Gods of Jade and Shadow. Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Del Rey, 2019. 352 pages.
Imagine Cinderella set in Jazz Age Mexico, and you've imagined the kernel at the heart of this story, with one big difference: the Fairy Godmother in this story is actually the Mayan God of Death, Hun-Kame. Casiopea Tun and her mother live in her wealthy grandfather's house in the Yucatan, near the state capital of Merida. Because her mother had married and been widowed by a Mayan commoner beneath her social status, thereby disgracing the family, they were treated like servants by her grandfather and the rest of the family, forced to serve and clean, but Casiopea has dreams of escaping the mundane drudgery. Left alone one day while the rest of the family was on an outing, she opens a locked chest in her grandfather's room, accidentally releasing Hun-Kame from imprisonment and initiating a link between herself and the god that would transform her life. Hun-Kame had been overthrown by his twin brother, with the help of Casiopea's grandfather, and imprisoned for eternity in the chest, minus a few particular possessions and body parts which were required for him to retake his rightful place as Lord of the Underworld. Hum-Kame and Casiopea were now joined, and together they set out on a quest that will take them across Mexico to recover those objects and to eventually defeat the evil usurper and resume his reign. Along the way, they meet and contend with various Mayan spirits and mythical figures seeking to thwart their quest. They are also in a race against time since both are weakening as time passes- Hun-Kame is literally draining life from Casiopea, not only gaining the strength required to remain active in the human world, but also becoming more and more mortal in the process. Finally, Casiopea must defeat her arrogant cousin Martin in a life and death race that will determine the true ruler of the Underworld. This was a fun blend of mythology, magical realism, and historical fiction.
Author interview
Gates of Fire. Steven Pressfield. Doubleday, 1998. 400 pages.
In 480 BC, the Persian Emperor Xerxes led a huge invasion force determined to conquer the Greek city-states. While ancient chroniclers estimated an army of up to 2 million, it was likely no more than 300,000 in reality. Opposing them was an allied force of some 7,000 Greeks. The two forces met at a narrow pass called Thermopylae. After two days of pitched battle, which left 20,000 Persian troops dead with their bodies piled high and the ground soaked in blood, a Greek traitor revealed a secret route around the pass. Spartan King Leonidas and 300 of the city's most fierce warriors volunteered to fight to the death in order to delay the Persian army and to allow the other Greeks to retreat and regroup for a future fight. In Pressfield's novel, there is a lone Greek survivor captured by the Persians and presented to Xerxes. He was not a warrior, not even a Spartan by birth, but he was a a helot, a slave and the squire of one of the officers. Xerxes, desiring to learn as much as possible about his enemies, prods the Greek to tell his version of Spartan history and culture leading up to the battle, revealing the mindset of the Spartan, shaped by a lifetime of unbelievable brutality, beginning in childhood, with the intent of building a culture of hardened warriors, and perhaps even more hardened wives and mothers, who give their lives, without thinking, for their state and for their fellow warriors. Apparently, this novel is or has been required required reading at the US military academies because of its explorations of courage, fear, leadership, duty, and brotherhood. It's an epic story.
podcast appearance
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail. Eric Jay Dolin. Liveright, 2026. 272 pages.
Outstanding maritime historian Eric Jay Dolin is back with another interesting true tale of the sea. In 1832, the American whaling ship Mentor wrecked on a remote reef in the Palau archipelago in the western Pacific. The eleven survivors of the wreck not only had to survive being stranded on a barren island, but they also found themselves in the middle of tribal wars. European and American contact with the natives of the archipelago had been haphazard since the 1700s. Some ships' crews were attacked, and some were warmly welcomed. Some captains and crews treated islanders respectfully and honorably, and some deceived, cheated, and harmed the islanders. It was hard to know how strangers would be received. Indeed, the Mentor's survivors experienced both welcomes and were ultimately captured and enslaved by one of the tribes. Dolin's written a great account of their ordeal and their survival efforts, and he also informs the reader about the whaling industry and how sailing ships operated in the 19th century. It's also an interesting look at first contact and culture clashes.
