brainsplotch

Superstars is yet another, "Hey, that looks interesting--let me put a hold on it!" book. It came across my desk at work and I can only assume the description on the back grabbed me right away: "First published in 2000, Superstars is a cult classic: a blistering but tender, sexed-up, drugged-out fictionalization of lesbian life in the '90s Paris techno scene." I mean, how is that NOT gonna pique my curiosity? Superstars , as the blurb indicates, was originally published in French back in the year 2000. It was not translated into English until this year. I had never heard of it until it hit my desk waiting to be catalogued. The author, Ann Scott (a pen name) has had quite an interesting life. Born in 1965,  her father was Russian and her mother was French. As a young teenager, she lived for a while in England, where she became interested in the burgeoning punk scene. She played drums in a band, and she also modeled for a spell. Then she became a write...

After reading Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House and finishing it on May 6, I returned to Riley in the final week of last month and finished her book My Phantoms on June 30. As much as I enjoyed The Palm House , I liked My Phantoms even more. It's hard to neatly describe why I find Riley's books so enjoyable and compulsively readable. There is very little action or plot twists--not that any of that matters much to me. It comes down to the sharply drawn characters and Riley's ability to notice and artfully describe the small details of ordinary life. My Phantoms is narrated by Bridget "Bridge" Grant, a 40-something academic living in London with her partner, John. Bridget's parents, Lee and Helen (aka "Hen") divorced when Bridget was two years old. Bridget has an older sister, Michelle. Early in the book, Bridget describes her and Michelle's awkward court-mandated visits with her father. Lee frequently picks on and bullies the gir...

Here is another "verbal vomit book review," this time for The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman. Though I didn't LOVE The Monuments of Paris , I liked it enough that I thought I should definitely go back in time and read Huisman's first book in her series of books exploring her family (she has a second book, The Rose Desert , that I'm not sure has been translated to English. I can guarantee you my French is way way way too rusty and awful to read it in French). So let me dig right in. Violaine's mother Catherine Cremnitz was a complicated and mercurial woman. Born in humble circumstances, dealt with plenty of shit as a girl and young woman (I'll force you to read the book to find out), and had one brief and unsuccessful marriage before being almost literally swept off her feet by Violaine's father, (named "Antoine" in the book, but actually Denis Huisman).  The first third of the book is Violaine describing life with her mother....

I was a bit worried that my "hey, that book that crossed my desk looks interesting, I will read it" strategy would finally fail when I was about halfway through The Monuments of Paris by Violaine Huisman. Huisman's book is a semi-fictional exploration of her flamboyant father, Denis Huisman, and her grandfather, Georges Huisman. I wasn't finding her family nearly interesting enough to hold my attention despite all the book's Parisian references. But then the focus switched to Violaine's grandfather and I was all in. The narrative picked up speed, as Violaine told the story of Georges' exile and underground existence during World War II.  Georges Huisman came from humble background and rose to prominence in France's Department of Fine Arts prior to the war (and founder of the Cannes Film Festival). But as a Jew, he was forced to flee the country in a saga that could have come straight out of the movie Casablanca . But that's not all: he...

My strategy and/or streak (of reading books that pass my desk and look promising) continues to pay dividends. I have to admit that the striking cover shot of two long and shapely legs is what initially grabbed me. The cover of Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House would lead one to believe the novel is a steamy erotic potboiler. As it turns out, there is little sex in the book and what sex there is decidedly unglamorous. The Palm House is centered on 40-something Laura Miller, a magazine editor trying to make it in contemporary London. Along the way, we meet various people in her orbit, most notably: Edmund, a 50-something friend and co-worker; Laura's somewhat prickly mother; and Lawrence Wells, an eccentric stage actor with whom Laura has a brief fling, (though it doesn't seem she enjoys any of it).  In the most compelling section of the novel, we flash back to a teenage Laura living near Liverpool. She develops an infatuation with a laddish stand-up comedian f...

