 |
Molly's Musings Book Reviews by Molly Pace |
Hopping Into The Fire
I just have finished the short story collection MacTiernan's Bottle, by Michael Hopping and the first thing that came into my mind is that I felt I had read a collection of different colored flames. Some of the stories seemed me to be pages torn out of a note and set on fire as they entered my brain. Images so clear burned their way into my brain, especially the stories "Every Curry tells a Story" and "Toasted.” These people lived in his stories.
I also enjoyed his essay in the afterword, “Literature as Magic Theater.” I totally agree with him and enjoyed his ideas. People sometime read because they feel that they must for some reason, whether it's a book club or they want to model for their children. Read for the fun and excitement of it. Read this book and have that experience. He also has a good website
Thank you, Michael for a great trip.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Independent Bookstores and Independent Book Publishers
I will read just about anything, because - as I was discussing with my friend Marshall - reading is like eating, we do it for nourishment. I especially enjoy it when fed by an independent source. The book that I am offering up today is The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel. The story takes place in New York among a family of scavengers. The son, Adam, wants a different life so he goes to work for a good company. The story evolves around what happens to him when he is discovered faking it.
The author is very skilled at pulling you into the story, and helping you forget that what these people do is illegal. You want Adam to succeed. St. John Mandel has scored with a finely tuned story of intrigue.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who Is Your Adversary?
I have struggled with the issues that Hans Keilson address in his book, Death of the Adversary. He address the issues of raising your child to hate someone you have identified as a “bad” guy. He writes about Hitler without naming him or any of the participants in the novel. Keilson lived during this time of Hitler. He was sent as a young man to live in Amsterdam, to escape persecution. He became a child psychiatrist, working with children affected by war. His novel explores these issues very well.
Keilson has told the story of a young man who has been raised by his parents to hate someone named the Adversary. He lives his short life in the pursuit of the demise of this creature.
This is a book that could be applicable to what we have just gone through with the killing of Osama Bin Laden. There were many young people in the streets expressing joy at the death of Bin Laden. They had been small children at the time of 9-11. They were raised in fear of Muslims. Young people that lost parents in the bombing of the twin towers revel in the death. I recognize the need - revenge of death feels necessary for these young people. But what kind of world are we creating for the children if we continue to teach them only to hate.
I recommend that you read this book and explore with Keilson as he tells his story. This book gave me many hours of contemplation of the world that has been created by war and the people that bring it screaming to our door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Trapped In the Memory Box
You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin
Victor is a man caught in memory: The memories of the patients at the Alzheimer’s Institute that he heads and his trapped memories of his dead wife, as well as the memories of his Aunt Betsy, whom he meets for dinner every Friday night. He struggles through his days at the institute working for funding and trying to please his staff, and then spends all night in his music room, trying to sleep. This sounds like the life of somebody you would want to read about, RIGHT? I thought that I would not want to read this story for those reasons and those reasons became the ones that kept me glued to the pages of this book. Baldwin ’s skill with language and the ideas of the science world intrigued me. I wanted to stay with his characters to find out how they resolved all their issues. Plus he throws in Bruce Willis, proving his sense of humor.
Baldwin helped create a web site that I really like called Morning News. They have a tournament of books that I enjoy every year, and they are the ones that sponsored reading David Foster Wallace’s very strange books An Infinite Jest. Baldwin is also from North Carolina , so he had two pluses to his name. I would hope that you would read this great first novel, because I enjoyed it immensely.