Stories and music of Holocaust Resistance
In 1941, Moshe Gildenman was an engineer and owner of a concrete company in Korets Ukraine. In his free time, he was a musician, composer, and the conductor of various school and community orchestras and choruses. Korets was occupied by German troops on July 8, and they established a Jewish ghetto. That ghetto was liquidated in May, 1942, and an estimated 2,300 Jews were killed, including Gildenman's wife and daughter. Gildenman, his son, his nephew and a handful of others escaped into the forest, armed with a couple of pistols and a few bullets, determined to fight back. Eventually, Gildenman, nicknamed "Uncle Misha," formed a small but highly effective partisan brigade that carried out more than 150 missions including blowing up bridges and other strategic targets. Although the brigade linked up with other Ukrainian and then Soviet partisan groups, they still acted independently, under "Uncle Misha's" leadership throughout the war. On May 2, 1945, he was among the first Soviet troops to walk the streets of Berlin. Not only is this book a much welcome addition to the library of books about partisan resistance to the Nazis, and a little remembered part at that, but there's also a really interesting hook into the story. Grymes, the author, is himself a musicologist, a music historian, who discovered the story through his study of Jewish music, and music becomes an important part of the story.
Editor interview
The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women: Stories of Landscape and Community in the Mountain South. Edited by Kami Ahrens. The University of North Carolina Press, 2023. 288 pages.
In 1966, an English teacher in a small rural school in the extreme northeast corner of Georgia published a magazine and created a program that still thrives today, a program designed to collect, to preserve, and to celebrate Appalachian stories, memories, and cultural ways. The journal, numerous books published over the years, and audio and video interviews and demonstrations have created an invaluable treasury of Appalachian history. This volume is a collection of 21 oral histories from a variety of women, white, black, and Cherokee who share their lives, memories, and experiences. The reader feels like he or she is sitting on the porch with the women, maybe shelling peas, shucking corn, or quilting while they tell their stories. Each story is unique in its own way, but they all reinforce the importance of the land and how it shaped the Appalachian culture. Their stories are all very familiar to me in various ways, and as I read them, I realize that even though both sides of my family have deep south Georgia roots, they were very Appalachian. Things like planting "by signs," hog killings, picking cotton and tobacco, quilting, not doing laundry on New Year's Day, oranges and nuts in Christmas stockings --- these are all stories passed down in my family. This - and the other Foxfire books - are must reads for anyone interested in southern history and oral history.
Documentary
The Everlasting Life of Charlie Wall. Paul Wilborn. St. Petersburg Press, 2026. 304 pages.
People outside of Tampa Florida have probably never heard of Charlie Wall. I hadn't until moving to the area six years ago. From the 1920s into the 1940s however, Charlie Wall owned Tampa Bay and was a big player in state politics and crime. He controlled organized crime and shaped election results, gaining a large fortune through bootlegging, strip clubs, and especially bolita. Bolita was a hugely popular game of chance imported into Tampa Bay from Cuba. Basically, people bet spare coins daily on which numbered ball would be drawn from a sack. Everybody played, often daily, sometimes for pennies a draw, sometimes more. While bolita draws could be easily fixed and usually were, Wall always steadfastly claimed that he ran honest games. Wall's empires started to crumble when Sicilians, with ties to larger crime families up north, moved and took over Tampa. Wall eventually retired, after testifying in federal hearings on organized crime. In 1955, he was murdered in his home; it's still unsolved today. In this book, Paul Wilborn creates a historical fiction fantasy based on the premise that Wall actually survived the fatal attack and, now in 1985, is an old man sharing his life story, and life lessons, with Trip, a young aspiring writer, who takes a job as Wall's driver and bodyguard as a step on his path toward sobriety, leaving his drug-selling past, and gathering fodder for a book. The fantasy part comes in because not only does Wall survive his murder, but also Wilborn adjusts the real timeline a bit, making his Charlie Wall born 20 years later than the actual Wall. Wall is the only real-life character in the book, but I think Wilborn captures the real essence of the man and his world and tells a really satisfying story in the end.
Author talk
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Colin Woodard. Viking, 2011. 384 pages. (10 year anniversary updated edition 2021)
This is one of those books that make you think about American history in a different way than what you're used to. It's not a new idea, but relatively new to me. Colin Woodard's approach is to tell the story of America as a loose federation of eleven separate and distinct nations, each with its own very distinct roots, attitudes, and beliefs. Those distinctions continue to shape us, our society, and all political discourse and outcomes today. Basically, according to this view, America has only been a unified country during World War II, and even then each nation came to its support of the war effort with different motivations. The rest of the time, the nations have been making and breaking alliances with each other and in conflict with each other. In fact, our country's founding and the principles on which it was founded were not universally supported. The six nations were at odds with each other throughout. It all makes for an extremely interesting theory that makes sense in a lot of ways, and, in fact, some of the author's impressions in the original 2011 publication have proven to be somewhat prescient. It's not necessarily an optimistic picture, but it makes you think.