A beneficial aspect of my library job is that I see a lot of new items cross my desk before they are cataloged, processed, and sent out into circulation. When Sara Maurer's novel A Good Animal found its way into my work space, and I saw the setting was Sault Ste. Marie (MI), I knew I had to place a hold on it. Now, here is where the danger comes in. Sometimes library holds are fulfilled at inopportune times, or the initial enthusiasm you had for the book has dulled. When my turn came, I was already reading a book that I didn't want to put down ( Beeswing by Richard Thompson). I checked out A   Good Animal , a 7-day loan, and it languished on dining room table for a week. When the due date arrived, I seriously considering taking the loss and returning the book without even cracking it open. I hate doing that. Having finally finished Beeswing, I decided to ignore the overdue notice and give A   Good Animal a shot. If it didn't grab me after the first ten page...

Brace yourselves for another "word vomit" book review. Don't say I didn't warn you. Wolverine Tracks : On the Trail of Memory and Meaning in the Wild is yet another book that crossed my desk at work and looked intriguing enough that I placed a hold for it. My 2026 winning percentage for these "on a whim" books remains perfect. I will cut right to the chase and say I loved this book. At its most basic level, Wolverine Tracks is a chronicle of Dag O. Hessen's quest for a face-to-face encounter with a wolverine. Hessen, a Norwegian biologist, writes about his lifelong relationship with nature and the wild. In 1972, as teenager, he found wolverine tracks while out on a nature expedition with his father. About a decade later, he had a brief face-to-face with an actual wolverine. So, the premise of the book is Hessen trying for one more wolverine sighting. But Wolverine Tracks is so much more than that. While the book reads as a jour...

Berlin Shuffle (Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz). This is another book that passed across my desk at the library and piqued my curiosity. Since I've been interested in German history more in the last five years than any time in my life, I placed a hold on it. This promises to be another of my "word vomit"-type book reviews. I want to get my thoughts down before I forget. Since Berlin Shuffle is a novel, I will avoid spoilers.  Allow me to cut to the chase and declare my enjoyment of this book. Berlin Shuffle , written in 1937, takes place in approximately 1929. At this time, Germany is a country reeling from World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, buried by draconian reparations it can't hope to repay, struggling with inflation and unemployment. So in this setting, we have several characters who for various reasons are beaten down by life in post-Great War Germany. These characters are as follows:  Fundholz is an older man (between 65-70) who is possibly/pr...

Amidst all the horrors taking place in Minneapolis right now--I swear that every week and almost every day the terribleness changes location--I managed to finish reading a book. It was just the sort of book I needed at this moment. When Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress (by Lorissa Rinehart) crossed my desk at work last month, I was quickly intrigued. I had never heard of Jeannette Rankin. In all the American history classes I took at an undergraduate, I don't recall ever hearing her name. This probably speaks to the way history was taught in the 1980s, and how women's stories were relegated to Women's Studies courses. It's a shame, because Jeannette Rankin was an incredible and inspiring person. I want to share my impressions of the book and of Rankin's life right here on this blog because for one, it's fresh in my mind and secondly, I want anyone reading this blog to seek out this bo...

Oof, sorry about the buzzkill that was my last blog post. I was not feeling good that day, not that I'm that more upbeat today. I mean, we're still living under the Trump regime. How much happier could I get? I hope there's a day in the future where we can just say, "Wow, what a relief we survived THAT! What the heck was THAT about?! We lost our minds for [??] years." Do we have to live through some of the darkest years in American history in order to emerge into the light and a better future? Or am I delusional. All I know is I can't cave in to despair, particularly when our president is such a buffoon. (On the other hand, his buffoonery could get us into trouble if there aren't any adults in the room to reign in his worst implulses. For example, need I reiterate how batshit crazy this "take over Greenland" nonsense is?). After my lowpoint on Thursday morning, spending far too much time doomscrolling, I had a nice late afternoon and ...

