Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue

 

I have mixed feelings about this first novel by Cameroonian author Imbolo Mbue. It started strong, with chapters alternating between Neni's and her husband Jende's viewpoints. Neni is in the U.S. on a student visa, working on an Associate's degree and hoping to go on to eventually become a pharmacist. Jende is a taxi driver who has overstayed his visa and is applying for asylum. Things start to look up when Jende is offered a job as a chauffeur for Clark and his family; Neni also does some temporary work for them. And then the plot jumps the rails, and it's all downhill from there. The story becomes a bit tedious at this point, with one bad thing happening after another. Both Jende and Neni behave despicably at points, very different from how their characters were presented at first. I suppose the point is to demonstrate how desperate people will stoop to anything to achieve their dreams. Jende and Neni are not escaping violence at home; they're just hoping for a better life in the U.S. With the money they've saved, they can go back to Cameroon very wealthy, so it makes the extreme measures that Neni considers questionable. Overall, this books starts out well, but becomes a bit of a slog halfway through. All that being said, this book has 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon with more than 2,000 reviews, so I'm in the minority here.

Ansel Adams

 

Looking for a diversion from non-stop news watching, I borrowed this video from my library. I didn't know very much about Ansel Adams, and enjoyed learning about his life and career. He studied piano for many years, planning to make music his career, and hiking in and photographing the Yosemite Valley was just his hobby, although he was equally passionate about it. Eventually, he decided that it was photography that was his calling, and he devoted the next 60 years to it. He also had a photography business (which paid the bills), and became involved in the Sierra Club and the conservationist movement. An interesting fact: his father took him out of school at age 12 to home school him for a period of time. He bought a year-long pass to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and attended it every day. He eventually returned to school, although in a private setting.

Our library has a nice collection of Ansel Adams books, including this one: Ansel Adams: 50 Years of Portraits. I was only familiar with Adams' outdoor photography, so it was nice to see that he had explored portraiture as well. This collection is full of lots of famous artists, photographers, and writers, along with folks Adams bumped into on his travels, e.g., "Lobsterman," "Japanese-American Youth." Many of his portraits were of extreme close-ups, with the face taking up the entire frame; others show the subject in their environment. This book was published by an organization formed by Adams and some fellow artists called Friends of Photography; their goal was to publish and promote photography as an art form. The series of volumes was called "Untitled," published between 1972 and 1994, and this was the 16th in the series.

This is a collection of seven portfolios containing a cross-section of 45 years' worth of Adams' photographs. They include many of his famous shots of Mount McKinley, Sentinel Rock, Old Faithful, Half Dome, and El Capitan. There are also many scenes of trees, lakes, and dunes, as well as a few portraits, architecture, and still lifes. I find it interesting that there are no photographs of wildlife (although there is one photo of a moth on a stump). I wonder if he was uninterested in wildlife or just didn't come across it (although I would find it hard to believe, given how much time he spent trekking around the outdoors.) The most interesting photographs are the trees, plants, flowers, and orchards.

 

 

 

 

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams were friends of and on for many years, both enamored of the American Southwest. This book shows how they both presented similar landscapes and architecture in their works. The essays describe how their lives overlapped, the times they spent together, and their relationships with Alfred Stieglitz, who was O'Keeffe's husband and Adams' mentor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So You Want to Talk about Race, by Ijeoma Oluo

 

So You Want to Talk about Race was selected by my library's climate committee, which has held a number of discussions over Zoom about the book this semester. I found the book to be very thought-provoking and well worth reading. It would be an excellent book for similar events and discussions at other libraries as well. The author addresses many questions that folks might have, defining racism and discussing intersectionality, police brutality, affirmative action, the school-to-prison pipeline, cultural appropriation, microaggressions, and much more.

