Book Review: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Author: Matt Haig
Title: The Midnight Library 
Narrator: Carey Mulligan
Other Books Read by the Same Author: How to Stop Time 
Publication Info: Penguin Audio, 2020
Summary/Review:

“In the Midnight Library you can’t take the same book out twice.”

Feeling useless and unloved, Nora Seed attempts to end her life through an overdose. Instead she finds herself in a library managed by Mrs. Elm, a school librarian who was kind to Nora in her youth. Mrs. Elm explains that all the books are stories of Nora’s life that diverge from different decisions she made during her life.  Nora is allowed to experience her life in different universes until she finds one where she is content.

Nora enters a life where she actually married her ex-fiance Dan and they run a country pub, a life where she joined her friend Izzy in Australia, a life in which she remained committed to competitive swimming and became an Olympic medalist, and a life where she followed her dream of becoming a glaciologist, among several others.  The rules of the library are a bit unfair as Nora is plopped into situations with no memory of the life that got her to this point or even the people she’s supposed to know.  Even in the most satisfying life, Nora notices negative changes in the lives of people she knows (shades of It’s a Wonderful Life) and feels like an imposter.

The ending of this novel is quite predictable, but nevertheless it is an inspiring story of embracing the life one has, and a great take on the multiverse theory.

Recommended books:

• Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
• Every Day by David Levithan
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Rating: ****

Book Review: Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner

Around the World for a Good Book selection for Cambodia

Author: Vaddey Ratner
Title: Music of the Ghosts
Narrator: Jennifer Ikeda
Publication Info: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2017

Summary/Review:

As a child, Teera escaped the Khmer Rouge regime with her Aunt Amara, her only living relative.  After Amara’s death, the 37-year-old Teera returns to Cambodia from the United States with her aunt’s ashes.  She also has a letter from Tun, a man known by most other people in the novel as The Old Musician who lives at a monastery that Amara supported.  He claims he has information about Teera’s father’s last days, and from his point of view the reader learns he carries great remorse for his actions as an idealistic member of the Khmer Rouge.

Teera meets a doctor and former monk named Narunn and they form a romantic relationship.  They also begin to care for Lah, and orphan child who was left at the monastery. The nonlinear narrative frequently goes into the past lives of all these characters showing the incidents that shaped who they are in the present day.  The details of the Cambodian genocide are unflinching and difficult to read, but all too important not to forget. Ultimately, this novel is a story of the survivors of great trauma that deals with atonement, forgiveness, persistence, and found family.

Recommended books:

• What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
• The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

Rating: *****

Book Review: Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon

Author: William Cronon
Title: Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
Publication Info: New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1991
Summary/Review:

Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon presents a comprehensive analysis of Chicago’s development during the 19th century, emphasizing its pivotal role as a Gateway City to the Great West. Cronon explores how Chicago’s strategic location at the intersection of transportation routes facilitated the flow of goods from the hinterlands to urban markets.

Grains, lumber, and meat emerge as key commodities driving Chicago’s growth. The Midwest’s fertile prairies supplied grains that fueled the city’s booming grain trade, earning Chicago the title of “breadbasket of the world.” Simultaneously, the region’s forests were harvested to meet the demand for lumber, supporting the city’s construction industry. Meatpacking also played a significant role, with Chicago emerging as a hub for processing and distributing livestock from the Western plains. Innovations in refrigeration and transportation enabled Chicago to dominate the meat industry, supplying meat to consumers across the nation.

Cronon’s meticulous research sheds light on the complex interplay between urbanization, environmental exploitation, and economic development. By examining Chicago’s rise within the broader context of the Great West, Nature’s Metropolis offers valuable insights into the interconnectedness of human societies and the natural world, challenging conventional narratives of urban growth.

