brainsplotch

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...

In honor of the beginning of baseball season, and marking the 50th anniversary of my baseball fandom, it's time for me to finally write a post that I've been thinking of writing for a few years. I've avoided it all this time due to a level of embarrassment I've had about the subject. In 1976, when I was eight years old, I created an imaginary baseball team called the Deto Bobcats. (Deto pronounced "DEE-to"). I imagined Deto as an imaginary city, and it's name was inspired by Detroit, the city I lived in between 1973 and 1979. I probably don't need to explain that "Bobcats" was a feline spinoff of "Tigers." In the Bobcats' earliest incarnation, the "team" (i.e., ME, with a whiffle ball and plastic bat) played its games in my backyard. The way our backyard was configured, it loosely resembled a tiny baseball field. The "homeplate" area was a strip of lawn that was bordered on the left by a concrete walking path...

Way back on December 22, 2022, I wrote a nostalgic post about becoming a full-blown Jimi Hendrix convert via the 1984 compilation, Kiss the Sky . I lamented jettisoning my cassette of the album decades ago. Well, guess what? I found the comp on CD at my local record shop and, after some wavering and hemming and hawing, I bought it. The icing on the cake is that it's what is known in CD collector geekitude as a "target CD," as in the design of the CD surface resembles a target. I can't tell you how exciting it was to pop that CD in my car's disc player and hear that Hendrix collection for the first time in at least 24 years (probably longer than that). It's not as if Kiss the Sky is that earth-shattering--with the exception of the live "I Don't Live Today," I have all of these songs on other albums--but listening to those songs in that order was like taking the Wayback Machine to 1987, when I was playing the hell out of t...

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...