I don’t remember much about September but maybe that’s because I had my head stuck in books. In addition to reading Stephen King’s latest (which tallies in at 849 pages) I read ten other books, all but one of which bring me closer to achieving completion of the 63 Reading Challenges I’m participating in this year. I have just one more month of reading to summarize and I’m caught up.

Enjoy this month’s extra links!

LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott (Fiction, Classics, YA)
This classic story of one year in the lives of the March sisters of New England during the American Civil War justly holds its place of honour in American literary tradition. This is really a Young Adult novel and I’m sure that each young (or older!) reader identifies with one of the sisters: the eldest, Meg who is maturing into a young women preparing for marriage; Jo, the impetuous tomboy & alter ego of the author; home-loving and painfully shy Beth; and the creative & somewhat spoiled baby, Amy; and events in the book involve all sisters in turn. Each chapter of Little Women contains a gentle moral, espousing a value such as honesty, industry or thriftiness with time and money.
I found this much easier to read than other 19th century novels, perhaps because it was targeting a young audience. My edition had several charming illustrated plates by Jessie Wilcox smith.
Read this if: you’d like to have a glimpse of the home-front during the American Civil War; you love a story that teaches old-fashioned morals; or you enjoy gentle old-fashioned adventures. 5 stars

Suggested reading companion to Little Women: March by Geraldine Brooks which follows the activities of the girls’ father, Mr. March during his enlistment. Note: March is not a YA novel.

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote (Non-fiction, Crime)
In November 1959, two young ex-convicts robbed and murdered the Clutter family of four in Holcomb Kansas. A 300-word article in the New York Times about the crime interested the young Truman Capote enough for him to travel to Kansas to investigate the murders. Capote talked to locals, family, and police, ultimately compiling 8,000 pages of notes. After the criminals were found, tried, and convicted, Capote conducted personal interviews with both Smith and Hickock. It’s these that add the psychological interest to the book, which is written as narrative non-fiction.
In comparison to modern real-live crime books, In Cold Blood which keeps the gore to a minimum and focuses more on the criminals’ minds, may not be as compelling to some as I found it. But it chilled me to the bone, and contains what I think is the most unnerving line I’ve read in non-fiction, as the killer tells Capote: “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoke. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.”
Read this if: you’re a fan of crime fiction; if you’re interested in how humans can sink without apparent reason to base behaviour; or you’d like to see how Capote wrote non-fiction. 4½ stars

THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ by Mordecai Richler (Literary Fiction, Canadian)
This is one of those classics of Canadian literature that I’d been meaning to read since high school 40 years ago, and was always embarrassed to tell anyone that I had not.
Apprenticeship, published in 1959, is set in Montreal and in the Jewish summer resorts of the Laurentian Mountains. We follow Duddy Kravitz as a boy that, if you are a certain age, you might describe as a two-bit punk: he fought, stole from Kresge’s department store and split streetcar tickets so they could be used twice. But Duddy wants to “make” it so, in his teens and twenties, following his grandfather’s advice that “a man without land is nothing”, he wheedles and hustles his way through scheme after scheme to purchase land for development. Along the way, he finds out just what morals he will compromise for his dream.
I’ve come to this CanLit icon late in life: this is only my second Richler, but along with Barney’s Version, it has convinced me that I must read his entire canon.
Read this if: you are interested in how other people achieve their dreams; you want to know about the Jewish experience in Montreal, Canada in the 1940s and ’50s; or you want an introduction to Mordecai Richler. 4 stars

CROW LAKE by Mary Lawson (Literary Fiction, Canadian)
This book won the Amazon.ca (formerly Books in Canada) First Novel Award for its author in 2002. Set in the near north of Ontario, Crow Lake tells the story of four siblings who lose both parents in a tragic accident one summer day, and their struggle to stay together and to fulfill their parents’ dream of them attending university. This sounds like a women’s novel, but it isn’t. And it isn’t the least bit a horror novel as the cover might suggest. My favourite quote: Memories. I’m not in favour of them, by and large. Not that there aren’t some good ones, but on the whole I’d like to put them in an airtight cupboard and close the door.
Doesn’t that make you want to find out why?
Read this if: if you enjoy family dramas or stories about the constrictions of unspoken class systems; or simply if you have siblings. 4 stars

