no penalty.

Amnesty programs — which San Francisco also offered in 2009, 2004 and 1998 — are somewhat controversial in the generally noncontroversial world of libraries. Some say that when libraries are known to forgive and forget every few years, it offers little incentive to return overdue books at other times. But Herrera said it was all about getting books back in the library where they belong, not about collecting a dime or two or 36,500.

Johnson said a check of family history showed that his great-grandma had died one week before the book was due. The timing suggests that Webb may have had more pressing business to attend to at the time than returning the book, he said.

The amnesty came in handy because Johnson said he had discovered the overdue book in 1996 and had hung onto it ever since. That means “Forty Minutes Late” has been unintentionally late for 79 years and deliberately late for 21 years.

“We figured it was ours now,” Johnson said. “I’m guilty. I know it. Guilty, guilty, guilty.”

The book is by F. Hopkinson Smith, an author, artist and engineer who designed the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The first story in Smith’s collection is about a cranky man who nearly misses a speaking engagement because of a late train. The author, in the story, suggests there are worst sins than being late, such as being cranky — a notion that Johnson says he fully endorses.

Conscience, along with the amnesty program, persuaded him to bring the book back. Another reason he brought it back is his cousin Judy Wells wanted to check it out.

She showed up at the Park Branch Library along with Johnson. After Johnson handed the overdue book back to the library, Wells stepped up to the circulation desk and applied for a library card. She figured she could go right home with “Forty Minutes Late” again, for three weeks or 100 years, whichever comes first.

But Herrera, perhaps reluctant to entrust the volume to the extended Webb-Wells-Johnson family for another century, said “Forty Minutes Late” would be temporarily unavailable until it could be properly re-cataloged and evaluated by library historians.

“I can wait,” Wells said.

Written by Steve Rubenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Posted by BookBarmy on Jan 30, 2017 in Book Reviews

The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida

It’s every travelers nightmare ~~ jet lagged, tired, disorientated, and at your most vulnerable ~~ you’re robbed. This is exactly what happens to a nameless American woman in the unconventional novel, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty.

While checking into her disappointing hotel in Casablanca, her backpack, holding her wallet, passport, computer, and all her money, is stolen while her back is turned.

(Let me stop here to say I heard Vendela Vida –don’t you love her name?–interviewed on Fresh Air — the author got the idea for this novel after her own experience of being robbed in a foreign country.)

The police investigating the theft are blatantly incompetent, perhaps in on the theft, and in the end return a backpack, but it’s not hers. It contains another woman’s wallet, money, passport, and (still working) credit cards.

While she is understandably panicked by the crime, she realizes she is also strangely free to become anyone she wants to be. Our nameless narrator takes the backpack and assumes the new identity.

Little by little, during this slim little novel, we are given her backstory An ugly divorce and a betrayal by her twin, allows us to understand why she escaped to Morocco and her need to create new personas.

The novel is written in second person singular (i.e.: you)

“You know who you are; other people do not need to.”

This voice is actually more intimate than the first person singular, as if we are co-inhabiting each new identity. She is recruited to play a famous actress’s stand-in for a film being filmed in Casablanca, she substitutes for the actress on a dreaded date with an older gentlemen, and even meets Patti Smith.

Ms. Vida describes the details of our narrator’s experiences through all the senses — we feel the heat, smell the traffic exhaust, but most impressive are the scene descriptions — almost as if they were stage sets:

“…(you) enter an enormous lobby. Its sofas are mocha colored and deep and plush. The kind of sofas that are easy to relax into, and difficult to rise from. White orchids are staged artfully throughout the lobby and Lauryn Hill must pulses softly through the speakers. Everyone is dressed as though going to a business meeting in London or an upscale lunch in New York. No one is dressed as though they are in Morocco…”

Smart and witty, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, explores the possibility of freeing ourselves from the shackles of our identity. How easily appearances, and identities, can be changed. What happens when we choose to become a creation of our own making? When we are able to fully escape our past history?

This is not a travel novel, but rather a reflection on reinvention, lying, and an endless world of possibilities. Shedding her painful past, our narrator restyles herself through several new personas, and finds a surrealistic new freedom on her journey.

The title, by the way, is from a Rumi poem, of the same name which ends,

“Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins that are lute strings that make ocean music, not the sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.”

Similarly, Ms. Vida leaves the ending open to the endless possibilities of having “no shore” ~~ as our character assumes yet another identity, but this time, with a hint of future happiness.

An appropriate ending for such a wonderfully unconventional and affecting story.

Vendela Vida, a San Francisco resident, is the co-founder of the literary magazine The Believer. Her husband, Dave Eggers, founded the literary journal McSweeney’s and the wonderful San Francisco literacy project 826 Valencia.

