Thursday, October 31, 2019

A Ghost of an Autumn



Here in western Montana, climate change robbed us of our Fall.

An early snowstorm on September 29 left us punched and reeling from an icy fist. In many parts of the region, snow levels were measured in feet, not inches. I woke to see my three cats staring out the living room picture window, stunned and purring nervously.

Instead of blazing with yellows and oranges, the leaves on the trees carpeting the hills around Butte curled up and died on the branches, turning a sickly dull brown overnight. They looked like pennies left too long in a miser’s pocketa fitting sight for this mining city which built its wealth and reputation on the copper dredged from its soil, but a sore sight for eyes like mine which always look forward to the color-symphony of autumn. Fall has always been my favorite season. Not this year.

Thankfully, I have some good books at hand to distract me from the dead landscape outside my window.

My annual Halloween list this year consists primarily of three books: Ghost Stories, edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger; The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King; and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I’m still floating somewhere in the middle of each of them, but here are some of the highlights of my favorite spooky parts so far....



Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

We all know the familiar opening line to Du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic novel, etched permanently in most of our minds by Alfred Hitchcock’s film. But there are chilling delights that creep up my spine the further I go in the book and read about how Maxim de Winter’s new wife (who remains unnamed throughout the novel) must contend with the memory and reputation of his first bride, Rebecca, who drowned after taking their boat out alone for an evening sail around the cliffs below Manderley. For instance, there is a scene when the “skull-faced” housekeeper Mrs. Danvers confronts the new Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca’s old bedroom and asks: “Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?” Apparently, Mrs. Danvers’ favorite hobby is keeping Rebecca alive by tormenting the second Mrs. De Winter. She proves that undying devotion to someone is not always a good thing.

Of course, having seen Hitchcock’s film countless times, I know how all this ends, but I’m enjoying my journey through Du Maurier’s novel which is so rich in imagery I often find myself reaching up to wipe away the ocean-dashed salt spray off my face. I’ve been listening to Rebecca on audiobook, narrated by actress Anna Massey sometime before she herself passed away in 2011. Massey expertly captures the, um, spirit of both Hitchcock’s movie and Du Maurier’s original words.



Stephen King has a way of turning ordinary, everyday objects into talismans of horror. Before reading The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, I never would have thought a cookie jar could be haunted. Or that an obituary could lead to a person’s death, rather than reporting it. Oh, and if you ever see a six-year-old boy with orange hair, green eyes, and a beanie, you should know bad things are about to happen: very, very bad things at the hands of a “Bad Little Kid” (one of the creepiest stories in these pages).

I’ve read some of these stories and novellas beforeincluding Blockade Billy and Urbut a return trip to King’s wicked prose did not disappoint.

As King himself says of the twenty-one tales (and a scatter of poems) gathered here, “The best of them have teeth.” Indeed they do, and they bite like vampires.



I busied myself to think of a storya story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horrorone to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name.

Thus writes Mary Shelley in the introduction to Frankenstein and which is quoted in a footnote to Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense. This new anthology edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger is completely worthy of its name and might just be the favorite of this scary trio of books I’m currently reading. Morton and Klinger have assembled a blood-curdling array of stories here whose authors include Charles Dickens (this marks the fourth or fifth time I’ve read “The Signal Man” and I’m still freaked out by what happens at the mouth of that lonely railroad tunnel), Henry James, M. R. James, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sir Walter Scott, Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allan Poe. If that sounds like a dusty, musty line-up to you, then you’d be wrong, dead wrong. Klinger and Morton expertly show how these ghost stories laid the foundation for the likes of Stephen King, Paul Tremblay, and Victor LaValle and serve as guideposts for any writer who wants to learn how to scare the hell out of readers.

Most of these tales also make us look at the genre of ghost stories in a fresh way (weird to say that about “dusty, musty” classics, eh?).

