The Whites by Harry Brandt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I admired Price's Lush Life, The Whites did not grip me as thoroughly although my traveling companion liked it a lot. It was fine for sleepy vacation reading and the author (otherwise known as Richard Price) is a stellar writer, tossing out admirable metaphors and description like "In the middle of the cramped living room, Horace Woody, deep into his sixties but DNA-blessed with the physique of a lanky teenager, stood hands on hips in his boxers, the taut skin across his flat chest the color of a good camel hair coat. But his eyes were maraschinos, and his liquored breath was sweet enough to curl Billy's teeth." And this bit right out of a 30's film noir:
She'd been a golden girl once and she took her tumble hard.
"Hey how's it going?" Billy said as he took a seat.
"The meat's so tough that it got up off the plate and beat the shit out of the coffee, which was too weak to defend itself."
The plot, relationships, grudges and murders befuddled me but the writing and character sketches kept me going, a reversal from the usual thriller.

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The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen

Entertaining, well-written memoir from the author of The Corrections and Freedom. If you're not interested in the growing up story of Jonathan Franzen and his nerdy, bookwormy Midwestern youth and beleaguered, irritating parents, read it for the marvelous descriptions of birding in the last part of the book. We listened to it on a road trip and it was excellent fare.

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Self-Pity by D. H. Lawrence

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/Self-Pity#sthash.NQDfTfZ8.dpuf

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Refuge – what an excellent book to bring one up short about prejudices. I knew of this book for years but feared the theme was too religious and nature study for my taste. I knew the author was Mormon and lived in Utah and the book had to do with birds. As soon as I read a few pages, I was awed by the beauty of the writing, the themes of refuge and grief undertaken by the writer, a naturalist. I even became interested in the different birds described in each chapter and read the book with a Peterson’s Guide to Birds on my lap. The interesting thing about the story is that Refuge might be described by some as a book about losing one’s mother to cancer and seeking a way through grief and loss while others might say it is a book about nature and the birds losing their habitat due to climate changes and pollution. It’s both and richer for it. I can’t recommend it highly enough to both memoir readers and nature lovers and any thoughtful reader.


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Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although I was not enthusiastic about this book club choice, I am glad to have read it. It generated a lively discussion about the themes of slavery and oppression which arise when a modern (1976) African American woman finds herself travelling back in time to 1819 on a Maryland farm, forced to rescue an ancestor to assure his and her own survival, and she must live as a slave in doing so. The writing struck me as clear but not lyrical. There was almost too much dialog at times but the story is a good one and trundled me along to its unsatisfactory ending. The protagonist and her husband do a little historical research but never really resolve this strange occurrence and how it permanently changed their lives.


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Someone by Alice McDermott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The story, the poetic writing, took my breath away as her Brooklyn Irish family came alive in McDermott's beautiful, compassionate telling of Marie and her neighbors packed together in a neighborhood of brownstones and twilight stickball and Mass.  In the final pages the mystery unfolds of her tragic, golden brother whom she "had associated with the sacred darkness...or the hushed groves of the seminary, or the spice of the incense in the cavernous church, even with his lifelong, silent communion with the words he found in his books. Incomprehensible, yes, but in the same way that much that was holy was incomprehensible to me, little pagan."  I did not want the book to end.


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Diana Vreeland Memos: The Vogue Years by Alexander Vreeland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What a personality! And not a single exclamation point as she guided Vogue with inspiration and verve, sending instructions and thanks to Beaton, Avedon, her editors, her friends. Stunning photos although the memos become repetitive over 300 pages.


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