Holiday Greetings from Jim and Jan De Young

 

Volume L                                                                                      December, 2023

                                                   Christmas 2023

 Would you believe that this will be the fiftieth consecutive year for this letter? The first one was on a ditto (only old people will know what that was) dated 1973. Our family had just returned from a year in our favorite city in all the world—London, England.  

Where are we now? The pair, who will soon celebrate their 64^th wedding anniversary, are beginning their third year of residency at Grand Living. We don’t travel much anymore; covid put a real stopper on that. We still drive for medical appointments and to our daughter’s first grade classroom where we spend an hour once a week reading stories and tutoring. Jan’s special project has been working with a little girl who just arrived from Mexico with zero English. She is finding her college Spanish is a bit rusty. The rest of our activity is pretty much focused inside our home community. Jim is on the resident council and chairs the Activities and Sales sub-committees. We both work on tending the building’s two libraries and we lead a book and creative writing group.

 Daughter Amy and her husband Todd live ten minutes from our apartment. She still teaches first grade at Hiawatha School in Cedar Rapids. Her life is a whirl of activity mostly devoted to her students, and her fellow teachers (all of whom are facing educational challenges that have not receded even though Covid has diminished.) She has inherited some of my appreciation of clever humor and recently sent me this one. “Have you seen the ad from a company that makes yardsticks promising that they won’t make them any longer?” Todd is officially retired and is now waiting for a surgical implant that we hope will alleviate his back pain. He is doing a lot of the cooking and is so good at it that he can even make brussels sprouts taste good. His skills also extend to marksmanship. He bagged a wild turkey and a deer with his crossbow last month. The year’s jerky supply is ensured.

Grandson Mikel will be graduating from Upper Iowa University in May. His next steps are not clear at the moment, but he likes the outdoors and it looks like he will land somewhere in the area of conservation or the environment. He now has his own apartment and is working part time while he finishes his senior year.

Big brother Taylor, a paramedic and firefighter in Texas, is also embarking on something new. He has announced his engagement to be married in March. His bride-to-be is employed by the

police department and both of them are familiar with the hours that must be kept by the people who work to heal and protect us. A commitment to helping others runs deep in our family and we wish them well.

Our son David and his family live in Finland. He works in IT (Information Technology) and reports that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is all the buzz. His wife, Lotta, still finds time for her Gestalt Therapy clients and their two girls (Frida and Selma) are up to their winter caps in school and activities. This brings us to the event of the year. BRUNO, David and Lotta’s 3^rd child, arrived in January. We didn’t meet him in person until this fall when everyone visited us in the USA. The young charmer took his first unassisted steps while here and with his twinkling eyes and wide smile endeared himself to everybody-- especially his uncle Mikel who seemed to develop a special bond with him and was a godsend as a caregiver during the visit.

 

Perhaps, in this season of giving, you will also give a thought to a bit of wisdom from Andrew McCall Smith: “Gracious acceptance is an art most of us never bother to cultivate. The very best gifts have no conditions attached to them and you must realize that accepting another person’s gift is allowing them to express their feelings for you.” With that in mind, we send you this gift of love which is enduring and carries no strings. May your season be merry and your new year bright.

 

Yours, Jim and Jan De Young.

dramajim@gmail.com janetwdeyoung@gmail.com  http://stirringthepudding.blogspot.com

Book Review of William Kent Krueger's THE RIVER WE REMEMBER

 

Krueger, William Kent The River We Remember

 

William Kent Krueger is a “sneaky” writer. He begins The River We Remember as a standalone, straightforward detective story. A man, Brody Dern, with a dark WWII past, is now a county sheriff and is called out, on what was celebrated as Decoration Day in 1958, to the site of a vicious death along the banks of the Alabaster River. The victim is Jimmy Quinn, a local man of considerable means, who has accumulated more than enough enemies over the years. The traditional questions of a murder mystery are broached. Was it suicide, was it murder, or was it a tragic accident? Then, quietly, we begin to meet some of the suspects and other people in the town. Things rapidly get  more complicated. The Alabaster River harbors dark secrets that go back through the history of the town and we begin to see how the hopes, the fears, the adolescent longings, the interlocking love affairs, the racial hatreds, and the violence of wars have impacted the lives of those who live in the ironically named farming community of Jewel, Iowa.    

Krueger writes with profound sensitivity about the scarred lives of the folks who live Jewel. His characters appear normal on the surface, but many are lost in their past secrets and sins. The narrative flows on and is continually deepened by references to both modern and ancient literature. We have lost adolescents who seem drawn out of Holden Caufield; we have lives compromised by alcohol and drugs; and we have the maimed veterans of modern wars whose lives could have easily been pulled from the pages of Homeric legend.  All of these folks now live near the quiet banks of the keynote river. The book moves you most specifically by dealing with the deep seeds of hatred toward the American Indian and the Japanese that have been planted in our history and continue to grow today in the rich soils of the USA. Each of the lives depicted leads inexorably to a violent resolution that takes you through more twists than a pretzel in distress.  

I must admit that this book caught me up. I read most of the last third in one sitting. The plot is solid and convincing, the characters seem spot on, and the overpowering inclusion of the sad history of our land puts a rich and satisfying sauce on an already well-made meal. Through it all, the Alabaster River runs with a current that sweeps all contents “from our beginning to our end.” As Kreuger says in the epilogue, there are many stories to be told and in all of them there is some truth and a “good deal of innocent misremembering.”  Separating it all out remains the ultimate challenge of living.