For instance, “Since I Died” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, first published in 1873, is narrated by a ghost who longs to reach out and touch her lesbian lover but can’t. It is as poignant as it is morbid (and surprisingly ahead of its time). Here’s a passage that is especially sad:
     I hold out my arms.
     You lift your head and look me in the eye.
     If a shudder crept across your figure; if your arms, laid out upon the table , leaped but once above your head; if you named my name; if you held your breath with terror, or sobbed aloud for love, or sprang, or cried—
     But you only lift your head and look me in the eye.
     If I dared step near, or nearer; if it were permitted that I should cross the current of your living breath; if it were willed that I should feel the leap of human blood within your veins; if I should touch your hands, your cheeks, your lips; if I dropped an arm as lightly as a snowflake round your shoulder—
Reading “Since I Died” made me think about my own afterlife to come and how horrible it would be if I couldn’t reach out to hug my wife with my light-as-snowflake arms. It’s enough to bring a cold, dead tear to my eye.

“The Last of Squire Ennismore” by Charlotte Riddell published in 1888 was another favorite story of mine and describes things that go bump in the night as well as anything I’ve seen or heard since I sat in a movie theater watching Poltergeist and Kubrick’s The Shining in the early 1980s. It opens with a fisherman recounting the strange goings-on in the titular squire’s house, which has now fallen into ruin:
There used to be awful noises, as if something was being pitched from the top of the great staircase down in to the hall; and then there would be a sound as if a hundred people were clinking glasses and talking all together at once. And then it seemed as if barrels were rolling in the cellars; and there would be screeches, and howls, and laughing, fit to make your blood run cold.
So there you have it: three ghostly reads for your Halloween list. They’re scary enough to freeze the sap in the trees around my house, even if a September snowstorm hadn’t gotten there first.


Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Trailer Tuesday: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King



The blood-gushing elevator. The snowbound maze. The REDRUM lipstick scrawl. The twins in their matching blue dresses. The shine of clairvoyance. We’ve been here before.

I’m ready to go back.

The Overlook Hotel, as we’re told in the opening pages of Doctor Sleep, burned to the ground during Jimmy Carter’s time in the White House. Some, like me, have checked into Stephen King’s haunted hotel for many repeat visits. The bolder ones have even stayed in Room 237....but those guests are most likely dead now.

Doctor Sleep, the sequel to King’s 1977 The Shining, came as a nice gift to his readers six years ago and now it’s going to be splashed across the big screen next week, ready to help us lose even more sleep. It stars Ewan McGregor as the grown-up version of Danny “Redrum” Torrance and his face looks suitably haunted for someone who had a literal hell of a childhood.

Though I still have Doctor Sleep in my to-be-read queue (I’m slowly working my way through my shelf of Stephen King unreads, which is different from his “undeads”), I hope to get to it soon. As always, I’ll stick by my old adage book first, then movie...though I must admit this trailer makes the movie look awfully tempting and my resolve may just splinter like an axed bathroom door (plus, I have a lot of other goddamn books in my TBR pile right now).

Adaptations of King’s work have always been hit or miss (often leaning toward the latter), but the trailer for director Mike Flanagan’s version has just enough visual and aural allusions to both the novel and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cinematic masterpiece to make me believe it will be worth the admission price. I’ll be checking in soon.

Trailer Tuesday is a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.


Sunday, October 27, 2019

Sunday Sentence: 50 Poems by e. e. cummings


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


       all by all and deep by deep
       and more by more they dream their sleep

from 50 Poems by e. e. cummings


Friday, October 25, 2019

Friday Freebie: Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s by Tiffany Midge


Congratulations to Mike Cooper, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs.

This week’s giveaway is for Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s by Tiffany Midge. Here’s what David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, had to say about the collection of essays: “Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s drives a spear into the stereotype of Native American stoicism. It is perhaps the funniest nonfiction collection I have ever read. But it is much more than funny: it is moving, honest, and painful as well, and looks at the absurdities of modern America.” One lucky reader will win a copy of this new hilarious book. Keep scrolling for more information on how you can bury your heart and resurrect your laughter....


Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s is a powerful and compelling collection of Tiffany Midge’s musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in America. Artfully blending sly humor, social commentary, and meditations on love and loss, Midge weaves short, stand-alone musings into a memoir that stares down colonialism while chastising hipsters for abusing pumpkin spice. She explains why she does not like pussy hats, mercilessly dismantles pretendians, and confesses her own struggles with white-bread privilege. Midge goes on to ponder Standing Rock, feminism, and a tweeting president, all while exploring her own complex identity and the loss of her mother. Employing humor as an act of resistance, these slices of life and matchless takes on urban-Indigenous identity disrupt the colonial narrative and provide commentary on popular culture, media, feminism, and the complications of identity, race, and politics.