Books: a memoir, by Larry McMurtry

 

I am fond of reading accounts of others' reading habits and interests, so I was happy to find this book on my most recent foray to the Dog Ears Bookstore in Hoosick Falls, NY. This is not a typical memoir, although it does start with McMurtry telling of how he grew up in a home without books until his cousin dropped off a box with 19 books for him. Over the next 109 very brief chapters, he tells us many stories and anecdotes about his life as a book scout,  used book store owner, and rare books dealer. The stories are very brief, two or three pages each, and many of them seem incomplete, as if he got distracted, went off on a tangent, and never returned. McMurtry drops a lot of names into the narrative, some of famous people and others that may have been well-known, but whom I never heard of. Throughout, he tells us about his reading habits, as he moves from accounts of women travelers to the diaries of James Lees-Milne, a minor English literary figure. This is a brief (259 pages) look into the reading habits and book-selling career of one of the 20th century's most successful novelists and screenwriters.

The Betrayers, by David Bezmozgis

 

I enjoyed this novel about fictional Soviet dissident Baruch Kotler. As a young man in the Soviet Union, he was denounced by a close friend, tried, and jailed for 13 years, before finally emigrating to Israel and rising to prominence as a politician. Later in life, he takes an unpopular political stand, and when he refuses to succumb to blackmail, his affair with a younger woman is exposed. Kotler flees to a resort town in Crimea where he spent long ago vacations with his family, and he ends up bumping into the man who denounced him so long ago. The story delves into the history and motivations of each character as Kotler struggles with the decision of whether he can forgive his former friend.

A Warning, by Anonymous (A Senior Trump Administration Official)

 

Unbelievable that this book was published in 2019, and there are so many things that have happened since then. I would really like to know who this official is, and hope that it will eventually come out. He/she wrote that he/she would reveal him/herself before the 2020 election, so it will be interesting to see if that happens. In the meantime, this is a quick read, but it doesn't reveal much that hasn't been obvious to everyone since before the 2016 election. Anyone who thought that a scumbag like Trump would change once elected was delusional. As a meme that went around Facebook a while back said, we weren't crying after the election because Hilary didn't win; we were crying because we knew what was coming, and it's clear after nearly four years that we weren't wrong. This election can't come soon enough for me.

Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales, by Stephen King

 

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories by Stephen King. I've been a fan for a long time, but I don't pick up his works often enough and I forget what a good writer he is. I'm easily spooked, but only one of the stories was scary...

Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World's Most Notorious Jewel Thief, by Doris Payne

 

I have mixed feelings about this book. While it was a quick and engaging read, I couldn't help resenting that the author has no regrets or qualms about stealing jewels for a living her whole life. She felt that she couldn't make it any other way, and that she deserved what she stole because of the prejudice that she experienced growing up. I wondered how many people lost their jobs because they let a woman walk out the door with a $20K or $200K diamond. How did that impact their lives? Maybe the store was insured, but how about the clerks whom she stole from? She has been stealing her whole life, and was arrested in her '80s for shoplifting from Walmart! I received this book as an advance reading copy at a library conference, and the editor talked it up as a fascinating portrait of a woman who got away with so much, as if it were charming, but I didn't feel that way reading it. I'm glad it was a short book! This was my book club's October book; I'll be very interested to see what everyone else thought.

Doing Justice, by Preet Bharara

 

This is a fascinating look at the legal system from one of the most prominent and well-known prosecutors in the U.S. It is a thoughtful analysis that is bolstered by personal anecdotes. I appreciated Mr. Bharara's style, which is to include stories that illustrate his points, without self-aggrandizement; on the contrary, many of his examples show how he learned the lessons that he shares with the reader. The book is organized in four sections that cover the whole life cycle of inquiry, accusation, judgment, and punishment. It's very well-written; I would gladly read other works by him.

Circe, by Madeline Miller

 

I loved this book! It has been many years since I studied Greek mythology as an undergraduate, but this brought it all back to life for me. It's very well-written, and fascinating to read an imagining of this story from the viewpoint of Circe. I would highly recommend it. Circe was my book club's October pick. I was so happy that our early October meeting date had good weather so we could continue our meetings outside. I'm guessing we'll have to move our meetings to an online format for the rest of fall and winter.