Jim De Young 12/11/23

 

Reviewing The Wizard of Oz at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

The Wizard of Oz at the Theatre Cedar Rapids is spiced up by some sizzling performances while being taken down a few pegs by glitzy overly busy lighting effects and a second act that goes on about fifteen minutes too long. The younger viewers around us started getting pretty antsy as the endless and not well integrated Jitterbug and reprise went on and on. The choreography overall was not quite as rousing as the high voltage hoofing in last year’s Cabaret, but still was pleasant enough to keep us involved.

All of the performances were competent while the standouts were well worth the ticket price. My favorite was the sprawling gangly Scarecrow of Jenup Wan and second by a hair goes to the creaky movement and strong voice of James Odegaard’s Lion.  Kudos also to Jessica Link as the nasty Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch.  Rhylee Larson’s Dorothy had the mature voice of a pro, but I felt she did not quite manage to portray the youthful vulnerability of the Kansas Dorothy as well as she might have or maybe Judy Garland’s performance in the movie was still a haunting presence for me.

 The costumes were spot-on with fanciful touches in hats and hair. I loved it when the apple trees started throwing their fruit.

 Now I come back to the lighting and special effects. Flying actors are always special and this was done with expertise and safety though perhaps it could have been done a few less times to keep it special. This goes for the lighting as well. The jazzy projections were simply not enough to keep me from feeling that the “Jitterbug dance and reprise in the 2^nd act was too long. It was not all clear to me what the dancers were doing for so long or why. In any case I do wonder if the moving projections and wild color changes were overused in the show. The score is more mellow and romantic than frenetic and boom-boom. This “hit em hard” ambiance was also evident in the miking of both actors and orchestra at what I felt was an ear-splitting level. This may be part of the reason I had some doubts about Rylee Larson’s Dorothy. Over-amplification gave her voice a grating harshness at times that was at odds with the tenderness of her character.

My doubts may also be the result of my many years as a play director. I detected a sense of even though the show has plenty of “wow” all by itself, let’s juice it up some more by overusing the special effects until they begin to pale from repetition. Not knowing when to stop is a disease that afflicts actors, directors, and designers as well as gamblers and drinkers.

 In spite of my quibbles, this was a fine afternoon at the theatre and I continue to admire the Theatre Cedar Rapids’ work. They have a fine mix of reliable adult talent both in front of and behind the curtain and they are giving younger performers a chance to work in what is clearly a talented ensemble.

 

   

 

Review McCall Smith Alexander The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even

 

Alexander McCall Smith is like a warm comforter in a chilly room. The last books I’ve tackled, in particular Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, have been stuffed with so much negativity, violence and despair that I was starting to cry “enough already.”  I know the world is a nasty place, but I also need a lighter lift once in a while and McCall Smith is the author who can deliver that. This is not another edition of one of his wonderful series like the Mma Ramotswe No 1 Ladies Detective Agency books. This is a group of droll short stories that illustrate the catch-all title of espionage and revenge. The heroes are pretty kind and the villains more often puffed up with themselves than sinister. As always the vignettes teem with philosophy, history, humor and spot-on character development.   

 

Section one features five stories about espionage. “Nuns and Spies”, for instance, deals with a male German spy in WWII who parachutes into England and ends up disguising himself as a Catholic Nun. It is based on a real but unproved rumor and McCall Smith re-makes the story into a delightfully absurd adventure.  In “Filioque” a young theology student in Rome is recruited by a Cardinal into the dark and secretive Vatican Secret Service—again with some unusual results. 

 

The second half of the book has four stories about various types of comeuppance. My favorite was “The Principles of Soap” a story of an actor/waiter in Australia who manages to strike it reasonably rich with a continuing role in a TV soap opera. Along the way he survives an attempt by a former nemesis and classmate from his old acting school to derail his career and replace him with her lover. The story is filled with fun, coincidences, and plenty of ironic humor about actor training and the theatre business. I liked that one for obvious reasons. 

 

If you feel the need to escape for a time from the horrors of today’s news, I suggest you try a dance in the sunshine with this Alexander McCall Smith collection. It will surely lift your heart and tickle your funnybone. I give this collection a solid 4 out of 5 stars.  

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

 

The Overnight Guest, a 2022 novel by Iowa author Heather Gudenkauf, mines a genre that I personally am getting sick of. Sure, the world has sadistic killers who specialize in binding and torturing women and children, but far too many writers today seem to find this particular horror and the detailed description of its painful and bloody results to be a mainstay.

 When you combine this with another modern writing convention of popping back and forth constantly between times and characters, you have a novel full of already overused conventions.  The plot tells the story of a bloody family massacre that reverberates over many years. It depends on the improbable meeting of two of the victims and continuous descriptions of fear, dread, and violence. Of course, it is “a dark and stormy night in a secluded farmhouse and the power (wait for it) just has to go out etc. and etc. The imprisoned must also pick this night after years of sick torture to try an escape. To be sure there is the requisite final twist at the end, but I remain convinced that you should pick this book up only if you have nothing better to do. I am going back to Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes.

A review of My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison

 

This novel is a sleeper. The Irish author, Cora Harrison, is a former primary school teacher who has written a large number of books for children. Back in 2007, she  changed her spots and produced an adult historical mystery novel set on the wild gray coast of western Ireland in the year 1509. Her heroine is an intriguing and assertive judge named Mara who has been appointed by the King of the area to rule on all activity (from marriage to murder) in accordance with the ancient Celtic traditions. Harrison has given Mara a love of plant and animal life, a sensitivity to  the physical world around her, a young daughter from a marriage that has ended in a divorce, a semi-romance with the King who appointed her, and finally the position as head mistress of a school that teaches young boys how to enter the legal profession.   