Favorite Passages:

“For [Louis] Sullivan, the wonder of Chicago was the wonder of nature transformed: the more nature had been reworked by an inspired human imagination, the more beautiful it became.  It served as the vehicle and occasion for expressing human spirit.’ – p. 14

We “moderns” believe, even in a postmodern age, that we have the power to control the earth, despite our deep ambivalence about whether we know ow to exercise that power wisely.  On the other hand, our nostalgia for the more “natural” world of an earlier time when we were not so powerful, when the human landscape did not seem so omnipresent, encourages us to seek refuge in pastoral or wilderness landscapes that seem as yet unscarred by human action. Convinced of our human omnipotence, we can imagine nature retreating to small islands – “preserves” – in the midst of a landscape which otherwise belongs to us.  And therein lies our dilemma: however we wish to “control” nature or “preserve” it – we unconsciously affirm our belief that we ourselves are unnatural.  Nature is the place where we are not. – p. 18

“Chicago’s population exploded after 1833 without bothering much about a pastoral stage, a settlement of pioneering subsistence farmers, or even an agricultural community at all.  The town’s speculators gambled on and urban future, staking fortunes on land they hoped would soon lie at the heart of a great city.  Explaining their vision of Chicago’s ‘destiny’ means reading Turner backward, for their theory of frontier growth apparently began with the city instead of ending with it.” – p. 32

“The changes in Chicago’s markets suddenly made it possible for people to buy and sell grain not as the physical product of human labor on a particular tract of prairie earth but as an abstract claim on the golden stream flowing through the city’s elevators.” – p. 120

“The futures market was a market not in grain but in the price of grain.  By entering into futures contracts, one bought and sold not wheat or corn or oats but the prices of those goods as they would exist at a future time. Speculators made and lost money by selling each other legally binding forecasts of how much grain prices would rise or fall.” – p. 125

“The land might have been taken from Indians, its profits might sometimes have been expropriated by absentee landlords, its small farmers might on occasion have suffocated beneath a burden of accumulating debt, but much of what made the land valuable in the first place had little to do with the exploitation of people. The exploitation of nature came first.” – p. 150

“Animals’ lives had been redistributed across regional space, for they were born in one place, fattened in another, and killed in still a third.” – p. 224

“The cattle that grazed on a Wyoming hillside, the corn that grew in an Iowa field, and the white pine that flourished in a Wisconsin forest would never ordinarily have shared the same landscape.  All nonetheless came together in Chicago.  There they were valued according to the demands and desires of people who for the most part had never even seen the landscapes from which they came.  In an urban market, one could by goods from hinterlands halfway round the world without understanding much if anything about how the goods had come to be there.  Those who bought plants and animals from so far away had little way of knowing the ecological consequences of such purchases, so the separation of production and consumption had moral as well as material implications.” – p. 226

“Once a product had been processed, packaged, advertised, sold, and shipped within the long chain of wholesale-retail relationships, its identity became more and more a creature of the market.  The natural roots from which it had sprung and the human history that had created it faded as it passed from hand to hand.  Wherever one bought it, that was where it came from.”- p. 340

“We are consumers all, whether we live in the city or the country.  This is to say that the urban and the rural landscapes I have been describing are not two places but one.  They created each other, they transformed each other’s environments and economies, and they now depend on each other for their very survival. To see them separately is to misunderstand where they came from and where they might go in the future. Worse, to ignore the nearly infinite ways they affect one another is to miss our moral responsibility for the ways they shape each other’s landscapes and alter the lives of people and organisms within their bounds. The city-country relations I have described in this book now involve the entire planet, in part because of what happened to Chicago and the Great West during the nineteenth century.  We all live in the city.  We all live in the country.  Both are second nature to us.” – p. 384-385

Recommended books:

• Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream by Thomas Dyja

Rating: ****

Book Review: A Damn Near Perfect Game by Joe Kelly

Author: Joe Kelly
Title: A Damn Near Perfect Game 
Publication Info: Diversion Books (2023)
Summary/Review:

Major League Baseball relief pitcher Joe Kelly is primarily known for two things: 1. with the Red Sox, starting a fight with the Yankees after one of their player’s dirty takeout slide, and 2. with the Dodgers, making a pouty face at Carlos Correa soon after the revelations of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.  Kelly covers both of these incidents and their aftermaths in full detail early on in this memoir.  But the better part of the book follows.

Coming from a troubled background, Kelly found an escape in baseball.  As a professional player, he’s part of a younger generation who have spurned the “unspoken rules” of baseball’s elders and recognized that baseball is a game and it’s supposed to be fun.  In Kelly’s analysis, baseball can better engage fans by embracing the fun and allowing the players to show their personality.  Through stories of the game as a player and a spectator, Kelly demonstrates that “baseball isn’t boring.”  In the final chapter, other players, Hall of Famers, as well as actors, musicians, and athletes from other sports express their love for baseball.

