Nevermore: Picoult, Ford, Alexander Hamilton, Churchill, Klansman, Bradley, Link, Woodward

Our first book club member picked up Jodi Picoult’s The Book of Two Ways. Dawn Edelstein discovers much about herself in a crisis—as the plane she is on prepares for a crash landing. Rather than thinking of her husband Brian, a serious astrophysicist, she finds herself thinking of an old connection, Egyptologist Wyatt Armstrong. Woven through the story are Egyptian tomb inscriptions, showing how the body can go one of two ways. Our reader found this to be a very interesting book, although she commented that there were not any overt social issues as there are in many of Picoult’s books.

 

Love and other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford struck a chord with our next reader.  Set in Seattle, this is the tale of a young boy born in China. His mother leaves the child for his “uncle” because she is poor, but the uncle takes child and puts him in a hold in a boat, and they go to America. The Coast Guard comes and the children are thrown overboard. The boy survives, and the man who rescues him is named Ernest, so he takes that name. The Christian Children’s Home Society sends him to a boarding school where he is ostracized. When he is sent to the 1909 World’s Fair this seems to be an fun outing, until Ernest finds that he is to be auctioned off as a “healthy boy to a good home.” The lady who wins the raffle is a madam in charge of a house of ill repute – where he goes as the houseboy.  Our reader found it to be a fantastic book about the history of Seattle and the World Fair, and totally recommends it.

 

Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth by Stephen F. Knott had a lot of surprises for our next reader. Hamilton died in 1804 and for the next 20 years, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did everything they could to smear his reputation. Hamilton said that the people were a great beast, but he was very concerned about the condition of everyone. He wanted even the common man to profit and thrive from the economic structure. Even today, many Supreme Court decisions quote Hamilton and the Federalist Papers. Aaron Burr who fatally shot Hamilton in a duel, saw a bust of Hamilton, rubbed his hands over the face of the bust and said “This is where all the poetry was.” Hamilton’s popularity has fluctuated over the years, with various political figures having differing opinions. FDR hated Hamilton; Lincoln loved Hamilton, and many people have strong opinions about him today with his story recently retold in a modern day musical via song and rap.

 

Another popular read this week was The Splendid and Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. The main part of the book covers Churchill’s first year from when he assumed office amidst immediate German bombing to when the US entered the Second World War. The author researched deeply, looking for stories that others omitted. One of Larson’s sources is diaries from Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville, detailing some of the things that were going on in Churchill’s private life, such as his finances and his son, Randall. Everyone acknowledged that Churchill was a wonderful orator, but some had great reservations about his ability to be Prime Minister. He began to energize the country during a time of great difficulty with the creation of the Ministry of Aircraft Development. Larson also utilized the Mass Observation Project, diaries from everyday people about their day-to-day experiences.  Nell Last, a housewife, age 49, said of Churchill and his political rival Neville Chamberlain:  “I would rather live my life with Chamberlain, but for this time perhaps we are better off with Churchill.”

 

Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy by Edward Ball has been passed around to several Nevermore readers. The author is the great-great-grandson of Constant Lecorgne, a white French Creole who terrorized African Americans from under the infamous white sheets. Our reader noted that in 1870 Ulysses Grant asked for laws that would prevent voter intimidation, and yet some people still feel those effects of intimidation at the voting booth today. Our reader found this an excellent book but heavy reading.  

Fighting Words by local author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is a middle grade novel. Ten year old Della has always felt protected by her older sister Suki. The sisters have secrets, but when Suki comes to a breaking point, Della’s world is shattered. The author tackles the stigma of childhood sexual abuse in a very real way. Our reader feels that everyone should read this book because abuse affects so many people and is so well hidden from the mainstream. Abuse could be happening to people you see on an everyday basis because you do not know what is going on behind closed doors. Our reviewer felt it was a very important book but said parental guidance might be needed for some children because of the topic, and recommended it for readers of all ages. 

O. Winston Link: Life along the Line: A Photographic Portrait of America’s Last Great Steam Railroad by Tony Reevy. Norfolk and Southern was the last steam railroad in the United States, and Norfolk and Western was the last one that ran steam trains on all of its lines. Winston was an artistic photographer, not just a point-and shoot hack. He was known for his perfect lighting and being able to capture glimpses of small town life that was changing dramatically in the 1950s. The History Museum of Western Virginia/O. Winston Link Museum is in nearby Roanoke, and many photographs of Bristol are in the book.  

 

Our last member said that reading Rage by Bob Woodward made her feel as if she was in the backroom listening to highly charged political conversations. Our reader felt that the author doesn’t get overly convoluted in semantics and does an excellent job of describing the chaos – with so many different people infighting and nobody knowing exactly what was happening.  She has new respect for General James Mattis, calling him unbelievably brilliant and knowledgeable. In such turbulent political times, this book was touted as descriptive and insightful, and our reader enjoyed it much more than she thought she would.