 

Each chapter of this “mystery of Medieval Ireland” begins with a listing of a type of law in the ancient canons such as personal worth, marriage, inheritance, thievery, or assault. The development then explores Mara (the judge’s) actions as she deals with the implications and intricacies of that set of laws. This creates a slow start as the reader has to absorb a certain amount of ancient Irish history, but the pace speeds up when one of Mara’s top students is murdered during the celebration of an important community May Day ritual.

 

A murder investigation quickly gets under way and Mara finds herself under pressure to find the culprit. Ultimately, what appears to be her orderly intellectual search to find the killer by determining the opportunity and motivation for the death, puts her into grave personal danger. This, along with a series of twists at the end, kept me wanting to see more of this woman. A quick internet search has revealed several more books by Harrison featuring Mara in what is called “the Burren Mysteries Series.” I look forward to sampling at least a few of them in the future.

 

This isn’t on the list of great books of the early 21^st century, but I give it a 4 out of 5 because the leading character is appealing, the mystery is absorbing and full of twists, and it explores a fascinating corner of the ancient world and the often strange laws that govern its inhabitants.    

 

Jdy 10/26/2023

Clue Review at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

Clue  (the stage play)

Performed by Theatre Cedar Rapid Friday, Oct. 13, 2023

 Clue, the play, is a farce whodunnit, based on the movie and the venerable board game itself. All the well-known players such as Professor Plum and Miss Scarlet are present along with their associated murder weapons. The plot is strained but who cares when a group of very familiar suspects are gathered together on a dark and stormy night in an old mansion and engaged in seeing who did what to whom and how.

 

Right up front, let me say that I loved this production. I detected a single minded, disciplined commitment by the director and cast to play seriously inside the play without the kind of wink and nod to the audience that I felt was present in CRT’s recent production of the The Play That Went Wrong. The director here, Mic Evans, kept the over the top script from going to the heads of the cast and kept them tightly controlled even when they were literally dancing from room to room during the scenic bridges.

 

Second, the show profited greatly from an ingeniously designed set and superb lighting, music, and sound effects. The rumble of thunder shook the building and right on time lightning flashes accompanied it. Sharp intensified spotlight stabs accompanied the actor’s “takes” at dramatic moments. Kudos even to the stage crew as they smoothly enabled the actors to weave through the moving walls and doors.  A special mention goes to Seth Engen as Mr. Green, who managed a magnificently controlled back bend as a chandelier descended slowly onto him from above. This homage to Phantom of the Opera was worth the price of the ticket all by itself.

 

I also couldn’t but help to think about how almost none of technical artistry on view in the production would have even been possible in the 1950’s when I started my career in the theatre. Today’s computer aided systems were still in the future.  Lighting boards generally only had individually controlled dimmer handles or dials. We created sound and music effects by dropping a needle on a record—it was actually a 78 not a 33 1/3.  Spotlights had one color based on a gelatin slide put in front of the lens. Light movement could happen only as fast as human operators could physically adjust the placement of the instrument or the individual dimmers. Now you can change a single spotlight’s color and change its direction and focus by remote control. 

 

A new problem we didn’t have to face “in the old days” was the pressure that our current technical fireworks puts on actors to rise above glitz. It is a pleasure to report that this cast did just that. Throughout the evening they showed both physical stamina and performance skill. Standouts for me were John Miersen, as the butler, Greg Smith as Colonel Mustard, and  Lauren Galliart as the tarty Miss Scarlet in a flaming red dress that was certainly the knock-out costume of the evening. Belle Caney had multiple roles but made a real mark as the acerbic cook and later as a floppy dead body.

  

I close with my delight at seeing a show that could attract and please an audience composed of all age levels from children to adults. In sum, this play “went right”  and the enjoyment was evident during the curtain call and as the audience left the theatre. Get a ticket. It runs until October 29th.  

 

Jdy

Review of THE WINTER SOLDIER by Daniel Mason

 

Daniel Mason lives in California and is an MD and psychiatrist. I read The Winter Soldier on my Kindle. It tells the heartbreaking story of Lucius—a young man from a well-off military family who decides on medicine as a career against the wishes of his family. Just before he completes his medical degree in Vienna, WWI intervenes and the Austro-Hungarian empire is thrown into chaos. The young man, wishing to contribute to the war effort, enlists in the army and is sent as a medic to a casualty station located in a barely Carpathian village church.

From here on we get the story of the war, not from the trenches as in All Quiet on the Western Front, but from the hospitals where the physically maimed and psychologically scarred are dumped to be treated. Lucius is faced with barbaric sanitation, sparse medical equipment, limited drugs, and precious little food. He is relegated primarily to cutting off destroyed limbs while also attempting to cure lice, typhus, and the scourge of what was called “shell shock” in WWI and is now known as PTSS (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).

Dr. Mason spares the reader none of the stench, the blood, the suffering, and the violence that goes on behind the front lines. His diligently researched book is not for the delicate or faint of heart, but the reward is that, In spite of the conditions, Lucius manages to find romance in the person of a nun named Marguerite, who is the head nurse at the facility.

The young medic is separated from his hospital when the battle lines change, which leaves the last third of the novel to tell the story of his tragic search for his lost love. Some reviewers have even compared the book to Boris Pasternack’s Dr. Zhivago.

Mason uses his own medical knowledge with acute precision, while combining it with the history of medicine and the societal and human conflicts embodied in World War One. The title really tells it all. It reflects the chill of a landscape and a war that is rife with blizzards. The weather is as much an enemy as the opposing army and over it all hangs the pall of the horror of war. That human beings can still locate emotional warmth in this horrendous milieu is a heartwarming tribute to resiliency.

Definitely a 4.8 out of 5 for me, but a reminder that it does contain violent description. 