If you’d like a chance at winning Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s, simply e-mail your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please (or, two if you share the postsee below). Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Oct. 31, at which time I’ll draw the winning names. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Nov. 1. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your e-mail address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book). P.S. Since I’m downsizing my own book collection, I’ll occasionally toss an extra book into package. If you aren’t interested in reading the extra “Freebie,” please consider donating it to your local little free library.

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


Thursday, October 24, 2019

Virginia Woolf writes


There is the art of writing, and then there is the act of writing. From one springs the other....though not always (ask any writer how many artless words she moves to the trash bin during the revision process when every sentence is weighed and balanced and sometimes found wanting).

When writers write about writing, both the act and the art, the intersection of the two can dance a beautiful waltz on the page. Take Michael Cunningham’s triptych of a novel The Hours, for instance. Skillfully weaving the separate stories of one day in the lives of three women, two fictional and one very realClarissa Vaughn, an editor in the late twentieth century; Laura Brown, a housewife in 1949; and author Virginia Woolf in 1923Cunningham connects his characters in a style that bears distinct and purposeful echoes of Woolf’s own novel Mrs. Dalloway.

The Hours sat on my shelf for many years, unread. Finally, this summer, spurred in large part by James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, I opened it and dove into the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Reader, I loved it.

I have a lot to say about why I think it works so brilliantly, but what I want to focus on today and share with the rest of you is one particular passage from one of the Virginia Woolf sections which captures the art/act of writing so perfectly. This comes from an early chapter in Cunningham’s novel and, to put it in context for those who have yet to read The Hours, mentions Virginia’s husband Leonard Woolf and the household cook Nelly. The most important character in this scene is, of course, Virginia herself and her wrestling match with the pen as she struggles to find a good opening sentence for the manuscript she was working on in 1923: the novel which eventually became Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham perfectly describes how hard it is to push the art of words through the mind’s frequently “clogged pipes.” Reading this scene, I found my inner writer’s voice humming yes yes yes:


She gets to her study, quietly closes the door. Safe. She opens the curtains. Outside, beyond the glass, Richmond continues in its decent, peaceful dream of itself. Flowers and hedges are attended to; shutters are repainted before they require it. The neighbors, whom she does not know, do whatever it is they do behind the blinds and shutters of their red brick villa. She can only think of dim rooms and a listless, overcooked smell. She turns from the window. If she can remain strong and clear, if she can keep on weighing at least nine and a half stone, Leonard will be persuaded to move back to London. The rest cure, these years among the delphinium beds and the red suburban villas, will be pronounced a success, and she will be deemed fit for the city again. Lunch, yes; she will have lunch. She should have breakfast but she can’t bear the interruption it would entail, the contact with Nelly’s mood. She will write for an hour or so, then eat something. Not eating is a vice, a drug of sorts—with her stomach empty she feels quick and clean, clearheaded, ready for a fight. She sips her coffee, sets it down, stretches her arms. This is one of the most singular experiences, waking on what feels like a good day, preparing to work but not yet actually embarked. At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead. Her mind hums. This morning she may penetrate the obfuscation, the clogged pipes, to reach the gold. She can feel it inside her, an all but indescribable second self, or rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty. Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning. She may pick up her pen and follow it with her hand as it moves across the paper; she may pick up her pen and find that she’s merely herself, a woman in a housecoat holding a pen, afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent, with no idea about where to begin or what to write.

She picks up her pen.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.


Sunday, October 20, 2019

Sunday Sentence: Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin


Friday, October 18, 2019

Friday Freebie: A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs


Congratulations to John Smith, winner of the previous Friday Freebie contest: Full Throttle by Joe Hill.

This week’s giveaway is another spooky book that looks as tempting as a bowl of Halloween candy: A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs (it’s actually two short novels bound together in one lushly-seething package). With an introduction by literary great Chuck Wendig, this is a perfect way to round out this year’s Spooktober reading! Kirkus Reviews has this to say about the book: “Falling somewhere between House of Leaves and The Blair Witch Project, it is a terrifying, gothic descent into madness. This book has a fitting title if there ever was one, and these nightmares are worth every penny.” Keep scrolling for more about the book and how to enter the contest....


Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul. A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself. In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself. Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.

If you’d like a chance at winning A Lush and Seething Hell, simply e-mail your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please (or, two if you share the postsee below). Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Oct. 24, at which time I’ll draw the winning names. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Oct. 25. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your e-mail address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book). P.S. Since I’m downsizing my own book collection, I’ll occasionally toss an extra book into package. If you aren’t interested in reading the extra “Freebie,” please consider donating it to your local little free library.

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


Sunday, October 13, 2019

Sunday Sentence: No Thanks by e. e. cummings


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


          King Christ, this world is all aleak;
          and lifepreservers there are none

from No Thanks by e. e. cummings


Thursday, October 10, 2019

Front Porch Books: October 2019 edition


Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of new and forthcoming booksmainly advance review copies (aka “uncorrected proofs” and “galleys”)I’ve received from publishers. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released. I should also mention that, in nearly every case, I haven’t had a chance to read these books, but they’re definitely going in the to-be-read pile.



Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s
by Tiffany Midge
(University of Nebraska Press)

Jacket Copy:  Why is there no Native woman David Sedaris? Or Native Anne Lamott? Humor categories in publishing are packed with books by funny women and humorous sociocultural-political commentary—but no Native women. There are presumably more important concerns in Indian Country. More important than humor? Among the Diné/Navajo, a ceremony is held in honor of a baby’s first laugh. While the context is different, it nonetheless reminds us that laughter is precious, even sacred. Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s is a powerful and compelling collection of Tiffany Midge’s musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in America. Artfully blending sly humor, social commentary, and meditations on love and loss, Midge weaves short, stand-alone musings into a memoir that stares down colonialism while chastising hipsters for abusing pumpkin spice. She explains why she does not like pussy hats, mercilessly dismantles pretendians, and confesses her own struggles with white-bread privilege. Midge goes on to ponder Standing Rock, feminism, and a tweeting president, all while exploring her own complex identity and the loss of her mother. Employing humor as an act of resistance, these slices of life and matchless takes on urban-Indigenous identity disrupt the colonial narrative and provide commentary on popular culture, media, feminism, and the complications of identity, race, and politics.

Opening Lines:  The day of my mother’s funeral service I separated myself from the rest of the grieving throng and hid out in the musician’s belfry like tortured Quasimodo, my grief too hideous to expose.

Blurbworthiness:   “Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s drives a spear into the stereotype of Native American stoicism. It is perhaps the funniest nonfiction collection I have ever read. But it is much more than funny: it is moving, honest, and painful as well, and looks at the absurdities of modern America. Midge’s collection is so good it could raise Iron Eyes Cody from the grave and make him laugh till he cries.”  (David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee)



The Gnome Stories
by Ander Monson
(Graywolf Press)

Jacket Copy:  The Gnome Stories focuses on characters who are loners in the truest sense; who are in the process of recovering from mental, physical, or emotional trauma; and who find solace―or at least a sense of purpose―in peculiar jobs and pursuits. A man whose wife has left him is robbed, so he decides to start doing his own breaking and entering, into his neighbors’ homes. When another man’s girlfriend is cryogenically frozen by her family after a car accident, he becomes a maintenance worker at the cryogenic facility, eavesdropping on visitors as they whisper secrets to their frozen loved ones. A woman serves as an assistant to the Starvationist, whose methods to help clients lose large amounts of weight are unorthodox, sadistic―and utterly failproof. Another woman and her robot assistant have been hired to tinker with the troubling memories inside a celebrity’s brain. With The Gnome Stories, Ander Monson presents eleven unforgettable stories about oddly American situations: as surreal as an urban legend and at the same time perfectly mundane.

