Lonely Planet Ireland

Posted on April 22, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I took a fresh new 2012 copy of Lonely Planet Ireland with me on our trip there recently. My parents are fairly experienced travelers and users of travel guides, and my mother recommended Lonely Planet just barely above Rick Steves for our use on this trip. Also, the first Dublin taxi cab driver we encountered raved on and on (and on; he was a real talker) about the author of the Dublin & Cork sections, Fionn Davenport. The book was recommended, is what I’m saying.

And frankly, I was disappointed. This book frustrated me repeatedly. A few beefs:

  • A number of places and businesses that I was interested in appeared on maps of various cities but apparently had no other reference in the book. These include the hotel nearest the Guinness Storehouse (showed on the map with a name but no other info: no contact info, no price range) and, surprisingly, the Jameson Distillery. I know they give tours there because a friend of mine took one recently; but again, other than appearing on a map, no Jameson in the book.
  • The price of a train from Cork to Dublin was quoted in the book, and was within a Euro of being correct (it is a current book, after all; and I happily allow a few dollars’ discrepancy) but there was no mention of the fact that that price applies for online purchases only and if you show up to buy tickets in person the price almost doubles. This cost us almost $100 and is a great example of where a guidebook could have paid dividends. But didn’t.
  • Recommended that we not order Guinness in Cork but didn’t explain why. What is the cultural beef there? What are the consequences? Please teach me something!
  • Map unclear on national border between Republic of Ireland and North Ireland. As we drove from one to the other we kept wondering; no map in the book helped. Beyond that, I looked around for discussion of the two countries, their relationship, differences beyond the pound vs. the Euro, and found none.
  • Perhaps the biggest issue of all: no warning about “dry Friday” (Good Friday, when no alcohol is sold in the Republic). This, after saying something to the effect that “pubs are likely to be a large part of your reason for visiting” (they were) and “you may find it awkward to turn down a drink.” I think “dry Friday” deserved a mention. Even in the “Holidays” section, when I looked it up, it indicated that “many businesses close” but it is not a formal or legal holiday; which is not what we found there. Again, another failed opportunity for this guidebook to save the day.

I think this book missed several important points. But on the other hand, having it around was far better than having no book at all! The maps helped us get around on a few occasions (although they were far from ideal), and it gave us a few options for activities that we hadn’t considered. It helped explain Dunluce Castle after we saw a sign, and that helped us decide to stop. It told us about the Belfast black taxi tours of the political murals, that we ended up enjoying so much. It recommended the restaurant we ate at in Cork – which, by the way, despite being this book’s “top pick” we found just mediocre. Final verdict? Carry this book rather than no book at all. But in the future, I will look elsewhere than Lonely Planet for my travel guide needs.

Rating: 2 pubs.

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Taco USA by Gustavo Arellano

Posted on April 19, 2012 by pagesofjulia

A deliciously close-up look at Mexican food in the United States.


Gustavo Arellano is the author of the nationally syndicated column ¡Ask a Mexican! (and a 2008 book by the same title). Fans will recognize his voice in Taco USA: wise and knowledgeable, but always conversational and informal, even rambling–and very, very funny. Arellano capably handles the history of Mexican people and their cuisine, but Taco USA is less about Mexican food in Mexico than about its interpretations in the United States.

Several waves of Mexican food that have swept the U.S. (beginning with tamales and chile con carne or “chili”), and Arellano treats these as historical trends, tying them to larger themes in U.S. food history. We are reminded that Mexico is the source for global food staples such as corn, tomatoes and chocolate as well as the chile itself. Arellano refutes an emphasis on “authentic” Mexican cuisine in favor of the various permutations (Cal-Mex, Tex-Mex, southwestern, even Midwestern Mexican) that we know and love today. These are not bastardizations, he argues, but legitimate culinary heritages unto themselves, related to the Mexican tradition but not beholden to any of its rules. He is obviously passionate about his subject, which takes him from Taco Bell to Mission-style burritos to Rick Bayless.

