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Post by kims on Sept 1, 2023 21:25:20 GMT
I was afraid it was going to be a difficult read-the Russian novels I've read were. But now from your description, I must read it!
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Post by Hrothgar on Sept 10, 2023 21:03:29 GMT
I am reading "Stoner" by John Williams [nothing to do with drugs) about a farm boy who somewhat unlikely becomes a college professor but the writing in places is quite fine. I have not finished it yet. This is for a in-person book club meeting for Sep 22 ... anyone read this and have comments?
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Post by BunnyWhit on Sept 20, 2023 3:14:10 GMT
Grann, David. Killers of the Flowers Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. Doubleday, 2017.
I did not read this book six years ago when it was published. I wasn’t sure I’d read it at all, but my sister read it (it's her copy I borrowed) and was thus moved to visit the cemetery in Oklahoma. When she and my niece arrived there, an elderly man was driving away. He stopped his car and looked back at her. She feared he was going to shoo her away. Instead, he went back to speak with her. He motioned to the graves with a sweep of his arm and said, "There it all is. The story of my family."
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Killers of the Flower Moon tells the tale of the Osage Nation in the 1920s. In that time, the Osage were the richest people per capita in the world due to vast oil deposits beneath their land in northeastern Oklahoma. The Osage had negotiated with the United States government in 1865 to own their reservation, and they developed a headright system to protect their land and its subterranean rights. As their wealth continued to grow, the Osage became victims of the avarice of outsiders eager to steal from the Osage, their children, and their children’s children.
After more than two dozen Osage murders, the Bureau of Investigation, soon to be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, took up the investigation. When J. Edgar Hoover was appointed director of the Bureau in 1924, he sent a group of operatives, including a Native American agent, to the Osage reservation. This was the Bureau’s first major investigation.
Eventually, there was a prosecution for these murders that were a part of the Reign of Terror for the Osage Nation for more than half a decade, but it becomes plain that many more – perhaps hundreds more – Osage disappearances and deaths were a part of this story. It was not until the oil and the wealth it had produced ran out that mysterious and nefarious events halted.
Grann rolls out this story in spellbinding fashion, and the book moves along at a healthy clip. It is not a difficult read, but it is a haunting episode in American history.
Journalist, staff writer for The New Yorker, and author David Grann is celebrated as a fine writer of narrative nonfiction. Killers of the Flower Moon was a finalist for the National Book Award.
(The Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon will open in theaters in October. I have not yet decided if I want to see it. I very much want the story to be told correctly, and I hope that Scorsese’s efforts have been to that end.)
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Post by kims on Oct 8, 2023 18:13:42 GMT
AN ACTOR'S LIFE JOURNALS 1956 - 1976 by Charlton Heston. This is not an autobiography, though you learn about him, where he was when and doing what. This is journal entries. You learn a bit about cutting prints, that to believably play a pilot you don't learn to fly, you learn the instrument panels until you look like you could fly the plane or to play a quarterback, you learn to pass the ball, you practice until you have the "delusion of your own adequacy" (and then the defense blitz's him to show he's not adequate). You'll read about films he tried to get made and all the machinations to do so; parts he was offered and why he didn't or did take them. And that studios kept film not in the final cut of a film, then made that film available for sale-long shots could be used in a current film, saving filming costs of the current film.
Like most books by people at the top of their field, there are moments of superiority that he knows better than anyone else how to make film: he uses TARAS BULBA as an example of how not to make a period film as he makes THE WARLORD which also failed at the box office. By middle book, Heston refreshingly concedes loss of confidence that he knows what the public wants.
There is one issue I wonder if he intentionally left in his book, or if the editor intentionally left them in or if neither recognized how he came off from the entries. Throughout the book, he tells of his great love for wife Lydia and that he can't live without her. At his death they were married 64 years, but by mid book, you wonder why she stayed. He goes on location, misses her terribly, she flies over, he plays tennis. He's delighted to come home to his wife after out of town engagements and immediately plays tennis. He can't seem to turn down any association chairmanship, requests for his sponsorship or involvement in committees. The book is full of dashing to airports, cutting close to catching planes, but still able to get in some tennis not time with Lydia. Lydia begins to have severe migraines which he finds a nuisance "of course for her too." There's a short entry that Lydia goes to Hawaii alone to work on her play and photography and he decides to fly there to bring her home-no mention why she went alone leaving him alone at the house.
