The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher

Thank you Iris for recommending The Paris Bookseller (2022) by Kerri Maher.  I have finally gotten around to reading this well written and well researched historical novel about the legendary Sylvia Beach and her  bookstore Shakespeare and Company.  And for readers who have an interest in Sylvia Beach, Paris in the 1920's and the ex-pat writers who frequented Shakespeare and Company this is a must read.

Who was Sylvia Beach?  She was born in Baltimore Maryland in 1888.  Her father was a Presbyterian minister and her parents raised their three daughters to be independent and pursue their dreams.  In 1902 Reverend Beach took a job in Paris where the family lived until 1905.  The family moved back to the US but for Sylvia the experience of living in Paris was life changing.  She would return to Paris in the later years of World War I where she met her life partner Adrienne Monnier.   The two women lived together until Adrienne's tragic death in 1955

The Paris bookseller covers Sylvia's life from 1917 to 1936 and in 1919 she opened  Shakespeare and Company.   It was a store that sold books but also served as a lending library for those who could not afford to purchase books.   As Ernest Hemingway would later write about Sylvia:  "She was kind, cheerful and interested, and loved to make jokes and gossip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.”  

And that's the impression I got from Kerri Maher's portrait of Sylvia Beach.  A good woman, passionate about literature and also a risk taker.  Sylvia in 1922 was the first to publish James Joyce's Ulysees which was banned in America and Europe on obscenity charges.  James Joyce was forever grateful although he had a tendency to take advantage of his friends, asking for loans etc as the novel makes clear:

For Sylvia and Shakespeare and Company the 1920's were a highpoint, a decade of youth, parties art and adventure.  But things started to darken in the 1930's:

"Americans had been escaping to drink and write and love freely, and they frequently returned to their homeland; in fact, they were going home in droves these days. These German artists were escaping persecution and assumed they would never return to the country of their birth. They despaired of seeing sisters, brothers, cousins, and parents ever again"

The Paris Bookseller ends in 1936 but Kerri Maher provides an afterward regarding Sylvia Beach's life from 1937 until her death in 1962.  The Paris Bookseller is a very nice tribute to Sylvia Beach, a brave and good-hearted woman.

Shotgun Saturday Night by Bill Crider

Shotgun Saturday Night (1983) is the second novel in Bill Crider's Dan Rhodes mystery series.  And thank you to Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery (see the link to her website under blogs I follow) for recommending this series.  A good mystery novel rises or falls based on the lead detective and Dan Rhodes is a detective you want to follow.

Dan is the Sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas where major crime is not supposed to happen.  And so when Shotgun Saturday Night begins and Bert Ramsey, the local handyman, walks into Sheriff Dan Rhodes's office carrying a severed arm it is shocking.  Bert found the arm stored in a crate with other severed arms and legs while he was clearing out brush for a neighbor who is away traveling.  

Do they have a serial killer in Blacklin County?  Turns out the explanation is not that serious.  The severed arms and legs are from a hospital in another town which needed to dispose of body parts amputated during legitimate surgeries.  As to why the doctor at the hospital didn't dispose of these body parts using correct procedure that is wrong but it is not murder.

But then just as Sheriff Rhodes is ready to close the case, Bert Ramsey is murdered.  Is his death connected to finding the body parts?  Or could his death have a connection to the Los Muertos tatoo found on Bert's body during his autopsy?  Los Muertes is a motorcycle gang with a violent history and some of their members have been spotted riding their motorcycles around Blacklin County.  Did they kill Bert and if so, why?

So far I have found the crimes tthat Sheriff Dan Rhodes is asked to solve in book one and two mildly interesting but what keeps me coming back to this series is Sheriff Dan Rhodes himself.  He is an easy going man who loves old classic movies and the occasional Dr Pepper and a burger at the local diner.  Sheriff Rhodes has a small staff, Hack Jensen, the dispatcher, Lawton who runs the jail and a new deputy, Ruth Grady.  Since the death of his wife, Sheriff Rhodes has been lonely but in Shotgun Saturday Night his relationship with Ivy Daniels is getting serious and like Dan she is smart, courageous and determined.