Even the experienced border-dweller or Mexican food aficionado is likely to learn a lot, and giggle while doing so. What more can one ask of nonfiction? Just beware a growing desire to run out and get a burrito.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the April 17, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 8 delicious burritos.

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Jeeves in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse

Posted on April 16, 2012 by pagesofjulia

More Jeeves! (See my past readings here, here, here, and here.) At this point I’m recognizing all the Bertie-and-Jeeves patterns. There will be daunting aunts; there will be engagements, future, past and present, and conflicts between them; there will be secrets and hiding places and nighttime sneakings around; there will be old school friends and grouchy nobility who Bertie offended when he was young. Perhaps most importantly (to Husband, especially), there are very funny names. Jeeves will, of course, come to the rescue.

In this installment, Jeeves desires to go fishing in a river in the countryside, but Bertie resists visiting the idyllic town of Steeple Bumpleigh (funny name number one) because of the family residing there (daunting aunt) and the resident nobility (grouchy). Also, he dreads contact with Florence Craye, to whom he was formerly betrothed (check), although he has a few old school chums (check) out there as well. Jeeves joins forces with said grouchy nobility and manages to install Bertie in Steeple Bumpleigh, where he ends up bumblingly trying to help said old school chums pull off a desired engagement. Old acquaintances include Nobby Hopwood, Boko Fittleworth, and by far my personal favorite, Stilton Cheesewright. Stilton recalls another occasional Wodehouse pattern: the bicycling policeman.

It’s a funny one, and as a bonus, there is a “fancy dress” (costume) ball. Bertie humbles the nobility some, but it takes Jeeves to finish the job. I continue to be a fan of Wodehouse; he makes me giggle. Bertie does indulge in some misogyny here and there but it did not bother me as much as it did that one time. These books are admittedly more silly than anything else, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable; I think Wodehouse is a genius of comedy, both in phrasing (and names!) and in situations. These are classic comedies-of-error. Recommended.

Rating: 6 giggles.

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Darkness All Around by Doug Magee

Posted on April 15, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Darkness All Around is a psychological thriller involving a fractured trio of childhood friends from smalltown Braden, Pennsylvania. Risa was always expected to marry Alan but ended up getting pregnant with Sean, the third in their clique, and marrying him instead. Sean, struggling with his father’s suicide, ends up a raging drunk and leaves Risa and their daughter Kevin; Alan the ambitious politician helps her have him declared dead after many years’ absence and marries her himself, and takes over parenting Kevin as well. When the book opens, Kevin is the newly-minted football star of deeply football-obsessed Braden; Alan is on the campaign trail headed to Washington; and Risa is not sure she feels in control of her life. And then Sean shows back up.

Sean suffered a brain injury and very nearly died, to come back freshly sober and trying to remember his life before drink. He’s back in Braden without any intention of bothering Risa and Kevin, feeling good about his old friend Alan’s ability to take care of them. Rather, he’s concerned about the decade-old murder of Risa’s friend Carol: despite a local simpleton having confessed to the crime, new flashbacks convince Sean that he was involved. He contacts a local reporter who covered Carol’s death to try and help him figure out what happened; but of course it’s unavoidable, in a town like Braden, for Risa to avoid learning about his return. And Alan is not the least bit tolerant of this disruption of his campaign.

Sean is sick, but recovering – both in terms of his alcoholism, and his amnesia. His memory returns over the course of the book and he struggles to make sense of it. Risa is still dealing with the trauma of her first marriage, and Alan simply comes across as a self-centered jerk. Teenaged Kevin is understandably insecure about his supposedly dead father reappearing on the scene, especially considering his new football-related issues. The local reporter, Henry, was brand-new to town when Carol was killed but is now fully a part of the action. And as you might have guessed, nothing is as simple as it seems.