I assume the people who make the top of their field must have supreme confidence in themselves, complete focus on their goals, but I was surprised that the book was allowed to suggest a lack of regard for Lydia unless he needed something. Or maybe they had that pre-WWII marriage that everything is about the husband. I remember, still in the 1970's, going to a party and women were always introduced as Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Heston. Women were left to inquire after the woman's name or offer to 'CALL ME ..."
I do recommend the book for a look at movie biz, his observations of the change in movies by the 70's. About studios in the 70's, after Christopher Plummer scored in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, Heston believed the huge bump in the cost of Plummer's services was unwarranted on the basis of one film. Heston's agent observed "There are fewer and fewer actors they want... they're willing to pay them more and more." And that the business execs in charge of studios at that time were more interested in "the deal" than making movies. You'll get some idea of what Heston thought happened to the movies after the studio system.
I suggest you put it on your list.
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 12, 2023 2:52:02 GMT
Pursuit by Ludovic Kennedy originally published in 1974
Written before the release of information about the breaking of Germany's Enigma code, Pursuit's telling of the chase and sinking of the Bismarck, while not the subject's definitive book, is still a good, short and engaging account.
It is also, thankfully, free of today's political obsessions, which often destroy modern books. Further, it shows that, despite our current beliefs, even in the prehistoric days of the 1970s, WWII books weren't just "triumphant" affairs devoid of balance or perspective.
Kennedy distinguishes between fanatical Nazis and German Naval officers who tried to abide by the honorable traditions of Germany's pre-Nazi Navy. It's refreshing to see balance that doesn't pander and an author who identifies good and bad with confidence.
The best popular history books read like novels, see Stephen E. Ambrose or David McCullough. While Kennedy's effort falls short of that standard, he does, at times, tell the tale in an engaging and spirited manner that almost approaches a novel.
Kennedy, though, having been a BBC reporter for decades, includes more facts, names and details than can be absorbed casually, but he smartly writes in a way that allows you to let some of those details flow by without causing you to lose the bigger story.
That bigger story, of course, is the British Navy's hunt, chase and sinking of the Bismarck. The Bismarck was the fleeting pride of the German Navy, until the humongous and formidable battleship went down on its maiden voyage.
After a very quick telling of Bismarck's construction and launch, Kennedy moves on to the ship's maiden voyage, which necessitated a "break out" to the Atlantic where its mission was to sink merchant vessels bound for England.
England's Navy knew immediately that Bismarck was trying to "break out," making this a cat-and-mouse story from the start. The heart of Kennedy's tale is England's immense effort, employing tens of ships and its vast Naval intelligence, to track the Bismarck.
It's a gripping tale because the era's technology combined new but not fully deployed radar with old-style reconnaissance flights, plotting, triangulation, inference and a lot of steaming about. It was the right historical moment for a nail-biting hunt and chase at sea.
Without going deep into their personal histories, Kennedy profiles the major British and German officers involved in key decisions throughout the pursuit. One takeaway, command is hard even with perfect information and, here, nobody had perfect information.
Despite Pursuit being more of an overview, Kennedy recognizes good anecdotes and details, such as the incredible tale of an antiquated bi-plane, against all odds, being launched from a British carrier and dropping the torpedo that crippled the Bismarck.
Heavily footnoted the way even popular historical accounts like this used to be, the impression is that Kennedy did his homework. Plus, there's almost something charming to the fuzzy, not-digitally-enhanced and poorly captioned pictures grouped throughout.
There are Bismarck books with more up-to-date information, but for a good, quick and traditional telling of the sinking of the Bismarck, not burdened with our preening modern pieties, Pursuit is still a valuable and entertaining read.
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Post by NoShear on Oct 12, 2023 15:29:09 GMT
Little Men, Big World by W. R. Burnett published in 1950
The Godfather's skillful blend of fact and fiction creates an operatic underworld of larger than life characters and stories. In the novel Little Men, Big World, author W.R. Burnett hews closer to reality as he narrows the field of vision on the underworld to one large post-war Midwest city.
It's a revealing look at how a crime syndicate really works; hint, it's messier and less organized than in the movies. Burnett brings the atmosphere and zeitgeist of this sordid world alive, while personalizing the story from all its angles: the cops, gangsters, reporters and politicians.