 

Review of Fatal Legacy by Lindsey Davis

 

Are you one of the many who enjoy traditional “who dunnits” set in exotic or historical places?  If you are, British authoress Lindsey Davis may be just your cup of tea. She has written a slew of comical, historical mysteries set in ancient Rome. There have been over twenty in the Marcus Didius Falco series and 2023’s Fatal Legacy is the 11^th in the Flavia Alba series. Flavia, if you are not already familiar with her, is Marcus Didius Falco’s intelligent, high spirited and courageous daughter. She takes on similar cases to her father as an “Informer,” which is a sort of ancient investigator similar to today’s private eye. She also, like her dad, has a wicked sense of humor that exploits the legal, political, eating, drinking, and sexual habits of all levels of ancient Roman society. Is this just inventive trash talking? Not at all.  According to a classicist friend of mine. “Her history and geography is spot on.”

 In Fatal Legacy Flavia takes what seems like a simple case of getting the goods on a guy who skipped out on a restaurant tab.  This minor infraction turns quickly into a sinister and convoluted multi- generational family feud over citizenship and inheritance rights. The plot has more twists than a licorice stick and you will be laughing all the way through to the violent climax.   

 I haven’t read all of the Falco family books, but the ones I have read I have enjoyed immensely. They are light hearted, satirical, and deftly plotted.

I give this one a 4 out of 5.

Review of The Collector by Daniel Silva

 

Daniel Silva’s latest thriller, The Collector, has all the characteristics of a blockbuster. It is ripped right out of the pages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will attract devotees as well as first readers.

Gabriel Allon, the retired former head spymaster of the Israeli secret service is on tap and called into action once again. This time he is asked to look into the murder of a wealthy secret art collector and the theft of a long missing stolen masterpiece by the famous Dutch painter, Vermeer. In no time he turns up a brilliant, vivacious, female, master thief as a suspect, but almost immediately another more dangerous plot emerges. Allon has to leave the art world behind in order to prevent a Russian false flag operation from starting a nuclear war in the Ukraine. Soon the secret services of the USA, Russia, Denmark, and Finland are planning to send the female master thief and the head of a Danish petroleum company into the very heart of Moscow to steal the incriminating war-plan and save the world.  It should be no surprise that as the thieves begin to execute their escape from Russia, things go awry. The final bullet heavy standoff at a Finnish border crossing will keep you turning the pages at a rapid clip.    

If you like tradecraft and action you will be more than satisfied and if you wish to probe the depth of the retired Allon’s character, you will be reminded of his exploits all the way back to the Munich Olympics and the car bomb that permanently incapacitated his first wife. I would also add that an item that sets Silva’s work apart is his ability to lighten even catastrophes and setbacks with caustic humor.  

 My judgement may be a tad clouded by having a son and family living in Finland and therefore loving the irony of putting the climax at the border of Russia and the “the happiest country in the world,” but I still give it a 5 out of 5. 

 

 

Interesting Comparison

Had two interesting viewing experiences in the last two nights. On Thursday evening we saw Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music in an outdoor venue on the grounds of an old Cedar Rapids mansion called Brucemore.

Then on Friday night we saw the 1958 film of South Pacific. What a contrast in terms of the development of musical theatre over the past fifty years. The film was a big hit, but shows its age badly with hokey color tinting for the lovey-dovey scenes and some performances that seem wooden as well as in-appropriate in the modern era.

Although I am not a big Sondheim fan, the Theatre Cedar Rapids production hit the mark is almost all ways. You couldn't ask for a more gorgeous setting for this show--outdoors and twilight deepening to dark as the 2nd act starts. The CR actors and singers showed that they were more than up to the difficult score. The miking was excellent and we could hear the lyrics and dialog clearly. Not sure what can be done outdoors to keep action on the far side of large stage from coming at you from the left speaker array. Stage design and direction excellent.. Lots of levels and they were used nicely. Blocking of dinner scenes always give directors the heebie jeebies, but Angie Toomsen had a beautiful and successful solution. With small low tables on two levels and a third level for the grand dame hostess, everyone could be seen and no backs were turned.

I still think Act I could use some trimming. By the time we get to the Act I finale the going is tedious and the last number goes on forever. No weekend in the country needs to be repeated that many times. Then again the South Pacific film could use more than a lot of trimming too.

Plenty to think about all around.

Death in a Bygone Hue Book Review

 

Death in a Bygone Hue review

 

Susan Van Kirk’s second art center mystery, Death in a Bygone Hue” is an engrossing and pleasant cozy mystery. My caveat here is simply a mention that I have known Sue as a neighbor and friend for many years and she is aware that my personal preference in detective procedurals calls for a bit more guts than the “cozy” genre generally supplies.  

 With that said, I still love her single, delightful, and unabashedly inquisitive heroine Jill Madison. Jill is a budding artist, and Executive Director of an art center in a small midwestern town. Just as she is readying the center’s first national juried exhibition, Judge Spivey, her good friend and the treasurer of her Board of Directors, dies suspiciously. This suddenly puts her as a sleuth in search of a killer as well as a suspect in the crime.  The judge’s will, unknown to her, has disinherited his adult children and left all of his valuable paintings and his money to Jill and the Art Center. A local newspaper woman adds fuel to the fire by writing articles accusing Jill of the crime and a final fan to the flames exposes concerns about the judge’s hidden past during the Viet Nam War.     

 Van Kirk’s tightly plotted narrative comes nicely equipped with a jolly sidekick and a handsome emergency room doctor from the local hospital who adds just a touch of steam to her life. Witness this quote, “I found myself falling for him as he hugged me, kissed my forehead, and headed for the door. He actually thought my work was important. He could be a keeper.”   