The action and the suspense are well-done; I had trouble putting this book down and while it didn’t keep me up at night, it thought about it. Except for Alan, who I wanted to kick, the characters were sympathetic and fairly real; Kevin was nicely done as a sometimes-loving and sometimes-wall-punching teen. I really felt for Sean. Limited character development and occasionally awkward dialog will allow me to move on from this book more quickly than some, but it was thoroughly satisfying and worth my time.

This book was sent to me by the author in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 4 matches.

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The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

Posted on April 12, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I fear this review won’t do this book justice. Maybe I’m just intimidated. But I read it on vacation and sadly took NO notes – nor do I usually, but it took me a little longer after reading to write the review, and those were hectic days. And it’s a significant book: one of Abbey’s two most famous books, that alongside the nonfiction Desert Solitaire really made his career and solidified his celebrity, as well as birthing the Earth First! organization and movement. If ever a book had a cult following, this is it.

The story follows four individuals. Seldom Seen Smith is a Jack Mormon with three wives in three small towns in Utah; they gave him his nickname for being rarely around any of their three households; he guides river raft trips down the Grand Canyon and generally camps out and around in the natural world more than he stays home. Bonnie Abbzug is a Bronx Jewish girl working out in Albuquerque for Dr. A.K. Sarvis, who when he is widowed takes refuge in Bonnie’s desirable arms. She is much younger and beautiful and very capable; she manages his medical practice as well as satiates his considerable sexual urges. As the book opens, Bonnie and Doc amuse themselves by cutting down billboards with a chainsaw. George Hayduke is a young, muscular, angry Green Beret Vietnam veteran who returned from war with nothing on his mind but the beautiful desert country he loved; upon finding it defiled by industry and roads, he wanders around in a murderous mood until happening upon the other three.

The four form a conflict-ridden union of semi-organized, anarchic environmental activists – stress on the “action” part. They destroy heavy machinery and blow up bridges and the like. The group’s greatest ambition is to take out Glen Canyon Dam and free the mighty Colorado River (and liberate Seldom Seen’s hometown, now underwater, of Hite, Utah). They have adventures and do battle with a small-town Search and Rescue team lead by the Church of Latter Day Saints’ Bishop Love, which is really just a posse of renegades angry at Seldom Seen and whose profits are tied up in the industry that the Monkey Wrench Gang is bent on destroying. There is gunplay; there is infighting; there is sex and camping and nature-praise. It’s rather glorious; The Monkey Wrench Gang is funny and doesn’t take itself too seriously, although its values (pro-nature, anti-development) are definitely heartfelt and poignantly expressed. It’s easy to see how this novel, published in 1975, led like-minded young people to try to live it out.

Common critiques are easily spotted. Most glaringly for me, Bonnie is a sex symbol. Doc is her lover despite being “old and bald and fat and impotent” (the first three are true, the forth patently not; there is reference to his “grand erection,” on which more in a minute) but Seldom Seen openly worships her (which is accepted by all) while Hayduke tries to resist his equally obvious desire. This dynamic is not PC, although I fear it is entirely realistic even today. Knowing just a little about Abbey (one biography, check), it is painfully obvious that Doc (and Hayduke, and Seldom Seen) live out various forms of Abbey’s own lust for vastly younger women (their thighs, their buttocks…) – see again Doc’s “grand erection” even when threatening impotence. This is clearly indulgent of the author’s lechery. But somehow I note that and carry on unoffended. To be fair, Doc is rather laughable. Further, the group is not PC in its attitudes towards American Indians (somewhere in here is the often quoted line “drunk as a Navajo”) or Mormons, continue the list from here. And these are not your average environmentalists; they eat a lot of meat and drive big cars and throw beer cans out the windows along the highway (another famous Abbeyism).

But it’s a hell of a story; I was totally involved, and what can I say, I buy into Abbey’s greatness and went right along with his self-indulgent fantasy. I wanted to see the Glen Canyon Dam come down, too. I wish there was more. Oh wait! Hayduke Lives! That’s gotta be next on the list.

Rating: 8 sticks of dynamite.

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River in Ruin by Ray A. March

Posted on April 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

One American river’s well-researched journey from trickling stream to environmental disaster.