In this unnamed city, "Arky" runs the local mob, while staying almost behind the scenes. He plays the role of a humbly dressed small-time bookie, while his "front man," wearing loud suits and driving a flashy car, is the "face" of the mob to the press and public. The seventeenth ward, with its dilapidated buildings and slums in one part and demimonde nightclubs and bars with all but in-the-open gambling in the other, is Arky's world.
He's a taciturn farm boy who found his way to the city. Years later, he very quietly runs his empire by leveraging his long-nurtured connections to the police - the ward's top cop all but works for Arky, and is well paid for it. Arky also has a relationship with an unknown, even to Arky (they only speak on the phone), "Mover," who has incredible pull in all aspects of the government.
We get to know Arky well. He loves his "big blonde" of a longtime girlfriend, but doesn't quite know it. He lets her decorate his apartment and move in. He all but adopts her relative's abandoned baby to make her happy, yet he comes to kinda love the kid. It all shows that gangsters have complicated domestic lives like many of us.
As always with illegal businesses, there are great risks and threats, especially with a newspaperman, an old school reporter, now a columnist with an ulcer, sensing that the corruption runs up to some very high levels in the government.
There's also an honest reformer serving as Director of Public Safety tasked with rooting out corruption. Finally, Arky has the "big boys" from the national syndicate trying to squeeze him out.
With that set up, the rest of the novel is watching Arky trying to keep his world together as his police connections get nervous because the new Director of Public Safety is serious about cleaning up the city, while the national syndicate begins taking over some of his businesses.
There is some violence in Little Men, Big World, but it's a small part of the story as the game played here is more like human chess: Arky tries to influence people with opportunities to make money or with fear of exposure, more than with force.
At the top of the political house, it's all chess as the dirty politicians try to entice the reformer into taking a more prestigious and career-advancing judgeship to get him out of the reform business.
Almost everybody has family and financial pressures and mixed motives and morality, which get revealed when this complex nexus of crime, government and media comes under stress.
This is where author Burnett shines as the story feels real because it's not a heroes and villains tale, but one of regular and flawed humans: a reporter misses a story because of his ulcer, a mobster goes on the lam too quickly because he scares easily and a corrupt cop won't confess until talking to his minister first.
The climax (no spoilers coming) in Little Men, Big World is gripping, but the true value in the book is its revealing look at the people who populate the crazy, dangerous but always-with-us world of corruption that touches so many aspects of society.
It is a more granular and believable look at mob activity than the incredibly captivating and operatic The Godfather story.
One even senses that movie director Quentin Tarantino might have read some of Burnett's work before making his very mobsters-are-real-people-too movies. And it's not like Burnett's work missed the movie opportunity either as several of his novels - Little Caesar, High Sierra and The Asphalt Jungle - became successful Hollywood pictures.
For us today, Little Men, Big World is a detailed and engaging look into a post-war American city where corruption is part of its fabric. Until the time machine is perfected, contemporaneous fiction, that didn't have the constraints of the Motion Picture Production Code to contend with, is some of our best time-travel to these now lost worlds. Fading Fast, I like how you introduced the book's review with a truncated one of another.
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 26, 2023 3:25:31 GMT
The Small General by Robert Standish originally published in 1945
Robert Standish lived in and traveled through China, Japan and other Far East countries in the "between the war" years of the first half of the twentieth century. His enjoyable page-turning novels explore the different cultures of the region in a way that will surprise modern readers.
Standish, one of several pen names of Digby George Gerahty, was an Englishman, a "dead white man" in today's obnoxious piety, whose respectful writing about the people and cultures of the Far East refutes the modern narrative that almost everything old had one bias.
The Small General is set in the early twentieth century when a revolution established a Republic in China in 1912. Standish's tale, though, is not about a revolution, but how one Chinese family succeeded in the silk trade despite intense pressures from Japan.
Standish uses the story of this one family, a family whose mulberry tree leaves produce the worms whose cocoons are turned into silk, to examine the business of silk farming and, more broadly, the culture of family, business and friendships in China at that time.
The silk business, as is almost every business, is complex and competitive. In that slower moving period, though, the experience and knowledge of the older generation is valued. One's elders and ancestors are respected and, often venerated, at least on the surface.
Women have few rights, with even wives and mothers treated as nearly indentured servants. Except there are those few women, who through brains and will, carve out roles in business, families and even politics where they have real power.
