Audiobook. This 2009 National Book Award fiction winner was recommended by Pat. After reading several books about or set in the late 1960s, I have moved on to 1974. The unifying event of this book is the tightrope walk between the World Trade Center buildings by Philippe Petit. (A 2008 documentary called Man on Wire documents his walk which lasted about an hour...
Alex Miller has won the Miles Franklin Award twice and is a much loved writer in Australia. His book Journey to the Stone Country was recommended by Faye Christenberry; I picked up this one because the public library has a copy of it. A young Australian woman who resists her father's pressure to go to graduate school and live the life of an academic, and impetuously marries a...
Once again it's lovely to be in the hands of such a capable story teller even if the facts of story itself are not clear to us. Most of the story is set in the momentous year of 1967; as I just finished the book about the Smothers Brothers, that time is much on my mind. The main character, narrator of the first part, is Adam Walker, a student at Columbia. Adam tells about...
I found this an addictive book — I just couldn't stop reading it. It is highly dramatic; that's part of it, but there's more. The masterful storytelling takes you over, the slightly off-kilter use of words keeps you alert, and Winton's evident love of Western Australia, the shore, boats, and music takes you to another place. As in Shirley Hazzard's...
Audiobook. The subtitle, The Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour is true enough, but doesn't quite cover the breadth of the book. Three figures dominate the story during the dark hours of the Blitz: Edward R. Murrow, CBS reporter; John Gilbert Winant, Ambassador; and Averell Harriman, as administrator of Lend-Lease. Their individual stories and...
David Bianculli, a longtime TV critic in print, online, and on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, offers a thorough look at the three seasons of the Smothers Brothers on TV which ended when CBS fired them after countless censorship battles. He has interviewed an amazing number of people from the Brothers to some of the CBS executives involved. And what a delightful trip through the late 60s it was...
I met Faye Christenberry who has just completed a bibliography of Australian literature and of course she had lots of recommendations. Among them: Tim Winton's Dirt Music, early Kate Grenville (Joan Makes History, I think), Alex Miller, winner of several Miles Franklin awards, especially Journey to Stone Country. When Tim Winton was in Seattle he...
The impetus for reading this was to attend Kathy's book club while we are visiting Seattle next week. The story is told through three different voices: Aibileen, the wise, literate, loving caretaker; Skeeter, the misfit white writer; and Minny, the rebellious difficult worker, who could get work because she was such a wonderful cook. Set in the early 1960s in Jackson...
Audiobook. Recommended by Jennifer, this story was an ideal audiobook. It is a well-read, long, compelling narrative that has plenty of drama with interesting characters and nobody dies. The characters are fully developed; we see their better moments as well as their wretched selves. Only Ella and her father have a limited dimension; they are always good, kind...
The author spoke on a panel of writers of memoirs at the recent Festival of the Book here in Charlottesville. She writes about her grandmother, her father and herself; the most compelling figure is her grandmother, Rosamond Pinchot, the niece of Gifford Pinchot, appointed by Teddy Roosevelt to be the first chief of the Forest Service who also served as governor of Pennsylvania. Rosamond was...