Well, we made it through another year. With the way things are going in the world, and the barrage of nonsense that comes out of our presidential administration on a daily basis, that's no small feat. Here's hoping we all survive 2026, too. I have spent the bulk of today reading as much as possible to get my 2025 book total to a modest 30 titles. (Several of those are children's books that I've read while at work--so it's even less...well... "impressive" is not exactly the correct word. Maybe, "more pathetic"?) It's certainly paltry compared to people I know who routinely crank out 75+ books every year. When I see them post those statistics, I wonder what exactly they're reading and whether they do anything else in their lives other than read books. Then I can't help but ask how many of those are audiobooks. It all concludes with me feeling like an underachiever who should resolve to watch fewer movies and less television. But who am ...

As I write this, news broke that there was a school shooting in Minneapolis. "Murica doing what it does best...and just the excuse "Dear Leader" needs to send the National Guard to the Twin Cities (I am only half-kidding), extending his authoritarian tentacles even further. Sorry to finally get back to this blog and immediately start in on a downer. I am returning to this post four days later. I finally finished reading The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It was the heaviest reading I'd done in a long time, and a good primer into the world of Epicureanism, the search for ancient Roman manuscripts, Poggio Bracciolini (a seeker of said manuscripts), and how Epicureanism and Atomism flew in the face of Catholic/Christian orthodoxy. Advocates of this forward-thinking philosophy often paid with their lives. This was a dense but ultimately rewarding reading experience, a little bit out of my comfort zone, but that can be a good challenge. So now...

I finally finished The Name of This Band is R.E.M. and I give it a solid four stars out of five. Perhaps even 4 1/2 stars. It was a breezy read. A sign of how consistent R.E.M. was during their recording career is that I found myself constantly thinking, "oh, he's gonna talk about Fables !" "Oh, he's gonna talk about Pageant !" "Oh, he's gonna talk about Document !" ...and on and on. With the exception of Around the Sun , the band never released a sub-par album, and I wanted to read what Peter Ames Carlin had to say about all of them. He's a good insightful writer. R.E.M. were, by and large, well-behaved lads and have rarely let their private lives go public. Consequently, there is little in the way of salaciousness that one would find in a book about, say, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, or--for that matter--R.E.M. contemporaries like--say--Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, or any number of hair metal bands. The craziest story is the time in 2001...

 Last night, I finally finished reading Now You're One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross. A few days ago, in my Minutemen post, I talked about how that band had its own world. I'd say it's a similar situation with Redd Kross (coincidentally, another Los Angeles-based band). Just as the Minutemen were primarily the vision of two extremely close friends (who could be classified as "brothers from another mother") in D. Boon and Mike Watt, Redd Kross are the vision of two actual brothers (Jeff and Steven McDonald). Jeff and Steven were obsessed with music from an early age. In 1970, When Jeff was seven years old and Steven only three years old, they pooled their money to buy a copy of the Beatles' "White Album." Their musical precociousness was off the charts throughout their youth. While other kids in the '70s were obsessed with say, Star Wars , baseball cards, or comic books, Jeff and Steven were obsessed with the Beatles, David Bowie, T. ...

In trying to get a post in every day this month, which at this point has become a Brainsplotch yearly tradition since, uh, 2022, inevitably there'll be some days in which the content kinda sucks. Today might be one of those days. When I say, "suck," I don't mean "sad," I just mean "inconsequential," "mundane," "dull as fuck," "exciting as watching paint dry." So, here's the deal. It's a little past 11 o'clock and I'd like to get some reading in before I go to bed. I am almost done with the Redd Kross book, Now You're One of Us . I am enjoying it quite a bit and maybe will write about it a bit in here. On a whim, we started watching an old British sitcom from the early aughts called Black Books. It's about a rundown, disorganized bookshop in London called...you guessed it...Black Books. The store is run by a misanthrope named...you guessed it again...Black (Bernard Black, to be precise). The ...