There is a lot to chew on in this thick story that explores a father-son dynamic, decades-long friendships and the elaborate way the Chinese structure a conversation to say a lot of pleasant things, first, before the real purpose of the discussion begins.
Woven in is China's view of foreigners who they see as having taken advantage of China's weak governments, first the Qing Dynasty and now its Republic, to strike business deals that "steals" China's wealth and honor.
The Japanese, in particular, are hated as they are seen not just as foreigners trying to take monetary advantage of China, like the British, but as conquerors who want to turn China into a vassal state.
There's also much honesty about China's faults at that time. These include an inveterate resistance to modernity and a cultural acceptance of bribery that runs so deep even its judges all but openly accept bribes, which turns justice into a mockery.
Author Standish clearly likes and respects the Chinese people. He sees their greatness as being held back by a feeble and corrupt government and an insular culture that accepts, even defends, self-defeating practices.
The Small General can be read as simply a good story about one family's silk business in China in the early part of the twentieth century. But Standish, counter to today's generation's arrogant belief that it alone discovered an open, unbiased mind, shows much more.
He thoughtfully explores the culture and people of China in a way that reveals their strengths and weaknesses in neither a triumphant nor condescending manner. If anything, he is harder on the British Empire and, even more so, the aborning Japanese one.
No book, no author, no newspaper or other source of information, contains the absolute "truth" about a complex time and culture, but books like The Small General are valuable contemporaneous accounts of a period free, at least, from today's modern dogmatic beliefs.
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Post by NoShear on Oct 27, 2023 14:43:21 GMT
Fading Fast, thought of you with Alicia Malone's mention of framing device as a writing trait of co-host Scott Eyman who discussed Charlie Chaplin: You share the gift of contextual looks with Eyman. scotteyman.com/
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Post by NoShear on Oct 31, 2023 14:03:19 GMT
With its socio-historical looks, you 'must' read the following book if haven't already, Fading Fast: Happy Halloween!
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 6, 2023 1:03:10 GMT
It's been a long time since I read Danse Macabre but I remember thinking how good it was. He tells us little secrets of the writing world that I would never have heard anywhere else.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 17, 2023 3:01:50 GMT
With its socio-historical looks, you 'must' read the following book if haven't already, Fading Fast: Happy Halloween! I'm sorry I missed this when you first posted it, but I will look into it. I haven't read much King, but my girlfriend is a big fan.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 17, 2023 3:05:50 GMT
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles published in 2021
Amor Towles knows how to tell a story. He showed that in his debut novel Rules of Civility and again in his engaging follow-up The Gentleman in Moscow. Now, in his third book, he has proven himself to be one of the premiere storytellers of his generation.
In The Lincoln Highway, Towles wraps so many small stories and characters, with their own stories, inside several larger tales, which are all driven by the age-old story of a journey, that the book feels like you're sitting around a campfire listening to Towles spin wonderful yarns.
The framing of this Matryoshka-doll style of storytelling involves a young man, Emmett, just released from a juvenile work farm and returning to his home in Nebraska.
A year before, goaded to an emotional extreme one night, an angry punch had tragic consequences for Emmett, resulting in this usually calm boy doing time for involuntary manslaughter.
With his father having passed away while he was in juvenile workfarm and his mother having abandoned the family years ago, a now-free Emmett wants to move with his eight-year-old brother, Billy, from Nebraska to Texas to get a new start.
Just before taking off on this journey, he discovers Billy, following an old clue, wants to go to California in search of their mother, while two "stowaways" from the workfarm, Dutchess and Woolly, pop up with their own travel plans for all of them.
Along with Emmett's lifelong friend and neighbor, Sally, who cared for Billy when Emmett was away, the main characters are set. While each one has a distinctly engaging personality and history, this is a journey story with many other characters dropping in and out along the way.
Set in 1954, part of the beauty of the novel is its meandering through much mid-century cultural ephemera and experiences: Howard Johnson, a circus attached to a brothel, riding the rails, vaudeville's embers, Harlem, FAO Schwarz, a Catholic orphanage and on and on.
The beauty is also in all the people they meet along the way: Ulysses, a wandering black man with a kind soul and a broken heart; a venal preacher; an alcoholic down-and-out actor; a charming professor who writes compendiums about epic historical journeys and on and on.