The two novels I have read in this series are about 160 pages each and in addition to Dan Rhodes there is the town of Blacklin County, Texas.  Bill Crider has done a very good job in describing the local color of the town and the people who live there.  And if you don't mind the very warm weather, Blacklin County is a nice place to spend your time.

Murder On Gramercy Park by Victoria Thompson

Murder On Gramercy Park (2001) is the third novel in Victoria Thompson's bestselling Gaslight mystery series.  And thank you Lark at Lark Writes...on books and life for  recommending this author.  I am hooked and with 24 more novels to go in the series I have alot of reading pleasure ahead.  

As to what makes this mystery series so good it starts with the fact that Victoria Thompson is a very fine writer.  The setting New York City in the 1890's is fascinating and Thompson does a good job of researching that era.  And at the center of each novel is our detective duo, Frank Malloy and Sarah Brandt.  

As to why Frank, a police detective and Sarah, a nurse midwife would team up together to solve crimes, Frank isn't happy about that either when they first meet.  But Sarah is smart and not to be told no and by the third novel, Murder On Gramercy Park, Frank calls Sarah in to help investigate the death of Dr. Edmund Blackwell. 

Edmund advertises himself as a doctor but he has no medical degree.  His practice involves the laying on of hands to heal his patients. His practice has made him very wealthy and popular particularly with his female patients.  But then Dr. Blackwell is found dead in his study by his horrified wife.  It looks at first to be suicide but Frank soon determines it was murder.  But who killed Dr. Blackwell?  The list is long and Frank and Sarah are on the case.  

I love the chemistry between these two and so in a few months I will be on to book four, Murder On Washington Square.

My Favorite Kind of Books to Read

I have favorite book genres but going deeper there are topics that I love to read about in books. Here is my wish list:

1.  Novels set in the South Bronx during the 1940's and 1950's.  It's where my Mom was born and grew up and Marty is a favorite movie of mine.  But sadly when it comes to NYC there are very few novels set in the Bronx.  Tons of novels about Manhattan and Brooklyn but not so much about the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island

2.   I would love to find a biography of the poet C. P. Cavafy.  

3.   A new collection of essays from Vivian Gornick.

4.   Books about the Great Depression of the 1930's. I know I have romanticized this era as a time of can do spirit where everyone was pulling together and trying to make ends meet.  It's different today where poverty is still out there but it's not a national story the way it should be and everyone is on their own.

5.  Books about Jack Kerouac. What's odd is that I have never been able to get through On The Road but my fascination with Jack Kerouac stems from Ann Charters' wonderful biography Kerouac.  Read it many years ago and her biography has made a lasting impression on me.

6. Amarillo by Morning by George Strait is a favorite song of mine and wouldn't that song make a great novel about the lives of cowboys who ride the rodeo circuit?  A lonely life I would imagine and dangerous and yet they love it.  Reminds me that Larry McMurty's Moving On needs to be on my TBR list!

7.  Christmas Romance Novels.  Around October they certainly put me in the Holiday Spirit.

8.  Van life memoirs.  Have loved this genre since I read William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways in my 20's.

9.  19th century homesteading novels set in log cabins.

10.  Books set in remote parts of Alaska or Antartica.  

11.  Haunted House Novels where a young person down on their luck arrives at a lonely isolated mansion hoping for a new start.  And it helps if they bring their cat with them.  

 How about you?  What are your favorite type of books to read? 

The Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes

I love diaries, fiction or non-fiction and I have tried to keep my own journals.  But the trouble is what if someone were to find my diary and read it?  It's probably every diary keeper's fear.  You want to write honestly about what you feel and how your life is going but that often requires writing about others and that's where it gets tricky.  