The Carmel River is barely a stream at its source, less than 40 miles long, and likely known only to the residents of its immediate surroundings. But it has a rich and telling history–from early Spanish explorers to its eventual place on the nonprofit environmental organization American Rivers’ top 10 list of Most Endangered Rivers in 1999. But the Carmel is especially important to journalist Ray March because he grew up nearby; with River in Ruin, he makes an excellent case for its story being an archetype of endangered rivers everywhere.

The paradise that is California’s Monterey Peninsula has attracted settlers since 1602, when Sebastian Vizcaino first discovered the Carmel River. Later, railroad magnates adopted the area as a site for profitable tourism, quickly followed by real estate speculators and the development of several small towns. The original Spanish mission and agriculture, followed by the later hotels, golf courses and townships all relied upon the Carmel for water, requiring the construction of dams and reservoirs and the flooding of idyllic valleys. Ecological implications abound: forest fires were exacerbated by a no-burn policy; the local steelhead population is nearly extinct. March details these and more consequences of local development while showing how the growth of the environmental movement nationwide has paralleled local awareness of the plight of the Carmel River and Monterey Peninsula. March’s treatment of the history, the politics and the personalities involved is heartfelt and personal; several times he consults diaries and includes individual stories (including his own), making the Carmel’s story resonate with his readers.

This review originally ran in the April 6, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 7 salmon.

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“A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote

Posted on April 9, 2012 by pagesofjulia

This short story comes from my paperback copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories. (Yes, I promise the cover image at right is of a book that includes stories, too.) It was just too easy to read this short, sweet, sad tale before bed one night, just before leaving on our trip.

Our first-person narrator is a child of seven, and this is the story of his relationship with his best friend, an unnamed distant cousin, aged sixty-something. She calls him Buddy, after an earlier best friend who died when they were children. Buddy and his friend live together, along with other family members who do not view them as favorably as they do one another. Along with the little dog, Queenie, Buddy and friend are one another’s world. They make fruitcakes together every fall for friends far and wide. There is an inevitable sad ending to this story which you can read into the disparate ages of these two friends if you so choose.

It’s brief and simple in terms of plot, but that is so often true of some of the best pieces of writing. And this piece is lovely. I only knew Capote through In Cold Blood, prior to this; and while that is very different kind of work, I get the same simple evocation of place, of sights and smells and feelings. I think I can best share the beauty of this story by giving you a few short passages.

Meet the friend:

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable – not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid.

After saving up to buy ingredients to make their fruitcakes:

Silently, wallowing in the pleasures of conspiracy, we take the bead purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the scrap quilt. Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds. Somber fifty-cent pieces, heavy enough to weight a dead man’s eyes. Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies.

On declining an offer to sell the Christmas tree they have just harvested:

“Goodness, woman, you can get another one.” In answer, my friend gently reflects: “I doubt it. There’s never two of anything.”

And the sad ending comes too soon.

I hope these passages shared with you better than I feel able to do, the quiet, loving, reflective mood. It is somber from the beginning, but also loving and solemnly celebratory of the beloved friend. Does that make sense? This story is a masterpiece in understated, simple evocation of emotion and mood.

Rating: 6 coins.

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The Most Expensive Game in Town: The Rising Cost of Youth Sports and the Toll on Today’s Families by Mark Hyman

Posted on April 7, 2012 by pagesofjulia

An impassioned argument that the mass commercialization of youth sports is not healthy for kids.


Mark Hyman’s first book, Until It Hurts, dealt with our national obsession with youth sports and its negative consequences for our children. The Most Expensive Game in Town expands on that theme by following the money. His research includes interviews and discussions with parents and grandparents, coaches, corporate sponsors and entrepreneurs–all of them spending and making money from youth sports in the United States. His conclusion: money can have adverse effects on the kids that sports programs are supposed to benefit in the first place, even when many of the parties involved have only the best intentions.