 Another plus is the unique setting of the book in an arts center. I cheerfully admit that I know this art center since Van Kirk has fictionalized the real one that operates in our town. When Judge Spivey’s painting collection is discovered to be valuable, it opens up the plot to potential art theft and forgery, which extends the plot well beyond the locality where the crime was committed. This allows a reader to pick up just enough discussion of how art shows are run, how exhibits are hung, and how provenance operates in the art world itself to add depth to the setting without slipping into the aesthetic weeds.

Van Kirk’s book is not going to knock Agatha Christie or Louise Penny off the top rung of the ladder quite yet, but she had me guessing the wrong villain right up to the final suspenseful confrontation. That, for my money, is what a good solid enjoyable read is all about. I give it a 4 out of 5.  Get a copy!

 

 

A PRIZED POSSESION

 

“A most prized possession”

This writing prompt asks that you select something you have or have had that means something to you. It should be a treasure, but not necessarily a monetary one. It should be something that has been special to you for a long time and you have kept in your heart if not in reality.  

Although my wife comes to mind immediately, this is not really a reasonable choice. Not a good idea to go there in this day and age.   Just in case you need to be reminded, women are no longer owned objects to be controlled by men.     

This leads me into a more physical domain. In spite of heart stutters, a bum shoulder, and all-round old age, I do treasure the blessing of my continued mobility. It is one of those things we don’t think about until it is disappearing. The ability to go about your daily regimen, albeit more slowly than before, is a treasured possession for any senior citizen.    

Tied to the physical world would be to choose the treasured memories of a lifetime of travel.  For many, those recollections are contained in the now fading photos or slides of far-flung places and past family gatherings.

Just as easily I could select a group of memories of the college students I have encountered over the years and the experiences bound up in the plays directed and sets constructed. More than a few of these students have kept a place in their lives for attending or making live theatre. Several met their mate while participating in one of my productions. Though now long gone from their alma maters and working and raising families of their own, I continue to enjoy their lives vicariously via some of the positive features of the modern social media.  

But finally, I have focused on books.  I offer no apology for choosing them as a valuable personal treasure.  Teaching has been my life and books have been as constant a companion as my loving spouse. They lined the walls of my office and of my study at home. The difficulty remains that this option is plural and keeps me from focusing on a singular personal antecedent.

With that in mind, I have boiled the choice down to a single representative book. It is my treasured copy of Richard Haliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels.  It is, as of now, my most prized possession.  I am looking at it on the shelf as I write this and am quite sure it can be used as a seminal first cause. The copy I own comes from the 1960’s. I am not quite sure when or where I bought it, but it has traveled with me for years.  It is a hardback and unquestionably shopworn. The paper jacket is still on although pretty torn and tattered. The jacket blurb proclaims proudly that it is “the most popular adventure book of our times.” The times are the 1930’s prior to its copywrite date of 1937.  What I do know is that it was a library discard and the evidence of my attempts, without much success, to pry off the old card pocket are still there to see.

You now have a right to ask why this volume has kept its place on my bookshelf over several moves and many years? This is where in old movies you see calendar pages sliding slowly backward in time to a younger and simpler age.

My mother was a high school graduate and an avid reader. She even belonged to the Book of the Month club.  Dad, not so much, partly because reduced circumstances took him into the work force and out of school after his sophomore year in high school.  They both did, however, share one commonality. That was that they would see to it that I and my sister would get a good education. My mother quit her secretarial job when I was born and one of the things I remember from my early life was she took me religiously to the branch library on Burleigh Street in Milwaukee every week from an early age.  It was first just for picture books and then on to real reading books as I entered the early grades. I was hooked and was devouring anything in print before I was eight.  Significantly fairy tales and travel to faraway places were tops on my list.

Adventure drew me like a bee to nectar and somewhere between my 8^th and 10^th birthday Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels came my way.  Halliburton often wrote for a younger audience and excelled in describing his travels around the Occident and the Orient. He wrote in the first person and in simple descriptive prose.  Facts were interspersed with questions and he had a penchant for throwing himself dramatically into his role as both narrator and participant in the scene he was describing. Take for instance his introduction to his first wonder—the San Francisco Bay Bridge.  He said, “Have you ever walked eight miles?  Were you tired?  How long did it take? . . . Now imagine walking and walking and walking for three hours all on the same enormous bridge.”  Yes, it’s a bit corny now. Time has not always been kind to Halliburton’s efforts, but I know for a fact that it got my travel juices flowing. I still would not trade his tale of swimming the Panama Canal (he is still today the smallest vessel ever to be locked through) or jumping into the “Well if Death” at the Mayan city of Chichen Itza for anything in the world. I must admit that I did not swim the canal or jump into the Well of Death like Richard did, but I have since passed through that canal and visited the “great well”  and other monuments at  Chichen Itza.

What now still makes this volume an important and valuable keepsake?  I guess because my copy of the book carries twenty-five checkmarks noting which ones of Halliburton’s fifty-five wonders of the world I have visited thus far. Now in my eighties, that bucket list still has some places and “miles to go” before I sleep, but with a little bit of luck  this scrappy kid from a working class family in Milwaukee might be able to add another checkmark or two to that book’s Table of Contents.

*A footnote:  Richard Halliburton disappeared in 1939 while trying to sail a specially constructed Chinese Junk named “The Sea Dragon” across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to the San Francisco World Fair. No sign of his ship or its crew has ever been found. 

 

Jim De Young  7/24/2023

Book Notice: The Case of the Cantankerous Carcass

 

The Case of the Cantankerous Carcass by Howard of Warwick

When all you want is quick and silly,  there is nothing like the series devoted to the adventures of a hapless monk named Brother Hermitage written by Howard of Warwick.  He has fallen into the position of King’s Investigator and can’t manage to think of a way out. He is joined by a savvy weaver named Wat who has made a pile of money making and selling lewd tapestries to any and all. A third member of this triad is a young smart-mouthed female weaver who has a snippy answer for all questions and challenges.