Opening Lines:  I came upon him as he was rustling through the DVDs, throwing them into a sack in what appeared to be a self-congratulatory way, laughing to himself, probably at the selection, which was my wife’s, and I was doubly enraged. I don’t know why I thought of it when action was required, but I wondered where people got sacks like this, as in could you buy them at the supermarket, or were these specialized burglary tools endorsed by criminals? I was standing on the steps coming down from the spacious landing to the main floor, and I wondered also how he got through the alarm system I had installed after my wife saw too many of those threatening commercials on television and I felt the pressure of my husbandness coming down on me, and I called and got jacked by the small print but had it installed nevertheless, which gesture did not stop my wife from leaving.
       I found out after she left that you can set the system, which is admittedly pretty glorious, to keep someone from leaving the house, too, though I did not read the entire instruction manual at the time and it would only seem important to me later, like most realizations I have had in my life.
       So I was watching and he must have heard me coming down or something because he turned to me, and it must have been hard to see me in the dark because he began to walk toward me. That’s why I shot him. He advanced on me. He was an imminent threat. This is what the police told me later as I sobbed, more for the loss of my marriage than any kind of ruined innocence.

Blurbworthiness:  “Ander Monson has always been fascinated by...human creatures who unexpectedly shine their light on the rest of us. [He] is an American Kafka...The Gnome Stories will stay in your memory long after you have finished the book.”  (Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love)



This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story
by Jackie Shannon Hollis
(Forest Avenue Press)

Jacket Copy:  Knowing where your scars come from doesn’t make them go away. When Jackie Shannon Hollis marries Bill, a man who does not want children, she joyfully commits to a childless life. But soon after the wedding, she returns to the family ranch in rural Oregon and holds her newborn niece. Jackie falls deep into baby love and longing and begins to question her decision. As she navigates the overlapping roles of wife, daughter, aunt, sister, survivor, counselor, and friend, she explores what it really means to choose a different path. This Particular Happiness delves into the messy and beautiful territory of what we keep and what we abandon to make the space for love.

Opening Lines:  The child in my arms breathed the fast breath of baby sleep. Her eyes moved beneath her lids and her mouth pouted and relaxed, pouted and relaxed. I smoothed my hand over her thick black hair, smelled the smell of her, milk and powder and Desitin. Her small weight and the heat of her against my chest were perfect comforts that stilled me.

Blurbworthiness:  “This Particular Happiness, is a deeply moving story about Jackie Shannon Hollis’s decades-long yearning to have a child―and her complicated decision not to. But it’s also about so much more than that. With honesty, generosity, precision and insight, Hollis writes the story of her life―from her girlhood in rural Oregon, where she both broke and followed the rules, to her hard-earned self-acceptance at middle age. This Particular Happiness is a gloriously wise memoir about one woman’s unexpected path to becoming.”  (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild)



A Sportsman’s Notebook
by Ivan Turgenev
(Ecco)

Jacket Copy:  A Sportsman’s Notebook, Ivan Turgenev’s first literary masterpiece, is a sweeping portrayal of the magnificent nineteenth–century Russian countryside and the harsh lives of those who inhabited it. In a powerful and gripping series of sketches, a hunter wanders through the vast landscape of steppe and forest in search of game, encountering a varied cast of peasants, landlords, bailiffs, overseers, horse traders, and merchants. He witnesses both feudal tyranny and the submission of the tyrannized, against a backdrop of the sublime and pitiless terrain of rural Russia. These exquisitely rendered stories, now with a stirring introduction from Daniyal Mueenuddin, were not only universally popular with the reading public but, through the influence they exerted on important members of the Tsarist bureaucracy, contributed to the major political event of mid–nineteenth–century Russia: the Great Emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Rarely has a book that offers such undiluted literary pleasure also been so strong a force for significant social change, one that continues to speak to readers centuries later.

Opening Lines:  Anyone who has crossed from the district of Bolkhov into that of Zhizdra will probably have been struck by the sharp difference between the natives of the provinces of Orel and Kaluga. The peasant of Orel is short, stooping, sullen; he looks at you from under his brows, lives in flimsy huts of poplar wood, does labour-duty for his master; never goes in for trade; eats badly, wears plaited shoes. In Kaluga the peasant pays rent and lives in spacious cabins of pinewood; he is tall, with a bold gay way of looking at you, and a clean white face; he trades in oil and tar, and on feast days wears boots.



What Is the Grass
by Mark Doty
(W. W. Norton)

Jacket Copy:  Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman’s bold, new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty―a poet, a lover of men, a New Yorker, and an American―keeps company with Whitman and his mutable, landmark work, Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet’s life and work. What is it, then, between us? Whitman asks. Doty’s answer is to explore spaces tied to Whitman’s life and spaces where he finds the poet’s ghost, meditating on desire, love, and the mysterious wellsprings of the poet’s enduring work. How does a voice survive death? What Is the Grass is a conversation across time and space, a study of the astonishment one poet finds in the accomplishment of another, and an attempt to grasp Whitman’s deeply hopeful vision of humanity.

