by Ford Madox Ford

This was recommended to me because it involves all my old pals from Wolf Hall. Honestly it was pretty hard to follow. I think it’s a trilogy but I’m stopping at the first.

by Nathanial Ian Miller

Loved this story about interesting people on a farm in Iceland. Have never loved a depiction of farm life so much – whatever is the opposite of ‘romantic,’ that’s what this is. Even though the family raises Galloway beef cattle and not goats, the descriptions of dealing with livestock animals really hit home for me. Like when you take down an electric fence, lots of the dumb animals are still going to refuse to walk through, because there always WAS an electric fence there, how are they to know there isn’t one now? Like when you manage to get the majority of your herd into the place where you want them, but then a few stragglers ruin it for everyone, because the moms follow the calves and then everyone piles on. Like WHY do they insist on sh*tting in their water?? Because it feels nice to scratch their tushies against the water trough, yes, we know, but still, it is such a PAIN to change the water…

Most might say I’m missing the point of the story. But even if you don’t have beasts, I hope you can still glean from my examples the type of realistic and entertaining story this is.

Even while dealing with a very serious topic; the father of this family is slipping into a hopeless depression.

Back to the animals: maybe you’re a dog person. The dog of the book’s title is very entertaining too, and I’m not a dog person.

Again, I’m veering off “point.” This family of mother, father, and college-age son is at a turning point. Pappi is getting very depressed, as I said. Mom is drifting away. Son hasn’t found himself yet – but perhaps he’ll find love? The love story is adorable.

I loved everything about this book. Except maybe, just maybe… no, no spoilers.

by Meghan Daum

“I grieve the deaths of my parents. In some ways I grieve their lives, too. I grieve for what might have been had they not been damaged in the ways that they were damaged.”

Meghan Daum, has it really been so long since your last book? I just finished THE CATASTROPHE HOUR. You continue to parallel me.

I too grieve my parents, their lives as well as their deaths.

I too don’t know what’s going on in pop culture anymore; I still think the “alternative” I listened to circa 2000 is kind of edgy. When I pull out the Arts & Leisure section of the NYT, if there aren’t any headlines on the front page about dinosaur rock bands, I just toss it.

I too have infinitely many parallel lives that look at me off in the distance, some even including parenthood. Some of those lives are doing OK; I don’t know if the one I’m in is the “best” one – OK, I know very well it’s not the “best.” But it’s OK.

My own catastrophe hour is a little bit later at night when I get sleepy. Something primal in my cries out, “What are you going to do with your life?” The answer comes out: “You’ve done it.”

I don’t know how to feel about the end of your book. All I can say is I do hope you keep putting out more books.

by Prince Harry

I know I’m a little late to the party, but I saw this used and picked it up. It really wasn’t very compelling. There was much too detail about his army life (yes, I realize it was very important to him). There were disjointed anecdotes that went nowhere. There was TMI about frostbite in his royal nether regions.

I was interested when we finally got to the Meghan parts. Ultimately I am no more sympathetic to him than I was before. Which is to say, of course I’m sympathetic to being hounded by the press. Of course none of us would want that. Or to be lied about or to receive threats. Etc. But as I read in detail about Harry’s complaints, I kinda found myself on Team Charles – “don’t read the stuff, Darling Boy”. Don’t respond to it. You have to have dignity and rise above it. Do I know how I would behave in the same situation? Not for sure, but I know what my disposition suggests.

In the end, Harry and William strike me as very different people. It was probably inevitable they would rift in their older age.

by Percival Everett

Full of mathematical and literalist humor. Dr. Wala Kitu is a mathematician who studies nothing. He contemplates and searches for nothing. “I have not found it… I work very hard and wish that I could say I had nothing to show for it.”

He’s recruited by a supervillain to break into Fort Knox, where the villain believes they will find nothing. Kitu goes along with the plan in spite of, as well as because of, the likelihood that nothing is likely to come of it. This is the kind of joke we get over & over. And I love it!

I have read Everett’s ERASURE and this made me similarly laugh out loud. JAMES I found to be a disappointment.

by Vijay Khuruna

I don’t know. It was very gripping to start out. But I never really felt that motivations were clear. It got a little monotonous, just like the northern Canada terrain they were covering. I also thought the ending epilogue was very bad and a serious letdown.

Chronological set of interviews, which get better as time goes on.

Love this bit from 2006:

“I can’t stand to play arenas, but I do play ’em. But I know that’s not where music’s supposed to be. It’s not meant to be heard in football stadiums, it’s not ‘Hey, how are you doin’ tonight, Cleveland?’ Nobody gives a shit how you’re doing tonight in Cleveland… They say, ‘Dylan never talks.’ What the hell is there to SAY! That’s not the reason an artist is front of people.”

Hell yeah, when you put it that way.

What comes through over and over, interview after interview, is Bob’s roots in folk music, and love and respect for (and encyclopedic knowledge of) those old songs and traditions and musicians who came before him. People who think folk was just a youthful phase or a mercenary way for him to break into the business don’t get it. “Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book,” he says in 1997, and I believe him.

by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Finally, I like the book club pick! This author does a good job of building and sustaining drama, and crafting characters you care about. Strong plot line, strong women – that’s a book for me!

by Dr. Jan Pol

He had a co-writer so it should have been a better read. It really had no organization, just one anecdote after another, and it got repetitive. I feel sorry to give it a negative review, because we used to enjoy the show. I would have liked a more chronological narrative approach. Instead it was, “Then there was the time I saw an animal do this and I did this. Then there was the time I did this and the animal did this.”

by Johanna Spyri

Another Johanna Spyri book. Makes HEIDI look like great literature. Seriously, a slight book where the goat-boy wrestles with his conscience over being a party to a misdeed, all for the sake of the love for his little goat kid. It does suffer by comparison to HEIDI; there’s no gruff old grandfather to love.