City of Thieves - David Benioff

This was can't put down good. The premise is a grandson asking his grandfather about the war. You know, THE war, WWII. The grandfather was a Soviet citizen in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) at the time and the grandson wants to know what his grandfather did during the war.

So we get the grandfather's version of what he did. Lev Beniov lives in The Kirov, an apartment building in the outer ring of Leningrad. He serves on the building's fire brigade, there to put out any fires should the building get shelled during the Nazi siege of Leningrad. One evening, while standing watch on the top of his building with his friends, Lev spots a dead German paratrooper falling from the sky. As the city has been starving for months and people are dying from starvation daily, the youths figure the German paratrooper may have food on his person and decide to be the first ones there to investigate the possibility. Except, as an enemy soldier in Leningrad, the dead body is now government property and taking anything from the body would be considered "looting" and stealing of government property. 

When he pauses to help a friend running from the police, Lev is caught and taken to a Leningrad prison. Sometime in the night he is joined by an army deserter, Kolya. The head of the NKVD gives them the task of finding 12 eggs in the next five days for his daughter's wedding cake. Lev and Kolya then go about the impossible task of procuring a dozen eggs in a food wasteland. 

It is Kolya's indomitable spirit through the Lev's pessimistic lens, that carries this story from horror to humor and back again in endless and glorious cycles as the two undertake their quest. I didn't want this book to end.

5/5 Stars. 

Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Carol Rifka Brunt

I'm torn on this review. I started out really liking this book, then it started to wear on me. Really really wear on me. And then it ended well enough. So this is probably a 3.5 Star review, for what it's worth.

This is a classic YA coming of age story about June Elbus, 14 yo Renaissance fan and her dying uncle, Finn Weiss, who, in 1986 is dying from AIDS related complications. June and Finn have a special relationship which is full of inside jokes and stories. What doesn't work in this premise is the reliance on YA tropes. June is "quirky" and feels unloved and misunderstood (she's not). She thinks she's ugly and doesn't understand why anyone would like her (sigh). But Finn loves her, and she believes he loves her above all others. So she has a romantic crush on her own uncle, and she has a lot of self-loathing associated with this fact. 

When my sister and I were little, we spent weeks in the summer and over Christmas Break at my grandparent's house in Canada. My mom's much-younger brother still lived at home until my sister and I were approaching Tween years. We both loved him desperately. Not in the romantic way June feels about Finn, but close enough that the truth of love, and child love felt real about the book.

In any case, Finn dies and June learns that he's had a boyfriend for nine years. Toby seeks June out to try to have a relationship with her - seeking kinship in the one other person he believes is grieving Finn's loss as much as he is. June is hurt to learn that Finn led another life separate from her. This is common enough for children on the brink of adulthood, to learn that the people they love have other lives and interests. But man does June take it hard. She becomes a paragon of self-absorption and jealousy. It's not pretty. And if I was just left with Carol Rifka Brunt's great phrasing, it may be okay, but it goes on too long, becomes too much. 

Poor Toby. He has no one, and Finn leaves a note for June, asking her take care of him. But instead of really feeling for the Toby character, I found him a little creepy, and their budding friendship, built on mutual grief, somehow never seemed to blossom to me. Toby gets June hooked on cigarettes and even gets her drunk. He's in his 40s. I think it's meant to show what a mess he is, but it's hard to really feel for an adult who lets a 14 year old get wasted on volcano bowls. 

In the background is June's malicious sister Greta, her uninvolved boring father, and her uptight vicious mother. None of these characters were endearing, except maybe toward the end, Greta became redeemable. The stuff this family was willing to say to each other, good god. There was a jot of jealousy flying around here and a lot of self-righteousness that got old and felt staged. In the end, it was just a bit much and took a lot of shine off an otherwise nice looking apple.

3.5/5 stars

Two Paths: America Divided or United - John Kasich

I was excited to vote for John Kasich in Tennessee's primary in 2016. By then it was mostly clear that Donald Trump had built a momentum which was tipping toward winning. But I'd heard Kasich's message in fits and starts during the debates and tuned into to Facebook Live feeds of his town halls. 

The reason he ended up getting my support is well flushed out in this book. A reiteration of his refusal to "take the low road to the highest office." And his insistence that nothing gets accomplished without buy in from both sides - a factor I think was crushed by GOP leadership (McConnell) during Obama's eight years as president - was something I've always thought about politics. Even politics in Washington. 

As new media sources have become more and more partisan (even delving into outright lies) it seems impossible to have rational discourse these days. And the problem seems to have gotten worse over the general election and now through the first months of Donald Trump's presidency. But these pages, this book reiterates what we already know. It doesn't have to be this way. Nuance and open mindedness take effort and time. But isn't our country worth it? 

I know after the general election I took a hard look at where I was receiving my news sources and tried to take an extra second to let my initial reaction to news headlines become tempered by a second or third run through to see if the meat of the article really jibed with the headline. You'd be surprised (or maybe not surprised) to learn that a lot of times it doesn't. 

I was struck by Kasich's recounting of a townhall where a gentleman asked Kasich what he intended to do to fix the opioid epidemic, and Kasich turned that right back and asked the man what he was doing to fix it. It's an honest question. On November 8, I had a tear filled conversation with a good friend about how I clearly wasn't doing enough to make my world, heck my neighborhood, into the place I wanted to live. 

While sometimes, most of the time, I live at the base level described by Kasich in this book, in those moments where I go higher I try to keep my November 8 lessons in mind. What am I doing to make my community better? And that usually involves putting down the smart phone and really trying to connect with people, even to smile and say hello, thank you and please. Connecting to people, just like Kasich did on the campaign trail. 

