Review 404: Georgie, All Along

Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

The genre is romance as I feared. Really need to stop reading these books. Sure, they are quick, but I just don’t enjoy them.

I found the plot overall somewhat predictable. The chapters had alternating viewpoints from Georgie to Levi, of course the two end up together, meeting in the first scene of the book. Through several meetings, first at the neighborhood convenience store, then both staying at her parent’s house, as they both are staying the night.

This scene I found quite unbelievable, why didn’t they just talk to each other instead of freaking out wildly? Often, I found the action where you just had to accept and not look deeply.

The male voice wasn’t very convincing to me. There were many plot holes, anyway, I finished the book and now am going to purge any remaining (if any) romance-type books out of my library.

Review 403: City of Quartz

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have so many pages of notes and thoughts on this book, but want to keep it short, to condense it all down (if possible) however haphazard this may turn out to be.

Mike Davis has provided a historical context of the region of Los Angeles in several areas, starting with art which meant writers (noir mostly) and architects (Frank Gehry). The history of Los Angeles went back to the haciendas era of the mid-1800s, with land development, boosterism and once the city became more populous than San Francisco, a strong focus on homeowner associations, leaning into politics, slow-growth, and NIMBYism, which started way earlier than one would think (based in race and class – keep out anyone not like “us”). There is a look at power structures of politics – who runs L.A. (see some racism), the police force (very strongly against blacks), history of L.A. gangs, and the Los Angeles Catholic Church hierarchy (racism here too against Hispanics). 

There is also the economics, how the city struggled having housing and downtown redevelopment as the primary growth for income, until globalization with dire results for the city and region. The finishing chapter is all about Fontana, a town that has some unique history located about 100 miles east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County. Fontana had a much more interesting history than I expected, originating with hobby farms, then Kaiser Steel plant in WWII, and post war where Hell’s Angeles was born.

In one of those serendipitous moments an article came out this week in the L.A. Times about a company town (now largest California ghost town) developed by Kaiser Steel out at Eagle Mountain located near today’s Joshua Tree. If only I could link the article…. In any case, Davis much maligned the “Times”.

One final thought – about the writing style. Often Davis referenced something, without context, so you need to know from prior experience, although occasionally he would later explain the reference. It made for some tricky reading at times, and likely miss some of the deep meaning behind his writing. I know this book has been used in college classes, and this book does call for deep reading and study. 

(okay, very last note) The book is now over 30 years old, I read the first edition, then later read a preface to a 2006 Verso edition. Enlightening, for its analysis on how the city has not improved significantly over a generation since the book was originally published. (Traffic, development, continue decline in manufacturing and inequality, to name a few.)

Review 402: The Ferryman

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book starts out with Prosperans living a perfect life, once they get old they are sent back to the nursery to be given a new life to live again. The weather is also good. Prosperans don’t have children per se, instead they adopt a child, one that is a teenager back from the nursery. They understand the basics, but have to be taught much more. Prosperans work in creative endeavors, usually, although our main character is a Ferryman. Proctor Bennet helps take the elderly to the ferry which takes them across the water to the nursery.

Yet, all is not well in the island of Prospera. The others on the island, the help is getting unhappy with their lot, as they aren’t like the Prosperans; they have children the regular way and grow old then die. They also have to do all the manual work, and something has to change.

It starts the day the Ferryman is tasked with having an assistant, well more like a mentee, and the person they need to take to the docks is none other than Proctor’s father.

Without getting into too much of the details later in the book, as to spoil anything, I will say this is a bit of a mind-bending novel. There are many turns and adjustments one has to make while reading the book. It is also filled with action, and it becomes a gripping tale.

There were some parts when I felt the book was lagging a bit, and a tiny bit predictable, but then it changed and was not going where one might think. When the book came to the ending, I thought it was extended out much longer than it needed, maybe the last several chapters didn’t need to be there. All in all, a great ride.




Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine and NetGalley for an advanced electronic review copy of this book. However, I listened to the audiobook from my public library. An excellent narration by Scott Brick and Suzanne Elise Freeman.

Review 401: Father of the Rain

Father of the Rain by Lily King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A family story, or more to the point a father-daughter story. The story is told in three parts.