 In this adventure an Abbot finds he has been proclaimed dead although he is quite alive.  Hermitage is asked to find out who started the rumor of his demise. Before that question is answered a newly appointed Abbot is really found dead and we are off to the races with constant jokes that are so corny you won’t need to plant another crop for years.   

There are a whole group of these throwaway adventures on offer at Amazon and most are offered free to Prime readers. Not sure you will want to keep them on your book shelf, but they are a gas if you need a break from the hard stuff.

 

A solid 3 out of 5  

Book Review Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

 

Ordinary Grace

 

Something struck my fancy on p. 245 of William Kent Krueger’s 2013 novel titled Ordinary Grace. The main character says: “I lay in bed that night more confused than ever. Too many things had happened in the day.” Now Krueger is a fine storyteller and an evocative descriptor of the weather, the colors, and the very smells of mid-western river towns, but he just seems to give his thirteen year old hero too many burdens too fast to convince me that all this could happen or should to one kid in such a short time span.   

Thirteen year old Frank and his brother Jake, a stutterer, live in a Minnesota river town in 1961. His father is the local preacher and his mother is a not so happy woman who thought she was marrying a bright young lawyer before he returned from “the war” a changed man and went off to divinity school instead.

 The tragedies mount fast and furious in that summer and Frank, when he is not included in the adult’s lives, is an inveterate eavesdropper on their conversations—most of which he can barely understand. The story ultimately hinges on who is the murderer of Frank and Jake’s older sister--Ariel. There are twists and turns aplenty before the real villain is found, but I just don’t think, even though the narrator is the adult Frank looking back on his childhood, he would have been quite so involved and philosophical about the events as he seems to be. Frank often seems to be more a nosey little brat constantly egging his brother into more trouble and as such doesn't make me like him a lot of the time. 

Publicity for Krueger often seems to mention his series of crime novels. I have not tried one of those and may pick one up in the future. Right now I give this one a 2.5 out of 5.  

 

 

The Way of the Bear by Anne Hillerman

 

I will admit up front to being a devoted fan of Tony Hillerman’s Navaho detective mysteries for a long time. His daughter, Anne Hillerman, has carried on his series and I remain a fan. The Way of the Bear is her eighth book in the continuation and she now concentrates more on the adventures of Bernadette Manuelito and her husband Jim Chee. Joe Leaphorn, the original chief detective, is now retired but nearby for consultation if needed. He may even come back into more prominence again if a bit of a hint at the end of this book is a truthful tease.

 

Ms. Hillerman brings a significant departure from her father’s work in the sense that she brings the concerns of women, both personally and professionally into the spotlight. In The Way of the Bear,  Bernie Manuelito and her husband are on a little break in Page, UT.  Jim Chee, her policeman husband, has been asked to visit a reclusive paleontologist to confirm his financial interest in donating money to the Navaho police. Bernie has tagged along, but is nursing a present disappointment in her failure to achieve promotion to detective and a deeper grief that is only hinted at early in the book.

 

While Chee prepares to meet the paleontologist, Bernie travels to the newly created Bears Ear National Monument and the Valley of the Gods to think about her future. Both Navaho detectives quickly run into violence. Bernie is shot at in the desert and Chee learns of one death on a local highway and finds another on the doorstep of the man he was to visit.

 

All of the usual twists and turn enliven this book, including the required final revealing of the main villains. You may find Ms. Hillerman’s plot reliance on cell phone calls in the quirky service area of the desert a bit too flagrant and the foreshadowing of nasty weather as a tension raising device a bit too obvious, but her delightful characters keep you turning the pages.

 

Finally, Hillerman’s veneration of the land itself as combined with the history and culture of the Navaho nation is fascinating and emotionally compelling. She manages to integrate the sciences of archaeology, geology, and paleontology into the plot without making it seem too wonky. She then manages to merge the science beautifully into a personal story of family and marriage that is always an undercurrent even while the detectives are facing danger in the world of stolen artifacts, environmental greed, and graverobbing. There is even a little skull named Mary that might be as important as the Leaky family’s Lucy in promoting a true concern for our planet and the well-being of all of the many species that populate it.  

 

I give it a 4.5 out of 5

 

P.S. The story of the creation of Bears Ears National Monument is intriguing all on its own. A google search will give you lots of material including insight into the political fight that has surrounded it. Check this URL out for a brief pictorial review.  http://bearsears.patagonia.com/

 

The Light Over London --Book review

 

The Light Over London  by Julia Kelly  

Are you into a bit of romance combined with a bit of history? If you are, Julia Kelly’s 2019 entry titled The Light Over London might be up your alley. It is a part of an entertaining and instructive genre that has recently produced a number of novels about women’s roles in the second world war. Jacqueline Winspear has dealt with female pilots, for instance and others have dealt with women code breakers at Bletchley Park and women’s service in intelligence. Some of the most courageous even parachuted into France to work with the resistance. 

Kelly has hitched her star to this  market by writing about the “ack ack” women who became part of anti-aircraft gun crews in London and other English cities. If you have not heard of these young volunteer patriots, you will get a full measure of enjoyment from the history alone.  And if you like some romance you can settle comfortably into the love affairs of two women from two different times and backgrounds.

Louise Keene, a sheltered young village girl, is swept off her feet by Paul, a dashing young spitfire pilot in the WW II Brit Air Force. To do her part in the war effort, she joins the women’s auxiliary of the British Army and her training reveals an expertise in maths that earns her an assignment to an anti-aircraft gun crew. At the same time she also begins a diary that records her feelings, her letters, and her beloved Paul’s responses.