Opening Lines:  Walt Whitman spent his final years in a two-story, woodframe house on Mickle street in Camden, New Jersey, less than half a mile’s walk from the Delaware River, though in those days, after his debilitating stroke, he’d have been pushed there in his wheelchair by an attendant.

Blurbworthiness:  “What Is the Grass is a deep-dive into Walt Whitman’s life, work, worldview, and something that feels like his cosmic theology. As if that weren’t enough, we’re also invited into Doty’s own candid self-seeking, in episodes of the author’s life rendered in generous complexity. This beautiful, ingenious book affirms my belief in language as a living thing, and in the universe as a place overflowing with purpose and meaning. I wish all of the great poets could be reintroduced to me in such fashion!”  (Tracy K. Smith, author of Wade in the Water)



Eden Mine
by S. M. Hulse
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Jacket Copy: In Eden Mine, the award-winning author of Black River examines the aftershocks of an act of domestic terrorism rooted in a small Montana town on the brink of abandonment, as it tears apart a family, tests the faith of a pastor and the loyalty of a sister, and mines the deep rifts that come when the reach of the government clashes with individual freedom. Jo Faber is packing up the home she and her brother Samuel inherited. For generations, the Fabers have lived near Eden Mine, but Jo and Samuel will be the last. Their family home has been seized by the state through eminent domain. At the moment she hears the news of the bombing on the radio, Jo knows nothing, but she also knows that something isn’t right. The arrival of their friend and unofficial guardian, Sheriff Hawkins, confirms her suspicions. Samuel said he was going to find work. But soon it’s clear that he’s not gone, but missing—last seen by a security camera near the district courthouse at Elk Fork. And a nine-year-old girl, the daughter of a pastor of a storefront church, is in critical condition. This isn’t the first time Jo and Samuel have seen the ravages of violence visit their family. Last time, they lost their mother and Jo lost her ability to walk. Samuel took care of her, outfitted their barn with special rigging so she could keep riding their mule. But he was never the same, falling in with a separatist group, getting a tattoo he’d flaunt, then spending years hiding. She thought he had finished with all that. But now he’s missing, and she can’t talk to the one person she trusts. A timely story of the anger and disaffection tearing apart many communities in this country, S.M. Hulse’s Eden Mine is also a beautiful novel of the West, of a deep love for the land, of faith in the face of evil, and of the terrible choices we make for the ones we love.

Opening Lines: My brother’s bomb explodes at 10:16 on a late April Sunday morning.



I Want You to Know We’re Still Here
by Esther Safran Foer
(Tim Duggan Books)

Jacket Copy: Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching. So when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation—that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust—Esther resolves to find out who they were, and to learn how her father survived. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds not only reshapes her identity but gives her the opportunity to properly mourn. I Want You to Know We’re Still Here is the riveting and deeply moving story not only of Esther’s journey but of four generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. They are four generations of survivors, storytellers, and memory keepers, determined not just to keep the past alive but to imbue the present with life and more life.

Opening Lines: My birth certificate says that I was born on September 8, 1946, in Ziegenhain, Germany. It’s the wrong date, wrong city, wrong country. It would take me years to understand why my father created this fabrication. Why, each year, my mother came into my room on March 17 and gave me a kiss and whispered, “Happy birthday.”



I, John Kennedy Toole
by Kent Carroll and Jodee Blanco
(Pegasus Books)

Jacket Copy:  I, John Kennedy Toole is the novelized story of the funny, tragic, riveting narrative behind the making of an American masterpiece. The book traces Toole’s life in New Orleans through his adolescence, his stay at Columbia University in New York, his attempts to escape the burden of his demanding mother and his weak father, his retreat into a world of his own creation, and finally the invention of astonishing characters that came to living reality for both readers (and the author himself) in his prize-winning A Confederacy of Dunces. The other fascinating (and mostly unknown) part of the story is how after a decade of rebuke and dismissal the novel came to a brilliant author, Walker Percy, and a young publisher, Kent Carroll, who separately rescued the book, then published it with verve and devotion. The novel that almost never came to be went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and continues to sell at a satisfying rate as it winds its way to the 2 million mark. That audience is the happy ending for this brilliant, unrepentant writer, whose only reward before his untimely death was his unending belief in his work and his characters.