It adds up to a tapestry of engaging characters and many big and small adventures that Emmett and team take on as their journey is buffeted by many surprising twists and turns. But keeping up is not a challenge; it's a pleasure to simply get absorbed in the amble.
There are overarching themes of honor, friendship and integrity in The Lincoln Highway, but Towles also sprinkles in his philosophy about character, revenge, forgiveness, money, responsibility and more in tiny vignettes that pleasantly accumulate.
The main story, told from each character's perspective in alternating chapters, has Emmett and his brother Billy's move to California heading off in the wrong direction as Woolly and Dutchess all but shanghai the brothers on a treasure hunt to New York.
Their ten-day odyssey climaxes at an old Adirondack family retreat built during the Gilded Age where truths are outed, scores are settled, "soldiers" die, honor is restored and the heroes wearily walk into the sunset.
Towles, in The Lincoln Highway, employs a modern approach to the classic fables and myths of Western Civilization by layering stories and characters, one on top of the other, to take the reader on an engaging and page-turning trip through 1954 America and human nature.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 23, 2023 2:30:31 GMT
The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro published in 2013
Sometimes you need a book to read while you're deciding what you are going to read next. These interregnum books should be mindless, entertaining fluff that do not distract you from the serious work of choosing your next real book to read.
The Perfume Collector, a period novel, almost fits the bill and would have done the job if it could have resisted the obnoxious need to inject our strident modern politics into a light book set alternatingly in, mainly, 1920s New York City and 1950s Paris.
One wonders if authors today are truly so uniform in their political views, which is possible, or if they simply bend to the demands of the, mainly, New York City publishing houses that determine which books get published through the traditional channels.
If you can step away from all that, The Perfume Collector is an okay silly book about a young English woman, in 1955, in a failing marriage (guess who's at fault there) who receives a letter from a lawyer in France informing her she has been named in a will.
This sets her off on a journey to Paris where she meets a young handsome French lawyer as she tries to solve the riddle of her mysterious inheritance. Her search leads her to an abandoned perfume shop in present day (1955) Paris.
It also has her learning about her benefactor in a story that takes her and the reader back to 1927 Jazz Age New York City. There we meet a lonely fourteen-year-old waif working as a maid in a luxury hotel for wealthy "artistic" types and their hanger-ons.
The story, no spoilers coming, is one of an "illegitimate birth," clandestine adoption, the genius of perfume creators (a five-standard-deviation sense of smell plus access to expensive raw ingredients are required), a WWII deal with Nazis and a few failed relationships.
The plot's reverse engineering shows in its obvious construction of an oft told tale. It also shows in its pandering to so many modern political pieties that you'll think the author had a checklist.
A woman, who's brilliant at math, has her confidence undermined by an overbearing man. An alcoholic aristocrat guilts a young woman into partnering with him in a gambling scam. A mother sacrifices her identity to be with the baby girl that was taken from her by a man.
Check, check and check and on it goes. Even the small details - the man measures the square footage of an apartment for sale, while the woman cares about the aura of the place - aligns to modern politics: the man's calculated greed (bad) versus the woman's artistic "feelings" (good).
The men almost all have fragile egos in constant need of stroking from younger women who would shine on their own if not for the men holding them back. Heck, there's even a petite heroine who can outdrink men twice her size. Is it possible, sure, but good grief.
Had Tessaro read a few novels or newspapers from the era of her story, she'd have met many impressive women. But these women, as opposed to her characters, were strong and independent in a way consistent with the norms and social construct of that era.
An author concerned with period verisimilitude would create characters like women that actually existed, characters at the vanguard of their era's advancement. That, though, wouldn't please today's insane need to have historical characters align perfectly with modern ideology.
Away from the anachronistic politics, the novel also lacks enough historical details and atmosphere to make it a book that transports you to another century. Tessaro did some research, put in several historic details, but she didn't create a true time-travel experience.
Books like The Perfume Collector are churned out like Hallmark movies as their plots are only slightly more complex than those feel-good cookie-cutter pictures. For pure escapism they are fast easy reads if you can tolerate the goose-stepping political obeisance.
For readers looking for a real period experience through fiction, reading novels from the actual period is a much more rewarding historical experience. Plus, those often much-better-written books can be had on used book websites for a fraction of the cost of these new novels.