An advanced readers copy was provided by Harper Collins Publishers back in 2015.

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Posted by BookBarmy on Jan 28, 2017 in Book Reviews, Fiction

A special day

Among those whom I like or admire,

I can find no common denominator,

but among those whom I love, I can:

all of them make me laugh.

W.H. Auden

Celebrating thirty-eight years of love, friendship, and especially ~~~ laughter.

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Posted by BookBarmy on Jan 27, 2017 in Book Reviews, Musings

Bedelia by Vera Caspary

My January book ~~sorting~~ clean out, uncovered this gem, which from the scribbled pencil mark inside the front cover, I picked up for a dollar somewhere.

It was stacked behind some other books (oh, you don’t that too?) and was a tad dusty. So, I’ve had it for awhile. My hardback edition was published in 1945 and doesn’t look at all like the pretty cover to the left. My copy (lousy photo below) shows much wear and tear — and even sports a broken spine. It has been well read and most of its previous readers spilled food and drink upon its pages.

This poor volume almost went into the donation bag but, at the last minute, I rescued it to browse later. I had to see why it appealed to me in the first place…

While I was still in recovery from my recent malady, I picked up Bedelia, crawled under the duvet and read it practically cover to cover. This Goodreads blurb perfectly captures the appeal of this 1940 suspense novel:

Long before Desperate Housewives, there was Bedelia: pretty, ultra femme, and “adoring as a kitten.” A perfect housekeeper and lover, she wants nothing more than to please her insecure new husband, who can’t believe his luck. But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a “kitten with claws of steel”-a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake.

Caspary builds this tale to a peak of psychological suspense as her characters are trapped together by a blizzard. The true Bedelia, the woman who chose murder over a life on the street, reveals how she turns male fantasies of superiority into a deadly con.

The story is simple but compelling. Architect, Charlie Horst falls for the beautiful widow Bedelia while on vacation. He quickly marries her and brings her back to his lovely home in Connecticut. He’s besotted (don’t you love that word?) with her, and as they entertain neighbors and friends – everyone else is entranced with Bedelia too. There is one sole exception to Bedelia’s charms — Ben the artist and temporary renter next door. Why is he so skeptical and interested in Bedelia’s past? (Cue suspenseful music…)

Bedelia is the perfect wife: She’s charming, bouncy, dresses to please her husband, she’s the perfect hostess. Other women are jealous – but even they can’t hate Bedelia. She’s too … well, perfect. But, something is surely awry. Then, her past starts surfacing…but that’s all I say. I don’t want to give away any more of the story.

Even though the story is set in 1913 (but written in the 40’s), Ms. Caspary casts the other female characters as career women who discuss men’s lack of respect for working women. They go on and lament that most men would prefer a submissive woman — just like Bedelia. I relished that the weaker woman is the one to be afraid of.

A modern reprint of Bedelia can be found via The Feminist Press through their series called Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp.

There was also a 1946 film adaption called Bedelia and starring Margaret Lockwood. Although they changed the setting to rural England.

Ms. Caspary also wrote Laura which was a major film success.

Much of the story is set during a blizzard – making it a great choice to read in a warm bed during a stormy day. Bedelia was fun, suspenseful, and certainly creepy.

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Posted by BookBarmy on Jan 22, 2017 in Book Reviews, Mystery

Reading in Bed by Sue Gee

I will spare you the details, but I’ve been unwell. The upside was permission to remain pajama clad and read in bed (in between some epic catatonic naps).

But what to read? I knew I wasn’t up for any Booker prize titles, and reading my Kindle gave me a headache. Then I remembered I had the perfect book for this predicament – Reading in Bed by Sue Gee.

After unearthing it from my shelves and with dutiful tea service provided by Husband, I snuggled in.

One of my favorite British book bloggers Cornflower Books has long recommended anything by Sue Gee. She had me with this statement:

All (her) books are of quality and integrity – they are not showy, not gimmicky, they are perfect examples, I think, of what it means for a writer to be artist and craftsman in equal measure. (The image above is from her blog post.)

The book opens with long time friends Dido and Georgia as they depart the infamous Hay-on Wye book festival (on my bucket list), and as they make their separate ways home their thoughts and frailties emerge and, in this way, Ms. Gee introduces her readers to her central characters.

Two upper middle class Oxford couples, share not only a life-long friendship but also a mutual appreciation of art, classical music, architecture, summer holidays together, – and especially literature:

“Dido and Jeffrey, Georgia and Henry… had reading at the heart of everything, touching and defining everything, a ceaseless inner life so rich it’s hard to say where life and literature begin and end.”