Hyman’s case studies include visits with parents who became unintended entrepreneurs because they saw a way to improve their kids’ experience as well as parents disturbed by the costs of supporting their kids. He looks at the big business of marketing through children–such as youth tournament sponsorships–and the promises made that kids will have a heightened chances of playing college sports or landing an athletic scholarship.

It’s difficult to grasp the size of the ill-defined youth sports industry, but Hyman makes it clear that the amounts involved are shocking. Finally, he examines the plight of kids in inner cities (and others affected by poverty) whose access to the obvious benefits of sport, participation and competition is limited. Hyman’s arguments are well-researched yet very readable, bringing home an issue that is perhaps underexamined but of great importance to parents and concerned citizens.

This review originally ran in the March 27, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 5 soccer balls.

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The Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway

Posted on April 5, 2012 by pagesofjulia

The Torrents of Springs has an interesting place in the Hemingway canon. It’s under 100 pages, but couldn’t be more different than the similarly short The Old Man and the Sea; the latter was a masterpiece, cost the author great effort, and won him a Pulitzer Prize, towards the end of his career. The former was early in his career and took him a matter of days to complete; it’s a work of parody and was intended to break Hemingway’s contract with publisher Boni and Liveright. The contract stated that B&L would publish the young up-and-coming’s first three novels unless one were rejected; in the case of rejection, the contract would be broken. Thus tricky Hemingway, who wanted to sign with Scribner’s, submitted this brief and, Hadley Hemingway’s word, “nasty” novella, had his contract broken, and carried on. The Torrents of Spring has never received much critical attention. It is accepted as it was presented: a lark, and not a particularly good-natured one. In my Hemingway studies, though, I wanted to see what it was about – perhaps all the more so because it has such a prickly reputation. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, the dissenter, apparently found it impressive.)

So I picked up this slim little book and read it in a day. It reads like a parody. (But I knew this going in. Hm. An unbiased reader I was not.) It’s a little ridiculous, consciously skipping over character development and explanations in favor of repetitious sentences.

In some ways it was the happiest year of his life. In other ways it was a nightmare. A hideous nightmare. In the end he grew to like it. In other ways he hated it. Before he knew it, a year had passed. He was still collaring pistons. But what strange things had happened in that year. Often he wondered about them.

But these strange things are not explained to me, “the reader.”

The author addresses “the reader” and asks for allowances to be made:

It is very hard to write this way… the author hopes the reader will realize this… I don’t want to rush the reader any… I only wish the reader could help me.

There is definitely a note of less-than-seriousness. It’s also simple, and less than proper in its treatment of certain minority groups (which latter fact is pretty standard for the time period).

If you think you hear Hemingway’s famous “voice” here, you’re not alone. However, I think I hear Sherwood Anderson‘s “voice” here, too. Anderson is one of the writers being parodied; but he also appears in an article years after the publication of The Torrents of Spring as Hemingway’s recommended reading, which is a little odd. But then, Hemingway did make a habit of pushing-and-pulling at his literary friends and rivals, who were too often the same people.

Oh, did you want to know what it was about? Plot is not this book’s strong point, but I’ll tell you briefly. Scripps O’Neil was married to a woman in Mancelona (Michigan), but she left him; he then journeys towards Chicago but ends up in Petoskey (also Michigan, and one of Hemingway’s haunts). Here he works in a pump factory and marries an elderly waitress with whom he quickly becomes disenchanted. His coworker at the factory, Yogi Johnson, who was in the war, worries about losing his interest in women; drinks with some Indians whose luck runs out; and regains his interest in women upon encountering a nude squaw. The plot is not the point; the point is the funny style.