Favorite Passages:

Baseball is different from any other sport, where often you can watch the last few minutes of a game and get the gist. The NBA? The NFL? The NHL? What you see is what you get. Nothing wrong with any of it. The fast pace, the tight focus on a moving object, the made-for-TV rhythms of the season—they’re all tailor-made for today’s fans. Baseball? It’s a bit more complicated and that’s okay. Baseball makes you think. It makes you talk. Questions are being asked and answered. Why is that player doing this or that? And when the answers do arrive, the world somehow always seems to be a little bit better of a place. If you’re patient enough, you can see that baseball is a combination of chess, ballet, a classroom, and cannon fire. When you’re watching bat flips, punchouts, home-run-robbing catches, and laser throws from the warning track, it’s easy to remember all the feels.

Baseball is built on emotion. That’s a fact. The feeling of wanting to explode in just the right way at just the right time is what the whole experience is about. Swinging a bat. Throwing a ball. Bursting down a base path. Springing toward the perfect fielding position. The heart rate shoots up and the body follows in lockstep. And in between all those actions, there’s the other side: controlling your emotions in order for your mind and body to ultimately take over. The battle between nerves, muscle memory, memories, and excitement is an every-game, every-inning, every-batter, every-pitch thing. That is what this sport demands.

For years, the invisible book of unwritten rules suggested batters pimping homers should be frowned on. Respect the pitcher. Respect the game. News flash: If you really want to respect baseball, understand that we need more of that personality. Pimp away. Take a minute rounding the bases. Pitchers, throw your hats up in the air. Pump your fists. Whatever you want. If somebody hits a home run off me, I’m already fucking pissed. The hitter doing whatever he’s going to do won’t make me any angrier.

For instance, Major League Baseball has access to all of these Wall Street executives, so why in the world can’t it set up a committee for players who are retired or about to be retired that can help them with investment information? The unfortunate fact is that 60 percent of MLB players who retire have financial problems. Or how about this? Set up an independent committee involving mental health professionals who can really help a problem that is lingering among players these days. There needs to be somebody for these guys to talk to if they don’t trust who the clubs are offering up, or if there is an issue that crops up in the middle of the night. Right now everything has to be done through the club, and that doesn’t always work for a player.

What teams and Major League Baseball were trying to do was treat their players like they were in the Army. That works in the Army, because discipline and consistency are essential to the work it does. There’s no messing around, and everybody better be on the same page. Understood. But we’re playing a game. It’s not the same.

Fun and encouragement have to stay at the top of our lists. We have to remember that while we are obsessing over having this game take root, these kids are fending off the pitfalls of bullying, puberty, and those first girlfriends or boyfriends. Everything leading to high school is end-of-the-world stuff. Baseball should be part of the solution, not another part of the problem.

Kids are being asked to define themselves at such a young age, being pushed into sports specialization by parents and coaches who fear falling behind. That’s insane to me.

I will never forget one of my favorite moments when Stephen Drew hit a home run in Game 6 of the 2013 World Series and I was on-deck and something just clicked in my brain when he hit it. I knew it was gone so I immediately turned around and watched the fans. That’s the greatest thing you can do as an athlete. Our success is really cool, but to see all the fans rise up together, high-fiving and watching strangers hug. Shit, I get chills just thinking about it. – David Ross

Recommended books:

• Take time for paradise : Americans and their games by A. Bartlett Giamatti
• Veeck–As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck
• The Lords of the Realm by John Helyar
• You’re Missin’ a Great Game: From Casey to Ozzie, the Magic of Baseball and How to Get It Back by Whitey Herzog

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: Wintersmith
Narrator: Stephen Briggs
Publication Info: Clarion Books, 2007
Summary/Review:

