"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."- Haruki Murakami
Nonfiction: Biography, History
The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an
American Reporter in Nazi Germany by Pamela D. Toler
“No other American correspondent in Berlin knew so much of what was going on behind the scenes as did Sigrid Schultz.” — William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
What was it like living in Berlin - during World War I? - then during the years of riots, street-fights,
marches, intrigue, and terror? - or during Hitler’s rise to power and
subsequent World War II? Sigrid Schultz,
who was born in Chicago, began her career in newspaper journalism during these
momentous times. She later became chief of the Berlin office of the Chicago
Tribune. Schultz was willing to stand up to Nazi military leader Hermann Göring
by sticking to the facts in her reporting even at the risk of being arrested,
imprisoned, or deported. The Dragon from Chicago is the name Göring
gave her.
Living in the 21st century we know what devastating events were
about to unfold. But Schultz, living in that moment, did not. The compilation
of first-hand accounts from Schulz’s diary, newspaper quotes, and segments from
letters bring Schulz’s personality to life. We can follow her life during tense
and dangerous times and see how she gradually became aware of the danger of
Hitler and the Nazis. Her unrelenting commitment to unbiased, honest reporting
is compelling.
Soon after Hitler and the Nazis came into power, Schultz
commented: “They confuse manliness with brutality.” She was
correct. Years later, in April 1945, Schultz saw firsthand the results of a
fascist Nazi regime. She was a member of the Air Power Press Camp, and
witnessed the Allied forces seizing the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
I subscribe to a historical newspaper website and read many of her articles. Many of the events she described decades ago are happening in similar fashion today. I am thankful Schultz was there to record history. We can learn much from her reporting, especially how to recognize fascist activities.
This book is a story of journalistic integrity and ingenuity. We follow Schultz as she files news articles despite Nazi censors; scoops other reporters while protecting informants; hosts dinner parties to make political connections; and interviews participants of high-level diplomatic negotiations. What an amazing woman!
Fiction: Science Fiction
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, published in 1962!
Set during the year 2145, this novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kerans and his team of scientists as they confront a surreal world. They are living in a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming have melted the polar ice caps and Triassic-era jungles have overrun a submerged and tropical London. Nature has swallowed all but a few remnants of human civilization, and, slowly, Kerans and his companions are transformed—both physically and psychologically—by this prehistoric environment.
Ballard creates a blazing setting with stifling heat and humidity. His imagery is striking and creepy: wolf spiders and large hammer-nosed bats; a lagoon surrounded by giant iguanas, lizards, and exotic vegetation; and an eerie swamp-like cityscape.
However, the characters seemed stereotyped (probably because it was published in 1962) especially the lone female character and a white man in charge of a pirate ship with a crew of black men who do all the work.
The Drowned World starts off heavy on the science fiction, then quickly drops into what seems like a psychological exploration of the mind, then that is left behind for a bit of suspenseful action. There isn't really a good balance between the slow, psychological introspection and the action sequences. Flaws and all, I think this book is worth reading. There's a lot packed into this book, and I appreciate its evocative, lush, and oppressive atmosphere.
Nonfiction: History, Holocaust, True Crime
Hiding Mengele: How a Nazi Network Harbored the Angel of Death by Betina Anton
“How could a criminal of this magnitude and his supporters go unpunished in Brazil?”
This is a depressing, yet important book which describes how people excuse or ignore criminal behavior. In this historical case, Anton explores how people were fully aware of Mengle’s murderous war crimes but choose “ignorance.”
Publisher’s Description: “Josef Mengele, known worldwide for unimaginably cruel human experiments and for sending thousands of people to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, was a fugitive in South America for thirty-four years after World War II, sought by the Israeli secret service and Nazi hunters. Hidden for half that time in Brazil, Mengele created his own paradise, a life where he could speak German, maintain his beliefs, his friends, and his connection with the homeland. Never caught, he lived out the rest of his days thanks to a small circle of expatriate Europeans willing to help him.
One such person was Austrian ex-pat Liselotte Bossert, who buried Mengele with false documents to keep his identity hidden even after his death in 1979. When the world finally discovered where the remains of Josef Mengele were in 1985, Liselotte, a Kindergarten teacher, was escorted from the São Paulo school without further explanation to the students. One student, Betina Anton, could not let this mystery go. Decades later, as an experienced journalist, Betina decided to investigate, but when she found her former teacher Liselotte, she could not imagine how deep this case would take her.
Translated from the Portuguese and based on extensive research, including interviews, unpublished documents, and news coverage from that era, Hiding Mengele is a suspenseful narrative not only haunted by the doctor’s horrific experiments, but also by the motivations driving a community to protect one of the most evil people known to mankind.”
"While his victims suffered physical and mental torment throughout their lives, the Angel of Death ended his days with friends - writing, reading, walking his dogs, tending to his garden, barbequing, bathing in waterfalls, and in the sea of his tropical Bavaria"
Fiction: Horror, Paranormal
I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Philip Roughton (Translator - Icelandic)
I Remember You is a chilling, suspenseful ghost story, written in the style of a Scandinavian thriller. The plot is built on two strange, seemingly unrelated mysteries. These are slowly uncovered and investigated by a psychiatrist, named Freyr, in the town of Isafjördur. They include the disappearances of two children decades apart, and an isolated house on an island.
Sigurdardottir has written the quintessential ghost story.
Multiple characters are introduced in two distinct but ultimately merging story lines. She explores the impact of death and loss on the characters, without distracting from the action.
I was almost shivering as she ratcheted up the claustrophobia of being trapped with a ghost … at night… without electricity or cell phone connection … on an isolated island … in winter … with a dog. A dog I worried about endlessly because I'm that reader - the one that can cope with all manner of inhumanity to man but can’t handle anything where a dog is mistreated or dies. Fortunately - the dog makes it. Worry about the people! Best ghost story I’ve read in a long time!