Then death took one half of a partnership. Georgia, widowed a year, is alone with daughter Chloe nearby. Dido, comfortably secure and settled, secretly revels in her seemingly perfect life and husband:

(Her new book) “Justin Cartwright, The Promise of Happiness, just what she needs. She slips off her dressing gown, pulls back the covers. She’s tucked up, her specs on her nose, the pillows just right. She settles into chapter one, is turning page six by the time Jeffrey joins her, fresh from a shower. ‘Hello, my darling.’ ‘Hi’, Jeffrey reaches for his own books, put on his specs. They settle down. Dido is restored. What sweet companionship is this, to read, to sleep, to lie night after night against the man you love – still love after all these years. Poor Georgia.”

I’ll admit Reading in Bed is formulaic, it doesn’t demand much from a reader, but the characters are multi-faceted, intelligent, well developed and flawed — and I cared desperately for each of them. There’s narrow expectations for their children, resulting in the inevitable problems, an eccentric cousin who is loosing her mind, infidelity, illness, and building new beginnings — in other words Ms. Gee has beautifully rendered a well-lived, and loved, set of lives filled with problems, sorrows and joy.

Because I’m an admitted Anglophile, what I (and probably only I) enjoyed most about this British book, was just that — its wonderful, unapologetic, not trying to be anything else — British-ness. The book captures drinking tea in rose filled gardens, shopping in the village, and posh N1 London drinks by a fireplace. There are references to BBC4 shows (the Archers), the Brits keen walking (hiking) outings, and Knickerbocker glories (ice cream sundaes).

Reading a book about women of my same age, with similar views, with my shared love of literature, and so British-ily described was just what the doctor ordered. I’m feeling much better and now I’ve got a new author to follow!

N.B. Ms. Gee’s book are published in the UK, and are only available to us Yanks in their British editions. You can order HERE.

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Posted by BookBarmy on Jan 18, 2017 in Book Reviews, Fiction

Agatha Raisin Series by M. C. Beaton

They say, the first step is admitting you have a problem ~~ deep breath… here goes…

I recently splurged on a book purchase (no surprise there) , but I should clarify it was a “books” splurge (emphasis on the plural) ~~ uh oh.

This artist’s humorous installation (which I don’t find that funny) actually used my house as inspiration. Come on by, if you’re in the neighborhood. I’ll pose for selfies.

As ~~rationalization~~ background, I’ve always preferred British literary editions, their books often are higher quality, lovely in the hand, and their covers are always beautifully designed. Years ago, I returned from Blackwell’s in Oxford with my luggage full of books, a whole other separate box they shipped, and a severely damaged credit card which took me weeks to resurrect.

HERE — just look, you’ll understand.

Just after Christmas, I was telling a British friend about my love for British volumes, and he pointed out an obvious fact (one which somehow eluded me) that I could order books via Amazon UK. They covert British pounds and happily take our American money … SAY WHAAT?

So I set up an Amazon UK account and did some browsing ~~

I know, I know – Danger Danger Will Robinson…

But look, just look what arrived from the UK yesterday – be still my heart.

Ta Da! It’s (almost) the entire series of Agatha Raisin mysteries – direct from the UK! I am so excited I can hardly stand it. And all of them, including shipping (again from the UK) for just a bit over $30 American.

I take no financial reimbursement for this, but I have to mention that Book People UK offered this deal — brand spanking new paperbacks – which arrived perfectly packed and cello-wrapped together – again for an absurdly good price.

(Okay, that’s my opinion – Husband has a different take, but then, he is not one of us – try and forgive him, he really is adorable in all other aspects.)

I have more than my share of guilty pleasures — but let’s stick to reading shall we? I am crazy for the Agatha Raisin mystery series by M. C. Beaton.

Now the more intellectual Book Barmy followers will likely scoff at this series — but as my favorite (British) blogger Simon says – “I care not”. He, too, devours Agatha Raisin mysteries — you see why I consider him a reading buddy.

Now, if you don’t know about Agatha Raisin, let me correct that for you.

Agatha Raisin retired from a successful career in public relations and decided to live her dream of leaving London for a picturesque cottage in the Cotswolds. Don’t worry, she is not a particularly likable character. Agatha is self centered, tends to over indulge, and blurts out whatever is on her mind– with many disastrous and funny results.

Turns out, her idyllic life does not always live up to her dreams — and maybe, just maybe, retirement does not suit Agatha Raisin. She has trouble being ever-so-polite, caring about village gossip, or the dramas. Bravely, Agatha grits her teeth and tries to fit in with the village life.