N.B. With Thanksgiving kicking off the Christmas season, look for a review or two of a Christmas book coming in the next several weeks.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 30, 2023 1:38:47 GMT
The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
There are only a few Christmas stories that achieve iconic status like A Christmas Carol, the rest are happy to just wrap a heartwarming tale inside Noel ambience. Today, most of these stories are less about the birth of Christ and more about a general feeling of goodwill.
On that scale, David Baldacci's The Christmas Train is modestly successful. Kudos to Baldacci, though, for using one of the only two approved modes of transit at Christmas time in his novel as he recognized that reindeer pulling a sled is impractical for large groups.
Baldacci, thus, assembles his characters on a cross-country Amtrak, the hollowed out successor to the once mighty network of interstate trains that moved Americans around before the post-war build out of the interstate highway system and passenger airlines.
Tom Langdon is a former war correspondent, now in his early forties, who writes nice little articles about lawn care and cooking. He's single, burned out, loney and a bit lost in his life.
East Coast based Langdon is taking Amtrak from Washington to Los Angeles to meet up with his sorta girlfriend, who lives in LA, for a ski vacation at Christmas. It's really just a construct for Baldacci to have Langdon spend several days at Christmas on a train.
Amtrak, on these cross-country trips, is presented as a little world of its own with a dedicated staff committed to keeping its worn-out equipment going so that the passengers, a devoted group of rail riders, can have a pleasant trip.
There's an overarching story about Langon meeting on the train, by chance, "the one that got away -" his former love who is now a successful Hollywood screenwriter - but the novel is more a series of vignettes about an assortment of people who find meaning on the train.
There is Regina and her mom, both Amtrak employees for decades who view their work almost as a calling. When mom takes control of a boys choir on the train, it's a perfect surrogate mother moment showing how much kids need a kind but firm hand.
We also meet a retired Catholic priest who, now without a ministry or family, finds a little warmth and closeness on the train. A few other lonely souls - a middle-aged fortune teller, a former circus star estranged from her adult daughter - also find community on the rails.
There are two college kids, whose parents don't approve of their relationship, planning to get married on the train. There's also a movie producer taking the train to get a script idea. He loves the wedding story so much, he pays to turn it into an elaborate steel wheels affair.
Amidst all these little touching stories, the train itself becomes involved in drama as it gets stranded high up in the mountains owing to a blizzard and avalanche. The climax, no spoilers coming, has everyone pulling together to survive as fuel and food run out.
The train and the crisis have brought everyone together at Christmas, with Tom and his former love pushed by circumstances into evaluating their past and potential future. None of it's surprising, but no one reads a book titled The Christmas Train to be surprised.
Baldacci tries hard to create the feeling of Christmas. He uses a train in a snowstorm populated with many generous and kind people and several others struggling with life to try to make some Christmas magic happen. He also throws in a big fun twist at the end.
The result is only okay, in part because the stories and construction are too obvious. Also, without any true religious faith behind most of the Christmas vignettes, this is Christmas without Christ, leaving the bonhomie to float unmoored from any deeper meaning.
If you've already read all the well-known Christmas books and are looking for a quick mindless read, The Christmas Train is an okay way to pass the time in a crowded terminal waiting for a plane or, better still, a train at Christmas.
N.B. If you want to read a better Christmas story set on a train, pick up Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express. He wonderfully captures the Christmas spirit in this beautifully illustrated children's book.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 6, 2023 1:22:22 GMT
Christmas Stories, The Everyman's Library, published in 2007
Christmas Stories compiles short stories from the past two centuries and from around the world. From a Dickens Christmas gobblin story, to Russian tales about cobblers, to a twentieth century author writing about the sexual predilections of seasonal turkey "gutters," it is an insightful trip through faith, culture and the human experience at Christmas.
Below are brief comments on most of the stories, but there are a few stories in the anthology not mentioned.
Where Love Is, God Is by Leo Tolstoy
The best short stories have a neat twist at the end that has you thinking, "Oh! I didn't see that coming," but here, you see the twist as it's happening. It doesn't matter, though, as the power in this brief story is simply seeing if faith in Christ can be reborn in an old, sad and lonely shoe cobbler. Tolstoy, in only a few pages, brings that man’s struggle to life.
Vanka by Anton Chekhov
Nobody does deep, abiding, heartbreaking sadness like a Russian writer. On Christmas Eve, a nine-year-old boy, who'd been sent by his grandfather to apprentice with a master cobbler, writes a pleading letter to his grandfather to take him out of the abusive home where he's beaten, ill fed and overworked. Will the boy's desperate missive be answered?