Nevermore: They/Them, Ghost Brigades, Klansman, Song of Solomon, Lace Reader, Door to Door, Knitting Spies, Book of Two Ways

 

 Reported by Garry

Our reader was not prepared for the amount that she learned from the book How to They/Them:  A Visual  Guide to Nonbinary Pronouns and the World of Gender Fluidity by Stuart Getty and illustrator Brooke Thyng.  She learned a LOT.  For example, the term “they” was used up until about 1850 when it changed to “he.”  The tide has shifted back to using “they” to describe everyone, and even on contracts “they” is being used, not he/she.  When our reader checked out How to They/Them and two young people standing behind her saw the book and remarked “Oh, I want to check that book out,” and proceeded to have a brief conversation about their friend who is more comfortable with “they,” not he or she.   Our reader highly recommends this informative book as it has a lot of humor and many pictures, finding it to be a very good book on a serious and timely topic.

 

Our next reader thoroughly enjoyed The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi, the second in the Old Man’s War seires.  This was the first time she had read science fiction with humor in it, and found the change both unexpected and welcome.  This book is set in a futuristic society that enables people who are 75 years old to have their brains moved into young bodies, but the price is that they then go out and fight in an intergalactic war.  All of the main characters are famous scientists like Sagan, Roentgen, Currie, etc.  Our reader pointed out the well written and funny dialogue in this book as being one of the highlights.   

 

The Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy by Edward Ball is a biographical history book. It starts in 1755 with the matriarch and patriarch of the Lecorgne family and it traces the roots and depth of racism (organized and disorganized) in the South since that time.  The patriarch of the family is the author’s great-great-grandfather.  Our reader was struck by the importance of family connections, in particular the people who you are related to, and how very important those ties are here in the south.  She has had to work her way slowly through this dense, well researched and complicated book, but is enjoying it because of the amount of information that she is getting from it.  This book examines in detail the intertwining of whites, creoles, blacks, and freed black peoples in New Orleans in the 1800’s, where white people from Europe were considered outsiders, and radical militant white supremacists started a revolution following the end of slavery. 

 

Our next reader revisited an old favorite: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.  This absolutely fascinating, sprawling story examines and explains the feelings of those raised in American black culture.  The story focuses on Macon “Milkman” Dead from the day he was born through adulthood. A story about a sack filled with gold starts Milkman on his search for his family’s history and its roots. The book deals with complex family relationships as well as relationships with others in the black community.  Racial discrimination, the legacy of slavery, the concept of home, and kin are all woven through the story as characters move across the United States.  Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

 

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry is a historical mystery novel which uses the Salem Witches as its base theme. The women in this novel make lace and can read the future in the patterns.  The book moves back and forth in time, and one of the narrators in not exactly reliable.  Our reader is not sure that she recommends this book as it is not an upbeat book.  She did find it interesting that the novel is both about modern day and historic Salem and witches, but overall had a hard time with this book.

Next up is the non-fiction book Door to Door by Edward Humes.  Our reader, who is very passionate about transportation, really liked this book which explores how everything boils down to items moving from place to place—or door to door.  The book starts with a discussion of shipping transportation, how many container ships there are and how many more there are in the past few years and moves to exploring the delivery service UPS and how many trucks they have. It includes how people get from place to place, and examines the role this all has in our day to day existence.

 

Our next reader read was introduced to the fascinating world of knitting as a tool of espionage by an article in Atlas Obscura.  These books wove (see what I did there) together the theme of knitting as a spy tool and the almost exclusive role women played in utilizing this ancient art in the war effort: Writing Secret Codes and Sending Hidden Messages by Gyles Brandreth and Peter Stevenson, Stitches in Time by Lucy Adlington, A Guide to Codes and Signals by Peterson and McClintock (1942), and Women Heroes of World War 1:  16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics by Kathryn Atwood.  The stitches of knitting can be used similar to Morse code, which can then be deciphered.  One example our reader shared was a story of Madame Levengle who sat in her window knitting and tapped Morse code to her children downstairs.  A German general was in the house and never knew that the lady over his head was spying on him.   Another British spy, Phyllis Latour Doyle parachuted in behind enemy lines, and used her knitting skills to hide code-knotted silk threads containing over 2000 codes in her knitting.  She would later transmit her codes which detailed the movement of the German troops back to Britain via hidden radios.  During the Revolutionary War one famous spy, “Old Mom Rinker” used the “old woman always knitting” stereotype to spy for George Washington.  She would sit on a hill over-watching the British forces, and knit and report back to Washington’s people.  

 

Our last reader reviewed The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult, which she was surprised to find teaches a lot about Egyptology.  The novel tells the story of a woman who was getting her doctorate in Egyptology but had to return to the States.  She leaves Egyptology and becomes a death doula, marries, and has a child.  A near-death experience causes her to re-evaluate some of her choices in life. Picoult is known for taking on difficult topics, and this time is no exception.  Our reader enjoyed the book very much but was disappointed in the ambiguity of the ending.