I have to agree with the critics this time; this is not an important literary creation on the scale of Hemingway’s great works (like The Sun Also Rises, which like Torrents was published in 1926). But it’s amusing, and stylistically interesting. I wouldn’t go about freely recommending this to just any reader. I think you would want to be especially interested in Hemingway, or Anderson, or literary playfulness of their era, to appreciate it. If that’s not you – if you’re interested in exploring Hemingway generally – I can recommend much better books, and much better examples of his craft. The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea are my favorite of his novels; A Farewell to Arms is well-respected as well; A Moveable Feast is a lovely memoir of Paris; and I find his short stories marvelous (and nice short entries to his style if you’re hesitant). The best I can say about The Torrents of Spring is that it will not take much of your time! And is mildly noteworthy as an anecdote of Hemingway’s career.

Rating: 3 underhanded compliments.

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Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran (audio)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by pagesofjulia

The “City of the Dead” is New Orleans during & after Hurricane Katrina, and that’s what drew me to this mystery. That’s the whole sum total of my knowledge of Sara Gran’s book when I began it, and that was enough. I love New Orleans and I think my favorite mysteries are those with a strong sense of place, a well-developed sense of location as a pivotal part of the story – stories that couldn’t happen anywhere but where they do. (I’m thinking of Harry Bosch’s Los Angeles, Tana French’s Ireland, Lisa Gardner’s Boston, James Lee Burke’s New Iberia.) And even as far away as Houston – not so far, especially considering all the Katrina-displaced New Orleanians who now live here – the idea of Katrina is evocative and powerful. So the idea of a mystery set in Katrina’s New Orleans was enough to sell me. Of course, that wouldn’t necessarily make the book good… I’ll give Sara Gran herself credit for doing that.

This was a great, and entertaining read (listen). It’s part mystery and part study of New Orleans, and large part mystical magical musings – but perhaps that last is necessary of a study of New Orleans, with myth, legend, Mardi Gras Indians intruding upon the mystery. Our private investigator, Claire DeWitt, bends the classic hard-drinking, silent-loner-type PI to fit into New Orleans’s unique culture: she uses hard drugs and channels her detective hero, Jacques Silette (author of Détection, her bible of detective skills) as well as her mentor, the late Constance, former apprentice to Silette himself. Claire is sort of secondarily hunting her childhood friend and former fellow junior detective, Tracy, who disappeared so many years ago.

So what is the mystery? Claire comes down to NO from California when she’s hired by Leon, who wants to know what happened to his uncle, Vic Willing. Vic disappeared during Katrina, never to be seen again. I’m not sure we ever really settled why this indicates foul play, as lots of people got “lost” in Katrina, but it’s accepted throughout the story that something sinister must have befallen him, and I’m okay with getting on that train. Vic was a successful local DA, and fed birds from his apartment. And there the clues seem to end. Claire quickly gets herself entangled with some local delinquent youngsters, and has various adventures involving gunplay and drugs. Despite her hard exterior, she’s a bit of a softie towards these young men who’ve been dealt “a bad hand,” but she doesn’t let it show much. The mystery of Vic’s disappearance is not the star of this book. Its eventual wrap-up is a bit simplistic; as a strict, standalone mystery it might not impress. But that’s not what this book is about. Rather, several other threads steal the spotlight: Claire’s relationship with Andray and Terell; her relationship with her late mentor Constance; and the mystery (unresolved – maybe that’s another book?) of Tracy’s childhood disappearance, not to mention the interest (the framing element, if you will) of Claire’s nontraditional methods of detection, including throwing the I Ching and analyzing dreams and drug-induced hallucinations. Claire’s approach to mysteries in general is mystical.

There are also some decidedly funny moments; I giggled out loud several times (which will always make people look at me funny). Claire’s voice is wry and cynical, and she speaks in metaphors and self-deprecates. She’s prickly but altogether someone I’d like to know. In conclusion, while Claire has certain qualities in common with your traditional loner-drunken-detective archetype (which, by the way, is not a criticism!), she has plenty of unique quirks that make her very interesting to know. The mystery here is only a backdrop for the drama of New Orleans to play against. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead includes a number of characters I’d like to know better, and while it has a satisfactory and complete ending, it does leave the door open for a sequel. Sara Gran! I want it! Recommended.

Rating: 7 grumpy detectives.

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