From a disastrous cooking competition (in which she enters a store bought quiche) to openly scoffing at Women’s Institute activities — Ms. Raisin tries her damnest. And she keeps trying and trying. But don’t count Ms. Raisin out – this is no shrinking violet. Agatha ends up solving the village infractions, serious murders, goes foul of the local constable and falls in (and out) of love. Slowly – ever so slowly, she becomes part of the community – simultaneously befriended, resented and hated.

The series is clever and quirky, filled with a wacky assortment of characters, and snort-out-loud-humor.

But my delight in my new acquisition knows no bounds – just take a look at these precious British covers…and did I mention, they are all brand spanking new?

Click to make larger…you know you want to…

I want to continue the series, (I think I’m at the 5th or 6th) but I’m afraid to crease the spines. But I’m sure to delve into them soon.

Don’t worry you, too, can enjoy the Agatha Raisin mysteries by M. C. Beaton. They are at your local library or can be picked up for a buck or two at any used bookstore.

Pay no attention to the fact that you are reading the tacky American paperbacks with sub-par covers…contents are the same.

As you read, just try not to think of me, as I happily pet and shelve my new British versions.

Okay, that was unseemly — pure gloating.

Best $30 I ever spent.

N.B. The Brits made a television series based on the books. It’s available on Youtube or Acorn TV if you’re interested Link: HERE. I will wait until I’ve finished reading the series (in order, if you please) or I’m drooling in a nursing home — whichever comes first.

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Posted by BookBarmy on Jan 14, 2017 in Book Reviews, Mystery

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

I would never have expected this to be my first read of the new year. In truth, I never would have opened this sci-fi thriller, except for a favorite bookstore customer.

He’s an older gentleman (OK, not that much older) who brings in his once read, bestseller hardbacks to donate — we love patrons like this. Often, he’ll press one into my hands and recommend I read it before donating. His reading tastes run to spy thrillers and political intrigue, so I usually take a look but then put them in the donation box after he’s left.

This time, however, I opened Dark Matter and sat down at the register to give it a try — half an hour later, customers were clearing their throats and uttering plaintive “excuse me”s to get my attention.

I took it home, read very late into the night and then finished it the next (luckily, rainy) morning.

It’s going to be tough to tell you about Dark Matter without spoiling it.

Suffice it to say ….

This is the story of Jason who has a pretty great life, a wife, a son, a comfortable home. He has regrets, a lackluster career, missed opportunities, but overall, he’s content. Walking home, after meeting a friend at a bar, he is abducted and, just before he is injected with a serum, is asked; “Are you happy with your life?”.

He wakes to find his family gone. Not dead, not abducted, but gone — they never existed. His home isn’t where it should be, his life as he knew it, never was. Dark Matter is the tale of Jason trying to get back to the life he so loves.

Like most of us, only after this loss does Jason fully realize that he has (whoops had) everything he could ever want. The power of this love, the anguish of the loss, and his journey to find his (now) lost life is the premise of Dark Matter.

But, that makes the story sound simple and it’s anything but. There’s quantum physics (there’s even a reference to Schrödinger’s cat, which my scientist sister had to explain to me). There are parallel universes (yes that’s plural). And there’s dark matter:

Most astrophysicists believe that the force holding stars and galaxies together—the thing that makes our whole universe work—comes from a theoretical substance we can’t measure or observe directly. Something they call dark matter.

Mr. Crouch writes for television* and his style reflects that medium. The writing simple but powerful.

He also writes in very short sentences.

And fragments.

Like this.

So, you see.

Why it is a quick read.

The other reason Dark Matter is a quick read is that it is ruthlessly compelling. Just when you think you got it, and you know where the book is going – Mr. Crouch hurdles you in whole new direction. I found myself empathizing with poor Jason throughout his quest to get his life back, imagining his turmoil, his loss as my own.

No one tells you it’s all about to change, to be taken away. There’s no proximity alert, no indication that you’re standing on the precipice. And maybe that’s what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you’re least expecting. No time to flinch or brace.

I’m sure you can tell that Dark Matter surprised me. At first appearance this is a sci-fi thriller — in the style of Patterson or Koonz. But the story line is insightful, human and will cause the reader to contemplate their own life and their choices. It’s the Road Not Taken – on a whole new level.

It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, creates a new world.

Yes, Dark Matter is an adrenaline-fueled thriller, a keep you up all night page turner, but what keeps it from being a cliche is Jason — an authentic, faithful and heart-warming hero, or should I say heroes? – (whoops enough said).

Well, I didn’t see that coming, my first book of the new year – way — way outside of my reading comfort zone and, much to my surprise I fell hard for this book. It’s high entertainment with a heart.

*Mr. Crouch is the creator/writer behind one of my favorite TV series Good Behavior, as well as Wayward Pines (which I don’t know)

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