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder (Literary Fiction, Classic)
This classic, dug out of basement storage in our central library at my request, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1928. The copy I read was actually printed then, so was quite fragile.
The setting of this book is Lima Peru 250 years ago. One fateful day a bridge made of willows which for ages has spanned a deep gorge near the city, breaks, and five people plunge to their deaths. Brother Juniper, a monk, witnesses the accident and determines to trace the life stories of the five to prove his belief that each of them in some way deserved this fate, and that such a catastrophe was God’s will.
Thankfully, I found that Brother Juniper’s purpose in researching the characters paled to the characters themselves and their intersecting lives. Not only a study of Peruvian society of the 18th century, but also an unmasking of societal attitudes of the 1920s.
As an aside: A new biography, Thornton Wilder: A Life by Penelope Niven was released October 30th, 2012.
Read this if: you love to see how lives intersect & the part circumstance plays in one’s destiny; or if you’re looking for a fairly short & not difficult-to-read classic to complete a reading challenge. 3½ stars

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY in Search of America by John Steinbeck (Non-fiction, Travel)
In the fall of 1960, John Steinbeck set out with a well-stocked camper truck and his standard bred poodle named Charley, to travel across America. His route took him from New York up to Maine from where he turned east, eventually crossing the prairies to visit the California of his boyhood before heading back east and catching Texas on the way.
Travels with Charley is a fascinating look at the America of half a century ago and of Steinbeck’s perceptions and assimilations of it. Steinbeck himself admits these may not mirror any other person’s when he says: I cannot commend this as an account as an America that you will find [in 1960]. So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes(.)
At the beginning of the trip (and the book), the author gives the reader lots of personal details both about his adventure, the places he sees, and the people he meets. But as the book progresses, the story is recounted in greater generalities, and he drives hundreds of miles without talking to anyone.
This is understandable since as he says: This journey has been like a full dinner of many courses, set before a starving man. At first, he tries to eat all of everything, but as the meal progresses he finds he must forgo some things to keep his appetite and his taste buds functioning.
Steinbeck made the observation that When we get these [inter-state] thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing. We should all be glad he captured some of life as it was before that happened.
Read this if: you’d like a taste of a simpler country; you’d like to discover a time-capsule of society in mid-twentieth century America; or you’re a Steinbeck fan and would like to get to know the author a bit better. 3½ stars

11/22/63 by Stephen King (Popular Fiction, Time-Travel, Science-Fiction)
When I was in high school, I read Stephen King’s Carrie which I had not realized until I had nearly finished it, is a classic horror novel. That put me off King, and I haven’t read another of his books in over 40 years.
But reassured by recent reviews & synopses that 11/22/63 is not a horror tale but, indeed, is one of my favourite genres–time travel–I tackled this chunkster.
As everyone must know by now, the story concerns a time ‘hole’ from the present back to 1958 Maine. The dying owner of the diner where the warp is located exacts a promise from our protagonist, Jake, to ‘go back’ and prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Does Jake succeed in his mission? I’ll leave it to you to find out.
Stephen King has described his own work as the “Big Mac and fries” of literature. There are so many applications of that metaphor : mass marketed, branded, appealing to the eye, easy to go down, only moderately nutritious, and certainly not something of which one should make a steady diet. But as a treat – this beats James Patterson, for sure.
Read this if: you’re a fan of Time and Again written by Jack Finney to whom King was going to dedicate his book until a new granddaughter was born; you love time-travel stories and haven’t yet read Finney (read him now); you like to speculate what the present would be like if major events of the past were altered; or you enjoy reading (or like me, reminiscing) about mid-twentieth century America. 3½ stars

