Review 379: Post Office

Post Office by Charles Bukowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a note that Bukowski wrote this novel in 4 weeks, and was likely the first novel he'd written. It is fairly autobiographical, based on his time working at the post office and his off-work activities: lots of drinking, getting with women, and gambling.

Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski is the main character (he appears in many of Bukowski's auto-fiction novels). Interspersed with his failing relationships with women, a few he married and one he had a child with, we see the drudgery of working at the post office. Chinaski hates the work. It is physically demanding and mentally demoralizing. He gets written up for all sorts of problems, taking too many break, too long, not showing up for work, taking too long to get through a mail bin. Once he even set a small fire in the post office, thus changing the rules for no smoking allowed.

There is humor in this book. It is also a book I can't see being written today, but I'm glad it is there. Bukowski tells it straight.

I listened to the audiobook and it was a perfect way to read the book. Also, was one of those rare moments when I got through a book entirely in one day.

Review 378: People of the Black Sun

People of the Black Sun by Kathleen O'Neal Gear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book #20 in the series: North America's Forgotten Past, and book #4 in the sub-series: People of the Longhouse.

This is the last book in the sub-series, and it closes the loop for this group of characters, that were instrumental in bringing about peace in the last after decades of war.

While this is fiction, it is also historical and attempts to match the oral histories of the Iroquois how they went from blood feuds to peace, which influenced the United States.

This is a good conclusion to the series, the best book of the four, but if this was read alone I don’t think the power contained within would be as striking.

I do enjoy these books written by wife and husband team, that through their education, research and dedication bring historical novels of the people of the Americas past.

Review 377: Vesper Flights

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A series of essays, not all with the subject of birds. Well written essays. I listened to the audiobook that was narrated by the author. She does a fantastic job, and I think this is the best way to read her book.

There are 41 essays in this book, many short and none too long. Some of the pieces appeared in a magazine prior, but may have been reworked slightly for the book. Only once did there seem to be a repetition of material, found in back-to-back essays. Perhaps that should have been edited a bit more, but overall the essays do shine for the language and thoughts.

Animals, well birds more specifically, do come up frequently in most of the essays. She also wrote about her migraines, a refugee and a few essays were autobiographical.

 

Review 376: Eversion

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

The main character is a doctor, an unreliable narrator at that. He keeps waking from up from a dream where he died...or did he really die? The doctor is on a ship, and the crew remains the same each time, but there are changes.

It's an interesting premise. There is also the warning, get out while you can. It all has a sort of Lovecraft type vibe going, something unknown with a slight horror aspect.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was fantastic!

Review 375: The Broken Land

The Broken Land by W. Michael Gear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

People of the Longhouse #3

North America's Forgotten Past #19

This book wasn't nearly as dark as the previous two in the sub-series. The story takes up 12 years after the previous, when the stolen children are now adults and most in prominent positions in their clans. Despite being in different villages, even in enemy clans, they all are bound to each other. They will always be friends after what they went through.

War is taking over, due to illness sweeping through the land, and cold weather that provided a poor harvest. A huge war seems to be coming, can peace prevail? We don't know that really as there is another book in this series.

I enjoyed this book much more than the previous two in the sub-series. There is enough filling in of the past that one doesn't necessarily have to read the previous books. But where this one ends, you definitely want to read the next one. Hopefully I won't wait to long to get to it.

Review 374: The Trouble with Tom

The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine by Paul Collins
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars



Not really a biography of Thomas Paine as the author follows where Paine's bones have appeared in the years after his death. Along the way we meet all sorts of people that are associated, and brief biographies of m0st. We have moments of modern times and compare the current state of that place with what it was like in the past, when Paine was there, or some of his bones.

One person discussed the most is Moncure D. Conway, a minister who published Paine's works. We also encounter Margret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain and some phrenologists.

Wasn't exactly what I expected from the book, but I'm not unhappy I read it.
Listened to the audiobook.