Sixty years later, Cara Hargraves, a recently divorced woman working for an antique business, finds a tin box that contains old memorabilia and Louise Keene’s unfinished WW II diary. Cara is fascinated by the find and embarks on a search to learn more about the diarist and the described love affair. Conveniently, Cara also has a single male neighbor who offers to help in the search. 

From here on the book alternates chapters between Cara’s investigation in the present and Louise’s experiences from the past. The fairly traditional gimmick to integrate  the two stories seemed a bit arbitrary to me and the sexual sizzle remained resolutely  within the “cosy” genre guidelines.  But, overall, the material on the training and lives of the "gunner" girls was engaging and historically informative. I had never heard of these women. They were prohibited from engaging in combat, but they could do everything to aim and prepare the guns to fire except pull the actual trigger. It is not at all surprising to learn that a fair number of them were killed or injured while serving their country.      

 This is not a great book by any stretch of the imagination, but it retains enough bang for your proverbial buck to give it a try.  I give it a 3.5 out of 5 

 

 

 

 

 

A LINE TO KILL by Anthony Horowitz

 

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz is a 2021 continuation of the Horowitz-Hawthorne series of mysteries. I  had recently enjoyed the London theatre setting in his The Twist of A Knife and had seen of his televised contributions such as The Magpie Murders. Once again Horowitz is the real author and also appears in the book as the writer who is following ex-detective Daniel Horowitz around while he solves more cases.

 

In this outing the pair is invited to attend a literary festival to promote their next to be published novel. The event is to take place on the quaint little English channel island of Alderney. It is an interesting and exotic location that still bears the scars of being taken over by the Germans during WWII and I was a bit disappointed that more about this history might was not incorporated.    

 

Shortly after the pair arrive, the rich resident who has bankrolled the festival is murdered. He has also been at the center of an ongoing fight to put a new electrical line from France that will result in environmental and historical destruction in exchange for lower rates. This leaves motives a-plenty for island residents to consider murder and it is complicated by previously unknown connections to the victim from among the invited literary guests.

 

Alderney is such a peaceful place that there is no upper-level constabulary on the island to handle murder, so a pair of investigators must be dispatched from Guernsey to handle the case. Even though Hawthorne is no longer with Scotland Yard, the DI sent over gives semi-official carte blanche to him to work the case and work it he does.

 

With befuddled writer and hanger-on Horowitz doing little other than wondering how he might write a book about the case, I kept bogging down in the narrative. It takes a lot of pages to set up the opening scenes and even the second murder of the first victim’s wife isn't much help. The narrative begins to pick up a bit as w head for the conclusion, but the final twists are so complex that it takes a whole series of chapters to tie things up. Coincidences are a part of fiction as well as real life, but there are just too many in this one for me to swallow. I give it a 2 out of 5 and in a publishing world inundated with crime fiction, Horowitz’s output won't be on my "have-to-read pile" any longer.   

 

 

 

THIS TENDER LAND by William Kent Krueger

 

 When Mr. Krueger appeared on a zoom interview last month I had never heard of him.  He cast himself as a “storyteller” and this 2019 novel is all of that and more. It is set in 1932 and gets its historical grounding from a host of atmospheric detail about the great depression, prohibition, and the persecution of native Americans.

The narrator is an older man who speaks through his twelve-year self. Odie and his slightly older brother, Albert, are the only two white boys at a Native American school where they are fed little, worked hard, and punished for any infraction. When Odie commits a serious crime, the two boys decide to flee. They are joined by a native American friend, Mose (who is physically strong but mute), and a little orphan girl named Emmy. Each of the four are alike in their search for some kind of anchor or home within a tender land that seems to change from bountiful to indiscriminately cruel with tornadic fury. 

The youngsters travel a sequence of rivers in a canoe with the goal of reaching a relative of Odie’s and Albert’s in St. Louis. The water journey takes on symbolic overtones by drawing on elements of both Mark Twain and Homer.  At each stop on their trek the vagabonds meet new friends or new enemies. And always the long arm of the law is never far behind. There are joyful sections when the group meets Sister Eve and her revivalist crusade or a remarkable Hooverville family with a young daughter, but the frightening sections are full of tension and violence.  Even though hope is always around the corner, I guarantee you that the twists at the end will keep you in surprise mode.  

 Although Kreuger is a plotter not a plodder, I would be remiss in not mentioning his evocative prose.  From a number of examples this one will suffice. “The sun, which was the color of a blood orange, hung nailed above the horizon, and long bars of red light came through the gaps in the old barn walls and lay on the brown dirt floor like little streams of hot lava.”

 Krueger lives in Minnesota and has also written a series of detective novels featuring a retired sheriff named Cork O’connor. I am going to check out one of those next. I give this stand-alone a strong 4.5 out of 5.   

 

Book Review THE BOOKSHOP OF YESTERDAYS

 

According to the book jacket, Amy Meyerson teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California and her debut novel, The Bookshop of Yesterdays, is an auspicious one. If you aren’t a lover of bookstores, reading, and the theatre, you may not be as positive as I am, but this combination is a triple threat plus for anyone who is.  

 The main character is Miranda Brooks, who was named after Miranda, Prospero’s daughter, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  A passing familiarity with the play will deepen your experience with the book. The novel’s Miranda grows up on the west coast and then moves to the east coast. She teaches history at a private middle school and lives with a young gym teacher from the same school.  Her name seems to originate from an early close relationship with her uncle Billy, who owned a bookstore in Los Angeles called Prospero Books. He would often take the young Miranda there and gave her a love of books and reading. One of his teaching tools was to create complicated  literary scavenger hunts for her amusement. 