Reading The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man in the 21st Century
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. James Weldon Johnson. Sherman, French, & Co., 1912. 236 pages. Reprinted in 1927 by Alfred A. Knopf.
My latest classic read or re-read, one of the first books ever published in the US that presented a frank and honest portrayal of black life in the country, without offensive over-the-top stereotypes and broad comic characterizations. It is a fictional memoir that Johnson first published anonymously, but many readers assumed it was more factual than fiction. It's a frame story, with the unnamed narrator revealing his life story and the secret that overshadowed his life. Born in Georgia just after the Civil War, he is the child of a formerly enslaved woman and a wealthy white man. Knowing that they couldn't be together in Georgia, the father sent mother and child to Connecticut so that the boy could get an education and have a better life. Because he had a very light complexion, race and color, and all that those constructs entailed, were of no concern to the boy for his first few years in school, but then realizations hit him head-on, and he begins his life-long struggle with racial identity. He develops an extraordinary musical talent which opens up many opportunities for him, and he also realizes that he can operate within both worlds, black and white. He decides to dedicate his life to spotlighting black music and to introduce it to the world, elevating it to the attention it deserves - "glorifying" his race and their achievement. In the process, he has many experiences that remind him constantly of the overemphasis on race in America. Finally, on a return visit to Georgia, he witnesses a lynching, and that leads him to make a final decision. He gives up his race, his talent, and his "birthright" in exchange for security and safety, choosing to "pass" as white for the rest of his life, thereby becoming an "ex-colored man." The book is a brilliant depiction of race relations in America, colorism within a race, and the idea of "passing," forsaking one's true identity for expediency.
Author Talk
The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers Deadly Quest Find the Mythical Giant Panda. Nathalia Holt. Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025. 288 pages.
I have never understand the fascination with/admiration for the Kennedy family that many Americans have. I've never found much to admire in any of them. Maybe it's all the tragedy that seems to surround the family over generations? I've always thought that Theodore Roosevelt and his family were much more interesting and admirable, and perhaps even more tragic. I mean, Roosevelt's first wife and mother both died on the same day, Valentine's Day, in the same house, just a few hours apart. He had a bit of an estranged relationship with his first child, Alice, one of the most interesting of all the presidential children in history. His youngest son Quentin became a WWI pilot and was killed in action over France. Ted, or Theodore Jr., had a long and distinguished political career and was the oldest soldier, and only general, to land on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Kermit accompanied his father on numerous expeditions, including an Amazon trek that nearly killed them both, and he led a troubled personal life that ended in suicide. This book documents the 1928-1929 expedition led by Kermit and Ted Roosevelt in the Himalayan region of Tibet and China. The expedition was sponsored by Chicago's famous Field Museum of Natural History, and its objective was to collect specimens of the region's wildlife, specifically the almost mythical giant panda, thought to be - if it existed - a ferocious bear. As incredible as it seems now, the animal most connected with China was almost totally unknown outside of legend well into the 20th century. The first evidence of their existence didn't reach the West until the 19th century. Even few Chinese claimed to have ever seen one, representations are almost nonexistent in Chinese art over the centuries although artists portrayed many other animals, and, in a country in which one can find furs, skins, and body parts of almost every animal that ever existed in the country, its furs were never offered for sale in markets. It was the Roosevelts' job to prove its existence, to kill specimens, and to bring the hides and skeletons back for mounting and scientific study. Here's another hard-to-reconcile bit for many of us: I've never understood or appreciated the concept of trophy hunting and find it repugnant. However, well into the 20th century, it was standard scientific practice to hunt down and kill thousands of animals, make orphans of baby animals, and kidnap said babies, dooming them to miserable lives in captivity, or more likely, miserable deaths. It was even considered acceptable to go after and kill the last known specimens of a species. The expedition was a harrowing one, and both brothers nearly died. The expedition also changed them and their attitudes forever. It's a great read, and a great companion read to Candice Millard's River of Doubt, about the aforementioned Amazon expedition.
Author interview
The Land and Its People. David Sedaris. Little, Brown and Company, 2026. 272 pages.