Attending the “Dark Morris” dance, young witch Tiffany Aching finds herself inextricably drawn to participate.  The Wintersmith, the mysterious personification of winter, mistakes her for the Summer Lady and kind of gets a crush on Tiffany.  Now faced with the prospect of endless Winter, Tiffany has to solve the problem of the Wintersmith with the help of Granny Weatherwax, the Nac Mac Feegles, and her friend – and potential love interest – Roland (Tiffany is 13 after all and is beginning to develop feelings for boys although she won’t admit it).  On top of this, the elder witch Miss Treason dies, leaving her cottage to Annagramma, but it’s up to the more skilled Tiffany to help Annagramma succeed as the local witch.  This is another clever, amusing, and well-told tale from Discworld.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Author: Mark Kurlansky
Title: Salt: A World History
Publication Info: Penguin, 2003
Summary/Review:
Other Books I’ve Read by the Same Author:

• Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
• The Last Fish Tale

Recommended books:

I read this book many years ago but as I received it as a gift from my younger child, it was time to read it again. Despite the seasoning of decades it holds up as a good book.  Salt, which the author notes is “the only rock we eat,” plays a vital role in human history and culture.  At times this book reads like someone who knows a lot about salt and has decided to tell you all about it in detail, but in the most fascinating way possible.  For foodies, Kurlansky also includes recipes using salt from across time and cultures.

There’s way too much to summarize here, but my favorite part involves Avery Island in Lousiana.  The island is actually a salt dome, and there’s a curious connection between salt domes and petroleum.  In the case of Avery Island, people have not only exploited it for salt and oil, but Edmund McIlhenny decided it would be a good place to grow peppers for use in his product, Tabasco sauce.  The fun stories and historical connections make this book an informative and entertaining read.

Rating: ****

Book Review: King of Shadows by Susan Cooper

Author: Susan Cooper 
Title: King of Shadows 
Narrator: Jim Dale
Publication Info: Listening Library, 2000
Other Books I’ve Read by the Same Author:

• The Dark Is Rising
• Over Sea, Under Stone
• The Grey King
• Greenwitch
• Silver on the Tree
• The Magic Maker: A Portrait of John Langstaff and His Revels

Summary/Review:

Nat Field is a boy from the American South who joins a company of boys from across the country to travel to London and perform Shakespeare’s plays in the recreated Globe Theatre.  One night during the rehearsal period he falls ill and swaps places with another boy from 1599 who was being loaned to act with Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the original Globe! The unpleasant realities of Elizabethan London are a challenge for Nat, but he grows to enjoy the camaraderie of the company and a bond with William Shakespeare himself. This is an enjoyable historical fantasy, and I think for young readers would be a good introduction to Shakespeare and 17th-century history.

Recommended books:

• Stage Fright on a Summer Night (Magic Tree House #25) by Mary Pope Osborne
• Shakespeare of London by Marchette Chute

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole

Author: Fintan O’Toole
Title: We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland
Narrator: Aidan Kelly
Publication Info: Highbridge Audio, March 15, 2022
Summary/Review:

Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole takes the Billy Joel approach to the history of his nation by starting with the year of his birth.  In 1958, when O’Toole was born, the republic was lead by conservative veterans of the Irish war for independence who prioritized cultural causes over all else.  The even more conservative Catholic church leaders aimed to make Ireland the model of their form of Christianity.  As a result, Ireland was an economically depressed and isolated nation among the most impoverished in all of Europe facing a crisis of massive emigration.

Coincidentally, the Irish government initiated plans for modernizing Ireland in 1958.  Over the course of O’Toole’s life the country has gone through remarkable change that’s seen the fall of solid institutions and the people of Ireland voting to legalize abortion and same sex marriage.  Part of the change comes from looking to the United States, makers of Western films the Irish saw themselves in leading to the popularity of Country music.  The presidency of John F. Kennedy and his visit to Ireland also stirred a feeling of Irish pride. American investment in tech companies also propped up the success of the Celtic Tiger economy and the inevitable crash of 2008. Looking to Europe also helped as Ireland worked their way through the process of joining what would become the European Union.