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A better title might have been "Holmes does Christmas," as this fun tale has the renowned detective chasing down the origins of a Christmas goose to find the crook who stole the titular famous jewels. It's all Holmes logic, reasoning, investigation, showmanship and ribbing of Watson, with some Christmas forgiveness mixed in.
The Burglar's Christmas by Willa Cather
Riffing on The Prodigal Son, two broke young men are desperate for food and shelter on a blustery Chicago Christmas Eve. One, who says he's failed at everything in life, turns to burglary. What follows is a beyond-believable tale of coincidence, unconditional love and forgiveness. To enjoy, you'll need to be in the mood for some Christmas magic.
A Chaparral Christmas Gift by O. Henry
Combining the "Old West" gunfighter, Biblical-level jealousy over a woman and Christmas spirit, O. Henry delivers a very short tale of kindness from an unlikely source. Is it redemption-level kindness? No, but it does show a moment of decency can come from the most unlikely source.
Reginald's Christmas Revel by Saki
Sometimes you need a break from all the warmth, faith and goodwill of the traditional Christmas story to read about somebody grumbling because they're stuck with boring relatives for the holiday. There's no message, just some mirthful sarcasm and a little pranksterism in this short, biting tale from Saki (the pen name for Hector Hugh Munro).
Christmas by Vladimir Nabokov
Once again, nobody does heartbreaking sadness like a Russian writer. Through small details, Nabokov poignantly limns a father's grief at Christmas over the loss of his son. There's no escape for the father as, looking in his son's room, he discovers things he didn't know about the boy. A small light of hope elegantly closes this tale.
Dancing Dan's Christmas by Damon Runyon
It's quite a leap from Russian misery to Damon Runyon's hard-boiled denizens of Jazz Age New York City, but so be the plight of the compilation reader. Here, Runyon spins a tale of speakeasies, Tom and Jerry's, pilfered diamonds, mobsters, Irish grandmothers and a little Christmas whimsy to warm the heart of even a tough New York City mug.
Bella Fleace Throws a Party by Evelyn Waugh
This short tale is another Waugh-esque sharp elbow to the waning ruling class of England's interwar years. A reclusive elderly aristocratic woman makes a whimsical attempt to re-engage with the society she has long shunned by throwing an opulent Christmas ball. It results in an ironic and poignant coda to both the tale and her life.
Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor by John Cheever
Whose motive is ever completely pure of heart in gift giving or receiving? Gifts flow from penthouses to poor houses in this offbeat tale of Christmas giving, taking, grifting and charity. Cheever has you pondering if it is the action or the thought that counts in this cynical, but oddly, almost hopeful Noel tale.
The Carol Sing by John Updke
Christmas carol-singing practice in a small town in post-war America is brought to life with Updike's intimate observations of the people and place. This holiday, the meaning of life is poignantly forced on the town by the unexplained post-Thanksgiving suicide of a one of the carolors, which has left a hole in the small community.
The Fugue by Muriel Spark
A twenty-four-year-old English woman who had been living in Australia decides to move back to England after her roommate gets married and her boyfriend and she split up. On her Christmas day flight home, she has, or dreams she has, an intimate encounter with a handsome pilot that might or might not change her life back in England.
The Loudest Voice by Grace Paley
It's the 1940s and a grammar-school-aged Jewish girl is chosen to narrate her class's Christmas play. Her mother is worried, but her dad isn't. He sees it as just a way to learn about another culture and, notes, it's hardly like the pograms they escaped. It's an open-minded view that is more accepting of America's founding culture than many are today.
The Turkey Season by Alice Munro
A middle-aged woman reflects on when, at fourteen, she was a "gutter" at "The Turkey Barn" at Christmas. Blending themes of sexuality, it's a big part of the workers' chatter, and manual labor versus office work, in a community where the former is respected and the latter suspect, Munro creates an ad hoc but deeply nuanced Christmas community.
Creche by Richard Ford
Being a modern Christmas tale, Christ is nowhere to be found, the family is broken, a mother is in rehab, a husband almost sexually assaults his sister-in-law, we learn a lot about how people and places smell (an awful tic of modern fiction writing) and the little Christmas spirit there is, seems hopelessly outdated and ineffectual. Read at your own risk.
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