In the first part Daley is eleven and exposed to so much inappropriateness for her age, finally her mother cannot take the drinking so the parents divorce.

The second part is later, as an adult, 18 years later and Daley is about to embark on a significant career move with her boyfriend who gave up his great job to be with her. But a crisis develops, her father's life has fallen apart and Daley helps to get her father sober.

The last part is the shortest section of the book, and again years later, when the father is very ill. The phone call you don't want to get, your father is on his death bed, come say goodbye.

It was a decent story, but wouldn't say great. I question why there was so much of this exposing the child to sex and it not really coming up again later. Daley has a much older brother, who is barely in the book, and the mother is bit of a side character as well, really everyone is except the father and daughter. Perhaps there was too much focus there.

Review 400: Transplanted Man

Transplanted Man by Sanjay Nigam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is centered around a hospital in New York’s “Little India” with the doctors, patients, and other workers as the characters. There are several themes in this book, primarily seems to be about sleep disturbances and relationship problems, but that is not all. Yet there is a lot of humor in the book as well, perhaps as taking life to an extreme, such as one of the first couples in the E.R. we meet is where the man took a severe bite on his wife’s buttocks. This bite, of course, does lead to problems in the marriage.

Sonny is a resident doctor, who sleepwalks, and has a healing touch. One of the main patients is a politician from India with so many transplanted organs he is known as the Transplant Man. Thus, we get the title of the book, but it is a double meaning, as most of the people are transplants from India.

We follow Sonny with a relationship with an English Indophile nurse, Gwen, who loves literature but found her calling with helping people instead. She has her own unknown illness which caused relationship issues before.

There are many characters in the book, seemingly follow them all, but it doesn’t become confusing as they are distinct enough and introduced slowly. The book doesn’t seem to have much of a plot itself, we just follow these characters and see what happens, much like a year in the life of type story. Everyone does have some transformations of sorts, so it is not static in any way. An entertaining book.

Review 399: L.A. Exile

L.A. Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writing 1932-1998 edited by Paul Vangelisti with Evan Calbi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Generally, collections that feature excerpts from longer works I do not enjoy, but this one is a bit of an exception.

Reading one entry after another with a focus on Los Angeles brings forth some semblance of coherent structure that forms a picture the editors are attempting to portray, that Los Angeles is a place of exile. Not that I agree, although…the size of the place does make it challenging.

The geographic locations of where these writers lived are within the boundaries of the county, not all firmly set within the city limits. It is a sprawling metropolis, where San Francisco is more contained. Why compare to “The City”? Well, the editor does, and it was the most populous city in the state until the 1930s.

One major complaint is the amount of space given to the women writers. Of course, there are fewer in number (5 out of 38), but the space devoted to each woman was quite small too. Each entry is as follows: a picture of where the writer lived, a short biography that typically focused on explaining their time living in L.A., then a selection of their writing. This selection was usually around 7 pages, but for the women it was usually 3.

The quality of the writing was quite good. If you compare the writing of today, it is vastly different than what is found in this book. While the book subtitle states up to 1998, most of the selections are mid-century, and the writers themselves older, generally born around the last decade of the 19th century, into the first few decades of the twentieth. The entries are listed alphabetically by last name, with about half of the writers being unknown to me.

A common theme among the writers was being associated with movies. Often, they came to L.A. to make some money scriptwriting then went back to live where they enjoyed. One writer even mentioned this era of writers were involved with the pictures instead of teaching, which today is where many writers earn their living, with a university. The other grouping are poets, eleven of them (although a couple wrote more than poetry, but that was featured).

A few surprises for me of writers living in the LA area of note: John Steinbeck, Gore Vidal, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, just to name a few. And yes, all were here to write for movies, except Steinbeck who lived through a stipend by his father. Quite a few that are well known were a surprise to me, as I always associated their lives with another location, but most of these writers didn’t stick around. A few did, Upton Sinclair and Thomas Mann did.

One final note, I got this book as a gift many years ago and was reluctant to read it as I mentioned above. Then, the first entry was a difficult starting off point. Maybe it seemed great to the editors, but for me that almost made me not read this book ever. Now that I finished, I’m glad I took the time with it.