Fiction: Historical Fiction
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
Set in rural North Dakota in a beet farming region near the Red River, this novel features a small community of people living their daily lives during the financial crisis of 2008. The ensemble of main characters includes eighteen-year-old Kismet, her parents Crystal and Martin, and two young men competing for her love, Gary and Hugo. Also featured are Gary’s parents, and a handful of other residents.
“People in towns and cities had strange ideas about farming. People thought you just put a seed in the ground, and it grew.”
The book is structured in many short chapters that reveal the backstories of the characters. It is mostly character driven, but there are two plotlines. One is a mystery of why Gary is so obsessed with marrying Kismet. The other features a scandal involving possible embezzlement of church funds.
Due to its structure, it takes a long while to ramp up. But it does have consistent themes such as indigenous rights, agricultural pollution, corporate greed, betrayal, trauma, and mental health that tie the plotlines together.
This is a beautifully written book about an unusual coming of age story centered on a community tragedy. Erdrich also weaves a lot of information in the story about sugar beet farming, the dangers of pesticides, and the fragility of nature.
Books by the Beach Club Fiction: Magical Realism (Cherokee)
The Removed by Brandon Hobson
The author, Dr. Brandon Hobson is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University and teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma.
"How do you lose a child to gun violence and expect to return to a normal way of life?" That is the question that runs through The Removed, and there's no good answer to it.
We follow the Echota family, fifteen years after the devastating death of their son, Ray-Ray, who was shot by a white police officer for no reason. Justice is not served, and they are forced to carry on living. Maria, his mother, appears to cope with the loss of Ray-Ray the best, but she is depressed. Sonja, his sister, is sexually reckless. Edgar, his brother, is addicted to meth. His father, Ernest, is suffering from advancing Alzheimer's. Each chapter shifts point of view between Maria, Edgar, Sonja, and their Cherokee ancestor Tsala – who experienced the Trail of Tears.
The story of the Echota family is a sharing of Cherokee myth and history, and of the family's attempt to reclaim the memory of their son. As the Echotas prepare to gather in a shared ritual of memory-making — the family bonfire, recollection of stories, and feast during the annual celebration of the signing of the Cherokee Nation Constitution in 1839 — each family member attempts to unpack the trauma of Ray-Ray's death. They walk in both a spiritual world of Cherokee folklore and myth, and a world outside that culture and tradition. It's a path of mourning, meditation, and trauma. Each family member seeks the life that once was, and justice for what was taken.
Nonfiction: History, Biography
Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs by Mo Rocca
Publisher’s Description: “Roctogenarians is a collection of entertaining and unexpected profiles of these unretired titans—some long gone (a cancer-stricken Henri Matisse, who began work on his celebrated cut-outs when he could no longer paint), some very much still living (Rita Moreno, the EGOT - acronym for the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards - who’s still got it). The amazing cast of characters also includes Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-six, helped lead sit-ins at segregated Washington, DC, lunch counters in the 1950s, and Carol Channing, who married the love of her life at eighty-two. Then there’s Peter Mark Roget, who began working on his thesaurus in his twenties and completed it at seventy-three (because sometimes finding the right word takes time.)”
This is easy reading, a book you can pick up read a little (or a lot), put down, and pick up knowing you will be treated to a different, and encouraging tale about an inspiring person. Rocca tells the stories of exceptional people, most of whom became exceptional in the last quarter of their lives. There are so many people who did so many good things. But he doesn’t limit himself to historical people, the book also tells inspirational stories about fictional characters and animals. This is a “feel-good” book.
“We don’t grow older, we grow riper.” – Pablo Picasso
Audiobook Fiction: Historical Fiction, Ireland
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Don’t let the fact that this audiobook is only 2 hours (128 pages) long fool you! It is full of empathy, hope, and heroism.
“It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.”
‘Was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
This novel is a damning indictment of the morally corrupt Catholic Church's cruel treatment of unwed mothers. Their babies were taken away and they were enslaved in Magdalene Laundries. Women in the laundries were physically and verbally abused, denied food and water, assigned new names, and refused contact with family members.
This is the story of one man who asked himself, “What is the point of being a Christian if I allow this to happen?” A poignant, and beautifully written book.
*NOTE: Small Things Like These has been made into a movie available to rent or purchase it from Amazon Prime Video.
Nonfiction: Crime, Social Justice, Politics
What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms by Jonathan M. Metzl
What do you suggest should happen to stem the tide of gun violence and mass shootings – in schools, churches, grocery stores, music venues – everywhere? The number of guns sold after a mass shooting increases … and then there is another mass shooting … so obviously more people owning more guns is not the answer. This book explores guns and gun crime in the United States from several viewpoints and explains that this isn’t just a “mental health” vs. “gun rights” issue.
Publisher’s Description: “When a naked, mentally ill white man with an AR-15 killed four young adults of color at a nearby Waffle House, Nashville-based physician and gun policy scholar Dr. Jonathan M. Metzl once again advocated for commonsense gun reform. But did the approach he championed have it all wrong?
Long a leading expert at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, Dr. Metzl has been on constant media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings. But the 2018 Nashville killings led him on a path toward recognizing the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics.
Increasingly, as Dr. Metzl came to understand it, public health is a harder sell in a nation that fundamentally disagrees about what it means to be safe, healthy, or free. This brilliant, piercing analysis shows mass shootings as a symptom of our most unresolved national conflicts. What We’ve Become ultimately sets us on the path of alliance forging, racial reckoning, and political power brokering we must take to put things right.”
This is an excellent, intense reflection on how we arrived at this surge of violence and why we need to rethink solutions going forward.