And that is the dilemma faced by Valeria Cossati the diary writer in Alba De Cespedes's excellent novel Forbidden Notebook (1952).  Valeria is 43 and living in Rome with her family in the early 1950's when Forbidden Notebook begins.  She is a wife and mother.  Her son and daughter are in their late teens.  Both Valeria and her husband Michele work outside the home but money is tight and so all four family members are living together in an apartment with not much privacy.  

Valeria has a full time job in an office but when she comes home another full time job awaits since she does the cooking and cleaning.  And so needing some space for herself Valeria decides one Sunday to buy a diary.  But from the moment she takes the diary home where to hide her journal preoccupies her thoughts.  And the more Valeria writes in her diary the more she questions whether buying it was a good idea: 

It’s two in the morning. I got up to write: I can’t sleep. Yet again it’s the fault of this notebook. Before, I’d immediately forget what happened at home; now, instead, since I began to write down daily events, I hold on to them in my memory and try to understand why they occurred. If it’s true that the hidden presence of this notebook gives a new flavor to my life, I have to acknowledge that it isn’t making it any happier. In the family you have to pretend not to notice what happens, or at least not to wonder about its meaning".

When I began reading Forbidden Notebook I was thinking that it wouldn't be the end of the world if Valeria's husband Michele or their childten Mirella and Riccardo found her journal.  Maybe they should learn that Valeria is a person in her own right and shouldn't be expected to always be at their beck and call.  But the deeper I got into the diary the more it became clear that no Valeria's diary cannot be shared with anyone.  Due to her diary writing she begins to take risks in her life that are not for anyone else's eyes.   The end of the novel is kind of sad but in hindsight it is the only decision Valeria could have made.

Thanks to Sam at Book Chase (please see the link under blogs I follow) for recommending Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes.  This novel is a gem, a neglected classic of 20th century Italian literature and beautifully translated by Ann Goldstein.  Forbidden Notebook will definitely be on my best books of 2024 list at the end of this year. 

Look For Me There: Greiving My Father, Finding Myself by Luke Russert

I have loved travel memoirs since I was in my twenties and read Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.  And so when I heard about Luke Russert's memoir Look For Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself (2023) I was interested.  Luke Russert is the former Capital Hill Correspondent for NBC news and the son of the legendary journalist Tim Russert who died tragically at age 58 from a heart attack.  

And in Look For Me There, Luke Russert writes about how he had a great job as a correspondent at NBC that he had held for eight years.  But the pressure in competing for the next story or interview combined with the increasing acrimony on Capital Hill began to sour him on a job he had once loved.  

Also Luke had never come to terms with the grief he felt at his father's death.  Tim Russert's death was so unexpected and sudden that Luke started having worries about his own health: 

"I know I’ve suffered from anxiety since my father died. A therapist even confirmed it. Any routine pain or shortness of breath makes me think I’m going to have a heart attack. That I’m going to keel over and flatline just like he did. The feelings intensify during work hours. Breathing techniques help. Beers at night do, too—the irony, of course, being that any hangover only strengthens the anxiety tenfold the next day. I still tremble when I have to go into an audio tracking booth and record a script for a piece. Dad died in a tracking booth".

And so in 2016 at age thirty Luke Russert decided to make a radical change.  He quit his job at NBC in order to travel the world, visiting six continents and Look For Me There is the memoir of his three year odyssey, the countries he visited, the people he met and what he learned about himself along the way. 

Look For Me There is divided into twenty-eight chapters with most of the chapters covering a different country Luke visited.  But solo traveling is lonely and it can be dangerous.  Luke discovers that seeing the next country on your list, visiting the tourist sites, posting pictures on instagram, living in hotels and motels is fine if you do it for a few weeks or even months.  But three years wandering the globe without any real purpose and the excitement and fun diminished fast for Luke and he discovers that wherever you go you take yourself and your issues with you. 

Look For Me There is a travel memoir that people who are feeling lost and don't know what they should do next can benefit from.  And Look For Me There is also a loving tribute from a son to his father.  Tim Russert would be proud.