Opening Lines:  He was humming to himself as he drove back to the hardware store. It was a perfect day, a cool, crisp sixty degrees, sun shining, a light breeze tousling the trees. He had never before felt so free.

Blurbworthiness:  “I, John Kennedy Toole is a vivid exploration of every writers’ nightmare―of writing the best she or he possibly can to create a book that would become a standard-bearer for decades to come, but not getting it published until it's way too late.”  (Audrey Schulman, author of Theory of Bastards)



Little Constructions
by Anna Burns
(Graywolf Press)

Jacket Copy:  In the small town of Tiptoe Floorboard, the Doe clan, a close-knit family of criminals and victims, has the run of the place. Yet there are signs that patriarch John Doe’s reign may be coming to an end. When Jetty Doe breaks into a gun store and makes off with a Kalashnikov, the stage is set for a violent confrontation. But while Jetty is making her way across town in a taxi, an elusive, chatty narrator takes us on a wild journey, zooming in and out on various members of the Doe clan with long, digressive riffs that chase down the causes and repercussions of Jetty’s act. Before Milkman took the world by storm after winning the Man Booker Prize, Anna Burns had already honed her distinctive voice. In her second novel, Little Constructions, she exhibits the same linguistic brio, coruscating wit, and scintillating insight into men, women, and the roots of violence. A wickedly funny novel that swoops and spirals as it examines the long shadow of abuse and violent crime, Little Constructions explores what transpires when unspeakable realities, long hidden from view, can no longer be denied.

Opening Lines:  There are no differences between men and women. No differences. Except one. Men want to know what sort of gun it is. Women just want the gun.

Blurbworthiness:  “At the center of Anna Burns’ novel lies the Doe clan, a closely-knit family of criminals and victims whose internal conflicts and convoluted relationships propel this simultaneously funny and terrifying story. When unspeakable realities break through, the tale is chilling—and funny.”  (Belfast Telegraph)


Sunday, October 6, 2019

Sunday Sentence: No Thanks by e. e. cummings


Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

          little man 
          (in a hurry
          full of an
          important worry)
          halt stop forget relax

          wait

from No Thanks by e. e. cummings


Friday, October 4, 2019

Friday Freebie: Full Throttle by Joe Hill


Congratulations to Jennifer Gladhill, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: The Collector of Leftover Souls by Eliane Brum.

Just in time for Halloween, this week’s giveaway is for Full Throttle by Joe Hill. The new collection of stories opens with a startling sentence (“They rode west from the slaughter, through the painted desert, and did not stop until they were a hundred miles away.”) and just gets better and scarier from there. Library Journal gave it a starred review, saying: “Every piece is driven by anxiety and unease and feature Hill’s trademark characters who feel absolutely real. But it is also the sense of place that dazzles, whether it’s a sinister version of Narnia in ‘Faun,’ on a coastal pier in ‘Dark Carousel,’ or on a plane as WWIII breaks out in ‘You Are Released.’ Hill lulls the reader into deep enjoyment, even as the terror lies just around the corner.” Keep scrolling for more about the book and how to enter the contest....


In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass,” one of two stories co-written with Stephen King and the basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix. A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” soon to be an episode on Shudder TV’s Creepshow, two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality....and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King. Replete with shocking chillers, including two previously unpublished stories written expressly for this volume (“Mums” and “Late Returns”) and another appearing in print for the first time (“Dark Carousel”), Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.

If you’d like a chance at winning Full Throttle, simply e-mail your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please (or, two if you share the postsee below). Despite its name, the Friday Freebie remains open to entries until midnight on Oct. 10, at which time I’ll draw the winning names. I’ll announce the lucky reader on Oct. 11. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your e-mail address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book). P.S. Since I’m downsizing my own book collection, I’ll occasionally toss an extra book into package. If you aren’t interested in reading the extra “Freebie,” please consider donating it to your local little free library.

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.