notanotherbookreview

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, is a coming of age sports novel that transcends the category. It has been praised by almost every major critic in every possible publication. I mostly join that chorus. I like the gentle humor in this book, the sly homage to Melville's Moby Dick, the empathy aroused by his characters, the sure plotting that unhurriedly moves the story to an ending that's unexpected. Harbach's inarticulate hero, Henry Skrimshander is a great surprise, a ball-player stand-in for the artist as mystic. Henry's an outsider. He's the kind of visionary who's uncompromising, self-sacrificing and, for a short-stop, ungrounded in planet earth. Like a Sam Shepard hero, he comes from the obscure West, Lankton, South Dakota, with working class parents, and few aspirations but one. From the age of 9, when he got his glove with Aparico Rodrigues inscribed on it, he wanted to play shortstop like the famous player, whose book, "The Art of Fielding...

How can I say this? Probably because I never read it before. Tolstoy wasn't on my high school reading list. And I studied art in college. I've spent years reading for truth, when this book existed; luminous, transcendent, full of dirt and tragedy--like life itself. Tolstoy doesn't open with Anna, but her brother Stepan and it's brilliant he does so, because Stepan, Anna's brother has some similar proclivities. Stepan is a pleasure-loving family man, a sensualist easily moved by passing sentiments, and a philanderer. He's presented as attractive, a fun aristocrat with the usual indulgences of his class. In society he's liked for his easy-going personality and Stepan understands how to network and use connections. You almost agree with him that he's right to have a mistress or two, because pretty women are attracted to him and his wife has lost her looks, disposition, and has little of interest to say to a man of his cultured intelligence. You may sy...

I just finished Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy, which I may have read in my dim high school past. I had little recall except a vague idea of liking it, when my book group brought it up. Our group is small and impatient with trendiness. We want a quality read and this time, not overly long. At 85 pages we are reading a book that's fairly forgotten. O Pioneer probably makes it to college reading lists. But My Mortal Enemy asks that eternal question, what happens when you have the joy of getting the lover you want? And at a huge cost? Lizzie, age 15, meets Myra Henshawe, who's visiting her aunt in their small town in Illinois. From New York, she's a breath of glamour and elegance. Myra at age 45 is short round with the beginning of a double chin, but she dazzles with her style and her contagious laugh. Her voice is "bright and gay and carelessly kind" (except when it's withering and cold and her lip curls but that's later) Lizzie is attracted, as well...

I am reading classics for free on my KOBO and buying hardcovers of new fiction. I am liking the classics better. In terms of slightly guilty pleasure, I'm reading classics I've seen on PBC or BBC. NY in 2012 is sending me back to more genteel times? I feel a little like Clooney in The Descendants, who's shocked when his kids open their mouths and vile street invective comes out. Made me laugh but not sure I like living here. So, when Margaret Hale is partying with her cousin on Harley Street, I may know the dances and dinners and the made to perfection clothes--fab fabrics--and the admiration of handsome men is superficial hooey. She certainly has an inkling of this, and, though a great beauty, is skeptical of her lovely cousin's superficiality, but heck--it's so much fun to be a girl with money and prospects! Then her cuz marries an aristo with a military career and leaves for Corfu. Margaret returns home to the genteel poverty of her father's parsonage in th...

EMERGENCY PUBLIC RELATIONS: Crisis Management in a 3.0 world by Alan Bernstein and Cindy Rakowitz is not just nonfiction, but fantastic nonfiction, it teaches you about handelling the impossible; the improbably feared event, a crisis. As Cindy says in the book, most publicists would rather be shot than deal with a pr crisis. As a pr professional, I have been like the "Little Dutchman," foolishly using my thumb to plug a hole in a bursting dam. Wish I had had this book to school myself in the crisis mind-set and have some base-line plans for when the unexpected inevitably occured. The problem is there are very few mentors qualified to write such a book. Most PR people wing it with some perspective from the last crises, though they know that every one is different with it's own momentum and challenges. But experience in this book means more than "war stories." Between the two of them, Alan and Cindy have over 50 years of crisis management, from law enforcement to...

The Orphanmaster's Son by Adam Johnson is a book I wanted to like, lots of people I respect do, and I am always willing to champion a book that's against totalitarian repression and meglomaniacal dictators. So what's the problem? It's unrelenting in its narrative of atrocities so viscerally frightening in this "no exit" world that they would have been the envy of Kafka's Castle or Dostoyevsky's The Lower Depths or Solzenetsyn's Gulag or any concentration camp history....and that's my problem. I don't know if Mr.Johnson's N.Korea is meant to be mythic or real or a combination of both. Why does this matter? If it's historical truth or fiction based on it, then I accept the necessity to shock so we can be outraged and perhaps contribute to some change or resolve it won't happen again. If he's created this world in order to indict N.Korea, that would be an endeavor made more believable by a novel with more than one note--des...

DAMNED IF YOU DON'T By Anita Page I liked spending time with Hannah Fox, Anita Page's warmly human and admirably hardheaded heroine in DAMNED IF YOU DON'T (L&L Dreamspell). Hannah is a woman who looks at life with both rueful humor and intense sympathy for those who suffer. She's funny and smart, full of well-reasoned opinions and an awareness that she might be nuts. Although very conscious of her flaws, Hannah accepts herself and others with generosity of spirit. And the creature that returns this most consistently, in this mystery driven by complex human beings, is her dog, Brooklyn. Hannah is glad for the solace. She gets the world is a mess and wants to help fix it. And, in the process, take care of people close to her. Hannah's a grown-up, she does what she can. And in this mystery, it's that drive that makes her extraordinary. Like Marlowe, Hannah Fox puts one foot in front of the other, heart broken or not, sick and half dead doesn't matter,...