Feather Brained by Bob Tarte

Reviewed by Jeanne

Let me start out by saying I am a not a birder.  I can identify cardinals, robins, blue jays, and woodpeckers—providing the latter are pecking on wood when I see them.  That’s about it.  I admire people who at a glance or from six notes of a song can say with authority, “That’s a Greater Yellowbellied Sapsucker.”  Of course, they could be making all that up, because how would I know any differently? I was made aware of some birders’ obsessions in the book The Big Year by Mark Obmascik, but these were seasoned birders who had been identifying for years.  How on earth do these guys do that?

Fortunately, Bob Tarte came to my rescue with his book Feather Brained:  My Bumbling Quest to Become a Birder & Find a Rare Bird on My Own. Bob was not a natural birder.  At the tender age of nine in an effort to be cool, he set out for the park armed with a second-hand book on birds and a set of opera glasses. Let’s just say that first foray was less than successful.

A mere twenty five years later, Bob was ready to strike out again.  This time the impetus was due to an even rarer find: a red haired lady named Linda with a love of life in general and nature in particular.  He gets identification books, listens to recordings of bird song, and joins online birding groups where alerts are posted so members can rush to an area and maybe, just maybe, spot a bird for their life list. It becomes Bob’s mission in life to spot such a bird so he can alert the group and be the hero for once.  

The phrase “easier said than done” springs to mind at this juncture.

As with his earlier books (Enslaved by Ducks; Fowl Weather; Kitty Cornered), Bob writes with a self-deprecating humor.  Comparisons to Charlie Brown and his little red haired girl will not go amiss, although Bob also has to deal with Churchill’s black dog of depression.  His eye for detail and description is as keen as ever, even when prowling around a sewage pond for rare birds.  He’s accompanied on many of his expeditions by Bill Holm who, as Bob explains, “didn’t particularly like birds, but he liked them more than he liked people.” Bob’s strength as a birder is to identify birds by their songs, so he depends on Bill to spot the birds, point out his errors, and make unmerciful fun of him for being so wrong.  Even though some of the episodes border on slapstick in Bob’s recounting—I laughed out loud as he and Linda risk life and limb to check out an osprey’s nest built on a train trestle—the book was a wonderful look at how birders can be made, not born.  I found it reassuring as Bob misidentified wrens, grew frustrated at distinguishing calls, and sulked at birds that wouldn’t show up where they were supposed to be. 

But above all else, Feather Brained is a romance. Oh, sure, Bob learns to love birds and birding, but it is his love for Linda that shines through the pages.  They would seem to be polar opposites:  Linda is the free spirit who lived happily in a small trailer in the woods while Bob enjoys creature comforts like electricity and running water. Where Linda sees rainbows, Bob sees dark clouds with tornado potiental.  Love conquers all, however, and throughout the book Bob’s devotion never waivers, not through feeding mealworms to orphaned starlings, chipping away ice for the ducks, or being pelted with soggy monkey chow by a cantankerous parrot.  It must be true love.

And, hey—maybe I’ll take another look at that bird book I have in the basement.

Bob Tarte's website is http://www.bobtarte.com/

P.S. The Bristol Bird Club will meet at the library on Tuesday,  August 16 starting at 7:30 pm.  Their website is http://bristolbirdclub.org/ 

"Okay, I'm watching the bird.  Now what?" ~Melon

Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley

Reviewed by Jeanne

Gus Carpenter grew up in the town of Starvation Lake, escaped to become a reporter at the Detroit Times, and now with has journalist career in tatters he’s editing the hometown paper.  His out of town bosses aren’t fans of hard-hitting news stories or even medium hitting: they want the social news, local sports, and stories that will encourage advertising.  The rest of the town isn’t really welcoming either, since they hold Gus responsible for missing that one goal that would have won the state high school hockey championship.  It was the town’s one shot at fame, and things have gone downhill ever since.  If they could, they’d even blame him for the death of Jack Blackburn, the coach who almost took them all the way, only to die in a snowmobile accident on the lake.

Now pieces of that old snowmobile have turned up—in the wrong lake.  What really happened that night? And what other secrets lie hidden in Starvation Lake?

When this book came out in 2009, it received a lot of praise from the mystery readers on the DorothyL list.  They talked about the good writing, the strong characterization and clever plotting.  One even said that she never thought she would read and enjoy a book about hockey.  I didn’t think I would either, which is why I put off reading it this long.  On the other hand, one patron I recommended the book to didn’t like it so as penance I decided I had better read it before I suggested it to anyone else.

The verdict?  I enjoyed it. I will say that the book started a bit slowly, but much of it was letting the reader get a feel for the town and the people. The town is almost a character itself:  it reminded me of so many of the little towns here in the mountains where jobs are few but the people keep trying to hang on with steely determination and sometimes just sheer cussedness. The plot, like the town, has its share of grit and its share of shady business deals and political maneuvering.   There is a lot of hockey action but understanding or even caring about the game isn’t required; he does use it to good advantage in revealing certain aspects of personality.

Gus, the narrator, is a wholly believable creation; we may not always agree with his choices but we understand why he makes them.  Most of the rest of the cast are people from Gus’ past, his friends and his enemies. These are people he’s known his whole life, which means there’s a lot of personal baggage associated. In a few places the reader may spot things before Gus does simply because he’s too close to parts of the story.

Despite the slow start, the story gained steam and I raced through the last 150 pages to see what would happen.  There were some good twists and turns in both plot and action, and a mostly satisfying resolution.  I’m already reading the second book, The Hanging Tree, and so far I would say that you wouldn’t have to read the books in order. I just prefer to do so.  The third book is The Skeleton Box and, according to his website, he’s at work on a fourth.