But the biggest change is in the Irish people themselves.  One of O’Toole’s recurring themes is the unwillingness to talk about the rot in the system that everyone knew was there.  In politics, the fantastically corrupt taoiseach Charles Haughey’s governed through the 1980s and into the early 90s before scandals finally damaged his party.  The Church would be rocked by learning of the secret families of famed bishops, the abuse and incarceration of children in Christian Brothers Schools and Magdalene Laundries, and worst of all the hierarchy turning a blind eye to priests’ sexual abuse of children. The Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland in 1968 and endured for 30 years adding a daily toll of violence to Irish life.  For generations a united Ireland was the only officially acceptable solution, but decades of violence changed the mind of people to support the peace agreement of 1998 that allows for a gradual reunification if the people of Northern Ireland chose it.

O’Toole observed many of the events he describes in the book from afar as a child and young adult (sometimes just watching on TV).  But as he becomes a journalist he’s often in the thick of things and is a first person witness to the historical changes in Ireland.  While not an autobiography, O’Toole uses his personal experience to enhance the history.  For example, he talks about how his family and community felt in 1972 that the Irish republic wouldn’t inevitably have to fight in a war in the North, which thankfully didn’t come to pass.  They also thought suspension of the unionist government in Stormont that year meant the Troubles were over, which unfortunately also proved to be false.  All told it makes for a fascinating and detailed history of modern Ireland.

Recommended books:

• Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age by Rosemary Mahoney
• The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace by Tim Pat Coogan
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Biting At the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair by Padraig O’Malley

Rating: ****

Book Review: The City Where Dreams Come True by Gulsifat Shahidi

Around the World for a Good Book selection for Tajikistan

Author: Gulsifat Shahidi
Title: The City Where Dreams Come True
Publication Info: Hertforshire Press, 2016
Summary/Review:

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Republic of Tajikstan fell into civil war.  Author Gulsifat Shahidi witnessed the war as a journalist, and tells how it affected the Tajik people in these four short stories.  Each story is narrated by a different member of the same family: Horosho, his granddaughter Nekbaht, her husband Ali and his cousin Shernazar. The stories illustrate the trauma of how the war divided this family but also the hope they have for the future and the love of their country.

Favorite Passages:

“The world is not without good people and it is inherent that I join them at the helm, to bring joy, kindness and happiness to others. And I’ll begin this righteous path with you.”

“If you do not cry over the grief of other humans, Can anyone call you human?”

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: The Secret History of Bigfoot by John O’Connor

Author: John O’Connor
Title: The Secret History of Bigfoot
Narrator: Matt Godfrey
Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2024
Summary/Review:

When my son was younger, he began an interest in cryptozoology by watching the cable TV show “Finding Bigfoot.”  The show was both entertaining and absurd, as they never actually found a Sasquatch despite the title.  I created my own conspiracy theory that the cast were actually people who just really loved backwoods camping and scammed Animal Planet to pay for all their equipment.

Of course, there are lots of people who believe Bigfoot is real and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization exists to support their attempts to find evidence to prove the existence of this species.  Author John O’Connor spends time with this people on Squatching expeditions and notes that they are generally good and companionable people despite their unorthodox beliefs.  In fact, O’Connor does a good job of making sure that his book does not tease or exploit the Bigfoot believers.

Instead O’Connor focuses on various issues that contribute to the belief in Bigfoot.  He relates the history of the Bigfoot phenomenon and how it relates to other benign obsessions like UFOs and more dangerous conspiracy theories that have gained currency with the supporters of Donald Trump and Qanon.  Psychological studies that show the flaws of crime witness reports and memory shed some light on why people may believe they’ve spotted a Bigfoot.  O’Connor researches legends of Native Americans regarding Bigfoot-like creatures, but also notes that the Bigfoot phenomenon reflects the fears that white Americans have of nature.  The ideas of leaving civilization behind for the wilderness and solitude are reflected upon by the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Merton.  O’Connor also tells the parallel story of the birding community of how some people who look for the ivory-billed woodpecker, believed to be extinct since the 1940s, are met with ridicule but persist in their search.

I like how O’Connor approaches the topic from so many different angles.  I also like that O’Connor makes his dislike for IPAs and the Yankees known, and just how he integrates his personality into the book.  We may never find Bigfoot, but you can find out a lot about humanity and the enduring popularity of myth by reading this book.

Recommended books:

• Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by Jon Mooallem
• Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg
• The Thoreau You Don’t Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant by Robert Sullivan
• Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creatures by Ben Mezrich
• Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

Rating: ****