 

When Miranda was twelve years old, her mother and her uncle Billy had a strange falling out and Billy disappears from the young girl’s life. Sixteen years pass and then Uncle Billy dies and bequeaths Prospero Books to her. Miranda returns to the west coast for Billy’s funeral and discovers she has inherited a failing bookstore (What Indie is not on the verge of failing?) and a complicated literary scavenger hunt put together by her long absent uncle. From here on the book concentrates on Miranda’s attempts to save the bookstore from bankruptcy while trying to re-find a relationship with her mother, find a new life for herself, and unravel her uncle’s mysterious connection to her.

 

The clues are buried mostly in a group of classic novels. At one time or another you will join Miranda in searching the pages of Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Fear of Flying, and The Grapes of Wrath, to mention just a few. I picked up the solution to the mystery early on, but the enjoyment of the search itself kept me going. I’m even going to make a guess that the author may have planned for that to happen so that we could also enjoy the pearls of wisdom dropped along the way. Early on, one of Billy’s cryptic notes says, “Understanding prepares us for the future. Remember that. It’s the only way to make us safer.” Another early item had an even greater impact on me. I am currently engaged in writing a family history and dealing with some uncomfortable times. Miranda states firmly in the early pages that “Every family has its unspoken stories. Billy was ours.”  Toward the end I also loved a part when Miranda is recalling what her father once said about baseball. As you settle into the batter’s box you have to look the pitcher in the eye. This tells him you aren’t afraid. “Baseball is like the rest of life . . . You have to decide how you want to be.” She might also have said that most of life is a search.

 

You can read The Bookshop of Yesterdays as a coming of age story, a romance, a mystery, a loving literary feast, or maybe all of the above. I give it a 4.5 of five and encourage Ms. Meyerson to keep writing.

 

 

"THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG" did

 

The Play That Goes Wrong DID!

 

 The Play That Goes Wrong, the latest offering of Theatre Cedar Rapids, had three problem areas: the script, the director, and the acting approach.  From the word go, as the audience arrives, we see the curtain up and trouble brewing. The set looks like it was done in a hurry by a meeting of the unskilled. Things are already falling off the walls and we haven't even started yet. This is followed by an overlong curtain speech that adds little to the show other than running time. Why this tedious pre-curtain ballet was necessary I do not know as the title and pre-show publicity already explicitly trumpets the content. We are treated to another curtain talk at the beginning of the second act.  Again unnecessary. 

 When the curtain finally does rise for real, this Brit developed show does give you what was advertised, which is a compendium of every possible miscue that could possibly occur in a live stage production and then some. Unfortunately, a great many of them are repeated more times and more broadly than necessary to get the requisite guffaw. That leaves some of the more original ideas in the show, such as a bit with exchanging a pen, with a notebook, with a glass and the quite fanciful tilting floor to be obscured by immersion in the obvious over-repetition of objects falling off walls, giant actor takes accompanied by loud music and light changes a la Phantom, or actors looking at a copy of the text or writing on their hands every time a line is lost. 

This is all accompanied by the practice of louder and larger is always better. Most of the actors could use a more controlled use of variety in vocal attack. This seems to have been advice expunged by the director when giving notes. The actors, also almost as a group, do not realize that lack of clear diction can foil intent.  Again I would fault the director, whose duty is not only to manage the action, but make sure that the dialogue is understood. Two other people attending the performance with me agreed that they were unable to understand a good deal of what was spoken. And this was not, as just noted, a problem of lack of volume in a large theatre. It may even been because of too much volume too much of the time. 

Shifting now to the script, I feel that the play overworks every cliché in the book. This work is not written with the sophistication of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, a classic in this genre, which presents actors desperately trying to do a good job in the midst of production chaos. I was never quite certain that these actors were trying to do that. They seemed to me to be celebrating their inadequacy even to the point of wagging a hand at us to ask for applause. If the writing is truly strong, the audience will respond and yes even applaud a well executed bit. If the writer, the actor, or the director feels insecure and resorts to telling you what response they want, it telegraphs a certain lack of confidence in the script and their own performance of it.

Another pitfall for the comic writer and director is the tendency to go back to the well too often with running gags. I must admit I start to groan not applaud after three or four returns to the same well. Farce can be maniacal in its plot devices, but it takes a most talented director and a highly talented cast to keep the subtle attachment to reality that makes it operate smoothly. One example from this show is John Zbankek’s butler, whose over-loud machine gun delivery combined with more than ten (I must admit to stopping counting at ten) memory lapses and consultation with his hand for his lines occurs. His performance wore thin in a hurry. Did he have the entire show written on his hand in tiny letters? Accents, as might be expected from an American cast, were also uneven. One performer, Aaron Pozdol I think, was playing some kind of Scotsman, but his diction was so garbled that neither I nor my companions had any idea of what his presence in the show was about for some time.

 All told some friends of the cast, like several folks around us, were slapping their knees and shouting encouragement, but others were sitting on their hands in stoic silence waiting for the silliness to end. I am willing to take account that the second performance of a show that was postponed for a week might have been just too giddy and might have seemed more under control later in the run, but I am still not ready to give this production more than a three out of five. Choose a better script, exert more directorial control, and pay attention to clarity as well as comic business and you will get a more professional  performance.

An apology:  (I look at plays in a more technical manner than most viewers. Because I have directed more than 100 of them, I look at a show in terms of would I like to direct it or would I do things differently if I had directed it or a similar piece. In this case I have directed a production of Noises Off by Michael Frayn. It is perhaps the very finest example of writing in this genre and I refer to it in my notice. All of this may have influenced by hyper critical attitude here and I do accept that many may have enjoyed this show more than I did. )

jim

4/20/23