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN by Ray Bradbury (Science Fiction)
I remember reading this in my teens and thinking it phenomenal, but my tastes have changed and I found it a little disappointing this time through.
The illustrated man of the title is covered in tattoos that come to life at night and reveal the stories herein. But the illustrated man is just a device to string together a collection of Bradbury’s (mostly) previously published short stories. Most of the stories are set on Mars or other space venues, or are in the future (including two ‘end of the world’ stories.)
The tales vary in quality and interest to me. The first one The Veldt is the one I particularly remembered from my first reading and is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. It’s set in (what seems to be) the future, where a children’s playroom has interactive walls that provide atmospheric backdrop to their ‘play’. The Long Rain, the only story in this collection set on Venus, is also memorable from this reading, but the others all run together for me. It’s classic science-fiction, but it’s just not my genre.
Read this if: you’re a fan of short stories set in space; you’re a sci-fi fan who wants to cover the classics of the genre; or to celebrate Red Planet Day on November 29th. 3 stars

A JEST OF GOD by Margaret Laurence (Fiction, Canadian)
Another classic of Canadian literature and a huge disappointment for me as a fan of Margaret Laurence whose Stone Angel is one of my favourite books.
A Jest of God follows Rachel Cameron, a 34-year-old spinster school teacher in the small prairie town of Manawaka. Because it’s told in the first person from Rachel’s view, we are privy to Rachel’s thoughts. For most of the book there is a wide discrepancy between what Rachel is in her visible public life, how she deals with and appears to others, and what she really thinks and feels. Rachel’s life is dull – she lives with her mother and has no real friends. Then she meets an old high school classmate, visiting for the summer from the city, and begins an affair. That yields one of Laurence’s wonderful lines: “Some poisons have sweetness at the first taste, but they are willing to kill you just the same.”
Despite Laurence’s writing, I really had a hard time with this book. I didn’t like Rachel at all and wanted to slap her silly: she hated being misunderstood but never said what she thought. She mistook a physical affair based on lust for love, and became obsessed with Nick.
Read this if: you’ve seen the movie Rachel, Rachel and want to read the book upon which it was based; or you’re reading the entire Laurence canon, as I am. 3 stars

YELLOWTHREAD STREET by William Marshall (Fiction, Police)
“If you’re a tourist in bustling Hong Kong, don’t venture into the seedy dancehall district of Hong Bay. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer and the cops of Yellowthread Street Station can tell you why.”
Published in 1975 when Hong Kong was still British-owned and (evidently) British-policed, this first in the series introduces us to the station staff and a few of the area streets, and not much else. There is very little plot, rather just the meandering day by day occurrences and interactions of policing in the largely Chinese district. There are 16 books in this series, so someone likes it enough to follow up. For its glimpse of Hong Kong in an easily readable format, 2½ stars
Read this if: you’re interested in a laid-back look at policing in British-held Hong Kong; or you need a book with the color ‘yellow’ in the title for a Colour Reading Challenge, and a ‘Y’ book in an A-Z reading challenge. (BAM.)

THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK by Steven Sherrill (Fiction)
I picked this up for $2 on a sale table at Chapters but for the life of me, I don’t know why. Yes, it’s that Minotaur—the head of a bull on the body of a man—now living and working in small town America as a chef. I’ll give the author a couple of points for imagining the day to day difficulties of fitting into modern society, but I couldn’t discern a plot to the book. Others might feel differently – this book ranks surprisingly high on Amazon’s charts.
Read this if: you’re a real fan of Greek mythology and love new takes on old themes. 2 stars

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Amazon links for CANADIAN readers:
Little Women
March
In Cold Blood
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Barney’s Version
Crow Lake
The Bridge Of San Luis Rey
Travels with Charley in Search of America
11/22/63
The Illustrated Man
A Jest of God
Yellowthread Street
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

KINDLE EDITIONS:
The Complete Little Women Series: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo’s Boys (4 books in one) .99¢
In Cold Blood
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Crow Lake
Travels with Charley in Search of America
11/22/63