Sardonic. Outrageous. Acerbic. Curmudgeonly. Quick-witted. Arrogant. Egocentric. Obsessive. Neurotic. Iconoclastic. Irreverent. Finicky. Judgemental. Fussy. Curious. Weird. Critical. Candid. Blunt. Attention-seeking. Funny. Hilarious. Honest. Cantankerous. Contrary. Ornery. Not afraid to say what everybody is thinking. All words used to describe David Sedaris. Absolutely one of my favorite celebrities ever and my favorite essayist/social commentator, but you have to wonder sometimes how he has any friends or a 35-year relationship. Nevertheless, I will read anything that he writes (OK, to be honest, I didn't love his unedited diaries and his book of animal fables, but I do love everything else.) This is one of his best collections of essays.
Street scenes Vienna, 1911
Anima Rising. Christopher Moore. William Morrow, 2025. 400 pages.
More Christopher Moore! Why haven't I read him before? I love this book. It's a historical fiction fantasy comedy set in 1911 Vienna. Artist Gustav Klimt spots the body of a beautiful, young, nude woman in the canal. Thinking she's dead, something compels him to draw the scene. While he's sketching, the woman sputters. She's alive. Instead of alerting police, he takes her to the house he uses as a studio. At first, she appears mentally ill, even feral, but eventually her fantastic, incredible, totally unbelievable story emerges, with assistance from Klimt, his model Wally Neuzill, artist Egon Schiele, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. Since she initially remembers nothing about her past life, Klimt names her Judith, and she assumes a place in his world while her new friends and acquaintances help her rebuild her memory. And what a memory! Turns out, Judith is literally the Bride of Frankenstein's Monster, resurrected by Dr. Frankenstein to be his creation's companion. Following a harrowing existence as the monster's- Adam's - wife/prisoner/hostage in the Arctic, she makes multiple journeys into the Underworld, alternately interacting with gods and spirits and reappearing on the Earth, both among the Inuit and in Europe. Once her story is revealed, it becomes obvious that she is being hunted by various unknown people, putting herself and the people around her in danger. Besides being a fantastically fun and fast-moving story, this book is full of great historical bits. Most of the characters are real people, and many of the events are real. I love books that lead me down multiple rabbit holes of research as I read. There's art, philosophy, psychology and more, overlaid with very creative fantasy and totally irreverent humor. Note: there are elements that are not for the prudish or those easily triggered by open and frank sexuality. And I highly recommend the audio version; narrator Mary Jane Wells is a genius at voices and characters, adding tremendously to the enjoyment. Picture a cross between Mel Brooks and Lenny Bruce, maybe even raunchier. I will definitely be reading more Moore, especially the historically themed titles.
Movie Trailer 2018
Ready Player One. Ernest Cline. Ballantine Books, 2011. 384 pages.
I consciously avoided Ready Player One when it was the biggest novel on the planet and later when the movie was released, for two reasons: 1) my natural aversion to anything that is universally popular and 2) I am not and have never been a gamer - Tetris is as game-y as I get. I know next to nothing about video games, and I'm totally happy with that. It's been 15 years now (impossible!) since the book came out, so I decided to try, and I'm glad I did. You probably already know, but this is the plot summary: "In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself." The result is a hugely fun adventure filled with 80s nostalgia perfect for a Gen X 80s teen like myself. The fact that I'm not a gamer did not affect my enjoyment at all. It was a lot of fun. (And the audiobook narrator is Wil Wheaton who has become one of my favorite narrators.)
1996 Movie Trailer
Mother Night. Kurt Vonnegut. Fawcett Publications, 1962. 192 pages.
Latest classic read/re-read. First published in 1962 and inspired by the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann and Lord Haw-Haw, a British traitor who did pro-Nazi radio propaganda broadcasts, it's in the form of the fictional memoir of Howard W. Campbell Jr, and American citizen who moved to Germany in 1923, remained as the Nazi regime took over, and became a well known, author, playwright, and propagandist. However, he was also secretly an American spy, transmitting coded information - so coded that he had no idea what he was passing on - in his broadcasts. The trouble is that only three people beside himself knew that he was an American spy. At the war's end, Campbell became a war criminal. Initially captured by soldier Bernard O'Hare (Campbell and O-Hare both appear in Vonnegut's later Slaughterhouse Five.), Campbell's handler strikes a deal for his release, and Campbell lives the next 15 years in relative obscurity and anonymity in New York City. That life comes crashing down when his identity is revealed and publicized, and Israel, the USSR, and West Germany all start demanding his extradition for trial. Campbell writes this memoir while awaiting trial in an Israeli prison. The resulting novel is a dark-humored parody of white supremacy and extreme fanaticism, but the larger theme is really that the world is almost never black and white; everything is gray. It's a powerful short read that affirms Vonnegut's stature as one of the greatest American novelists.
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