Thanks John Kasich for such a thoughtful analysis and a good example.

4/5 Stars. 

Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walter

This book was really charming. A lonely inn-keeper on the rocky side of Italy's famed Cinque Terre schemes ways to make his father's run down pensione into a world-class hotel. A 1960s film actress with a terminal diagnosis seems to be the possible solution to his loneliness and his ambitions. 

Fast-forward to the future to an unsatisfied production assistant, a has-been/never-was frontman, and a guy just trying to pitch a movie. Somehow these elements all come together and work. And none of the characters are cartoonish or unbelievable (except maybe the jerk movie producer who has had one too many procedures on his fountain of youth face). But again, it never seems too over the top. All the scenarios his just the right notes. 

It would be giving away too much to talk about the plot, so I'll say that the writing was really well done. In the end, the characters work through very real world issues and and are able to figure out some way to live with the lives they have been given and the choices they have made. They recognize their own agency in the outcome of their lives and it's refreshing to not have everything too bottled up, too satisfactory in the end.

4/5 Stars.

Ploughshares Spring 2017 Issue Guest-Edited by Jennifer Haigh

I loved Jennifer Haigh's introduction to this edition. She was editing the edition during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and it clearly shows in the selection of stories and poems. 

J. Scott Farrin's, The Weeds, is the clearest example of this - showcasing a young man in a border town deal with dwindling employment prospects and urban decay. The young man's girlfriend, Tamara is also dealing with depression and Farrin's writing feels visceral. The struggles and fears of the lower and middle classes often discussed during the election are strikingly portrayed in this story. 

Likewise, Kevin Fenton's Negative Space about an artist going through a bit of a breakdown who gets a temp job at a factory to try to clear his head. Not even the breakroom vending machine can cut through the ennui as the artist tries to convince himself his current life is temporary. 

Joshua Ferris' Life in the Heart of the Dead takes a different tone, following a man on a work trip in Prague. The man doesn't care anything about the history of the place or the hows and whys of the country. He's in the fog of jet lag and unable to see the detail through the exhaustion. 

Smith Henderson's Muscles tells a story of Trevor and his sister Lesley-Ann as they spend a weekend with their absentee father, their new stepmother, and their new step-siblings. Trevor has a young romance encounter with his stepsister, which leads to harsh criticism from his step-mother. You can sense that something is off with the family and Trevor seems unable to reconcile the harsh words of this woman and the behavior of her own children. Through very brief flash-forwards, we learn that the father, stepmother, and step-siblings go on to lead troubled lives. 

The Taster by Kristen Iskandrian is about Gary, a CPA in Indiana who learns he has a special gift for tasting subtle flavors. He becomes a world-renowned food taster, but his personal life starts to fall apart as his career takes off. The tasting is the only thing going well in Gary's life, and he clings to it for all it's worth. 

E.K. Ota's haunting story Silk and Dust about a man who tries to recreate his life with is dead wife through a look-a-like had the right notes of sad. An unattainable love developed by an inability to let go. The story is from the look-a-like's perspective. Through the role, she is exposed to a life she could never have on her own. 

In Poetry, Geffrey Davis' Self-Portrait as a Dead Black Boy was heartbreaking for all the reasons you would expect. Poem with Warehouse FIre & Disaster Recovery Team by Erika Meitner was also well done. What kinds of things would be blown around and found if a storage warehouse was burnt to the ground? What kinds of things are stored that have little meaning when it turns out they are destroyed? I also enjoyed Rough AIr by Maggie Smith. "Motherhood never kept anyone safe, though it's no fault of mothers. There is no such thing as safety - only survival and the absence of survival." I think of this sometimes when I hit turbulence when flying. "I hope this work trip was worth creating two motherless children," I think. Lastly, Gary Whitehead's Wild Columbine asks the obvious question of when we will ever be able to separate that word from tragedy again.

4/5 Stars. 

Children of Dune - Frank Herbert

This book was very uneven for me. I like Herbert's exploration of power and possession. In this installment, 9 years have passed since twins were born to Paul Atreides, Muad Dib, emperor, and his wife, Chani. Nine years since Paul walked off into the desert, blind and ready for death. Overwhelmed by all the possible futures he had seen and choosing instead to pass the burden on to his infant children (coward). 

His children, Leto II and Ghanima, are not like children at all. They too are filled with all the past lives of their ancestors. They can remember things that have fallen out of knowledge for centuries. And they have a plan for the empire. But, looking like children, they are also surrounded by powerful adults who also have plans for the empire. 

The grandson of former Emperor Shaddam plots with his mother to murder the twins and take back the throne. Alia, overcome by a lifetime of attempting to repress the past lives inside her, becomes overtaken by the memory of Vladmir Harkonnen. Under his sway, she plots also to kill the twins and remain in power. And Lady Jessica, Paul's mother, returns to Dune to complete the Bene Gesserit breeding program by mating the twins together (ewwwww).

Thinking they are facing mere 9 years olds, these adults plot and scheme, all the while the twins carry out their own plan. Looks like Leto has also looked into the future and decided to make the necessary changes Paul was unwilling to make, why? Oh because it involves the death and destruction of millions, possibly billions, all in an effort to wipe the slate clean on religion and power in the empire. I didn't really buy all that Leto was selling on this and it left a bitter taste in my mouth about all the interesting facets of the power struggle going on otherwise. 

Lastly, Herbert is so damn vague about so many details of the Butlerian Jihad or what is coming under Leto's "Golden Path" that it's difficult to grasp just how dangerous a position in which the players have put themselves.

3.5/5 Stars.