One of the best aspects of a relaxing vacation is that I get to catch up on reading. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to read during the daytime in a screened-in porch with Lake Superior as my "front yard." It beats the hell out of not getting to the book until 10 PM after eight hours of work and often falling asleep less than half an hour after cracking the book open. Weeks ago, I started reading Chris Stein's Under a Rock-- his memoir of his life before, during, and after Blondie (the band). It was a book that I'd pick up in the late evenings and almost immediately crash and burn before I made it more than about 15 minutes. I am happy to report that I shot through 184 pages in three days. I read on the porch of this cottage in Copper Harbor and I read on our 7 1/2 hours on the ferry to and from Isle Royale. The meandering storytelling style was a major part of my inability to get into Chris Stein's memoir. The book could have easily been titled, Everythi...

The above quote, and title for this post, is a direct quote from Donna Tartt, lifted from The Borris House Festival of Writing & Idea's podcast episode "Donna Tartt and Rick Stroud." The episode was posted on April 3, 2020 but I just listened to it today. Upon finally finishing The Secret History last night, I spent the entire day seeking out and listening to every podcast episode I could find devoted to the book. The second I heard Donna Tartt describe The Secret History as being "...really a fantasia about university," I thought it the most succinct and perfect description of the book. I've heard reviewers and commentators describe the book as either magical realism, a figment of the narrator's imagination, the product of an unreliable narrator (but mostly true), or on the rare occasion a story to be taken at face value. One definition of the word "fantasia" is "a work of art or literature that expresses the author's imaginatio...

Anytime we--and presumably the rest of the world that is able to take trips or vacation--wake up the morning on which we must check out of and leave a hotel, that morning turns into a logistical puzzle. There is showering, toothbrushing, packing away toiletries, packing suitcase(s), finding breakfast, and getting out of the hotel before the checkout deadline. This is further complicated when one also needs to get to an airport or train station. Thankfully, having merely driven our car the two hours or so to Detroit, this was considerably easier than most of our trips. We decided to make it simple and eat breakfast at Presley's, the restaurant on the lobby level. Despite only one person working the tables when we sat down, it was perfectly fine. Would recommend. Upon checking out and picking up the car from the valet, I drove up Woodward to the Cass Corridor and Third Man Records. (Publishing this now but will return lickity split). (Okay, I'm back--a bit later than expected). W...

Last night, when I was griping about writing in the blog, I was taking a short break from finishing this book, 1964: Eyes of the Storm , by Paul McCartney (with a great introductory essay by Harvard history professor Jill Lepore). The book features a treasure trove of photographs taken by McCartney in late 1963 and early 1964, none of which had been published before, and in fact had been in storage for decades. These candid photos of the Beatles and their entourage (Brian Epstein, George Martin, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall, Cynthia Lennon, and others) document Beatlemania as it was exploding and taking the world by storm. As I said, Jill Lepore's accompanying essay is excellent, as she places the Beatles in historical context by discussing many of the world events of '63 and '64 (Kennedy assassination, Civil Rights Act, Freedom Summer, Barry Goldwater and the Republican National Convention) and how the Beatles fit in. Of course, the photos are the real selling poin...

I finished by second consecutive graphic novel today, Strikers . If this book hadn't been so damned fun to read, I probably would not have mentioned it here. As I mentioned before, it's about a rag-tag youth hockey team (called "the Strikers") in Flint and takes place between the autumn of 1986 and winter of 1987. The historical and geographic detail is fairly impeccable, and mentions of IMA Sports Arena, the International Hockey League (IHL), the Flint Generals, the Flint Spirits, Carman-Ainsworth, and Lake Fenton (to name a few) were simply word candy for me. (To top if off, one of the fictional characters is said to have received a track & field scholarship to Michigan State). Ostensibly, Strikers is aimed at children and youth readers, but there is plenty of humor that likely goes over kids' heads. For example, at one point in the book, the kids on the Strikers team go to IMA Sports Arena to see a Flint Spirits IHL game. The adult chaperone, w...