Never Too Late for Summer Reading

This blog was originally titled “Late Summer Reading Part II” but obviously, I’m a bit late getting this one posted. After I wrote the first summer reading blog, I have taken book reviewing seriously and I have been reading as though I owed my English teacher back-to-school book reports. But hey, it’s still summer until next week, even if the beach in the rainy September weather just isn’t the same.

It’s certainly good to be expert at something, but when you are self-conscious about spouting off it’s good to have some background. I did get an M.A. in English from Wayne State University, but that was a while ago. In fact, since recovering from grad school, historical fiction has been my favorite flavor. And from recent reading, here are three great books that I can absolutely recommend:

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies (available in paperback)
This brilliant novel is set in the mountainous Snowdonia region of northern Wales at the end of WWII. There are overlapping characters and plots: first, the story of Esther, the Welsh Girl for whom the book is named; second, the story of Rotheram, a military investigator who is assigned to interview the high profile prisoner of war Rudolph Hess; and finally, Karsten, the German prisoner of war whose love of the Welsh landscape includes Esther. Author Davies, it should be noted, is a local: he directs the Creative Writing program at U of M. The novel weaves the three characters’ story lines and points of view together, but also adds a sense of how their overlapping paths and worlds are themselves a force: having evolved at the end of the war, this relatively isolated place is changed permanently. Davies makes these changes quite clear, breathing life into small-town existence, where the outside world reaches in to rewrite local history. At the end of the novel, the outcomes are neither unexpected nor totally predictable in Davies’ deft hands.

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard by Erin McGraw
This novel came to me as a galley that I snatched up at a booksellers’ conference last January, but it has only been released in the last month. At the turn of the twentieth century, Nell Plat is the wife of a Kansas farmer and the mother of two children who walks away from the monotony of all she has ever known to ply her trade in the already glamorous world of Hollywood. This is not the Hollywood of the thirties and forties, but Tinseltown in its infancy, when movies are just beginning to become a legitimate pastime and many moths are drawn to its flame. Nell reinvents herself as Madame Annelle, modiste, and her steps to success, while halting at times, give us ample room to understand the lot one women one hundred years ago, when any form of entertainment was of dubious virtue and value., and when actors and actresses were widely understood to be outside the bounds of Victorian propriety. This ability to summon a past that has been lost under layers of more familiar Hollywood history is the author’s finest achievement: I believe that this novel will become popular over time because of her deft ability to make Nell’s struggles seem somehow modern despite their vintage.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
This is a book that defies a lot of expectations. The title sounds cute and maybe a little silly, but the story is actually a=2 0war story about the German occupation of the Isle of Guernsey during World War II, covering lots of terrible ground. The novel is epistolary: it’s told entirely in letters, a form of storytelling that is not always easy to read. The large cast of characters is rather eccentric, but they become even more complex as the story progresses. As a young journalist puts together a book proposal, she interviews the surviving members of the GLPPPS, who continually complicate and confuse our view of the past as their recollections unfold. The exuberance of those who have survived the war is muted and tinged with the unfinished business of missing characters. But like The Welsh Girl, the novel gives a close view of the home front of that war as seen by those who live too close for comfort to its horror. Let me recommend this book as an uplifting read despite these would-be depression-inducing features. At the end of the book, I marveled at the way in which the authors craft this story, making everything that is askew seem ultimately perfect. There are few books that combine past and present as well as this current bestseller, which will be a great read for book groups and anyone who enjoys a cast of odd characters and an interesting plot.

Mitch Ryder Makes My Summer

Blog # 7
July 28, 2008

Mitch Ryder Makes My Summer,
One That's Slipping By Too Quickly

Okay, it’s true. I couldn’t think of a clever name for this blog entry. Meanwhile, the summertime is sneaking past me far too quickly. And it’s hard to stay focused on summer when August is the month when the back-to-school and Christmas seasons begin in earnest for the store. Buyers come in; we stock up; the summer seems to fade. So much for long vacations, wished-for meetings with friends, joining people at the local watering hole or concert venue, and having a perfect garden. I’ll settle for less because I don’t have a whole lot of time to contemplate what I’m missing.

But hey, there are still more than a few weeks of summer to go: if you count the first three weeks of September (and I do) it’s nearly two months to go. So let’s get to the heart of the matter: I’ve already had a great music experience this summer, and I want to savor it: I was lucky, I got to hear Mitch Ryder.

Now understand that I was one of the teenyboppers that his music was aimed at. That said, even though I’m a fan, I didn’t want to act like one. I have had cases of pre-concert buildup followed by a lower level of post-concert satisfaction too many times in recent years. However, Mitch Ryder gave a great show on Thursday night. Every element was there: the turbocharged rhythm section, great guitar work, the wildly exciting energy that they put out into the crowd and then, of course, Ryder’s voice, which sounded brand new.

Let me just put in my standard plug for Detroit here: I think Detroit is arguably the most important location for both R&B and rock, and in the sixties, the distinction between those two was really slim. Using the frantic voice of R&B and Gospel over a flawless band, Mitch Ryder has always been the poster child for the perfect blend of rock and soul music. And that’s only one part of what Detroit contributes to the history of American music, but that blend was alive and well and dancing through the crowd on Thursday night.


So I’m grateful that while summer is coming apart, I got time transported to my younger days, which is worth a lot. If I am not mistaken, there were lots of us there that perfect summer evening, and three cheers for that opportunity!