Review 490: Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year

Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning? by Ian Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I’m not there yet, this age will be in my future (baring something catastrophic), so why not read about one man’s experience with living the age of sixty. This diary is more contemplative than what happened each day, although there is that in the book as well.

Ian Brown lives in Toronto working at the Globe and Mail. He keeps active, sometimes biking to work when he’s at home. Near the end of the book I started to wonder how many days does he actually stay at home? He travels quite frequently, and mostly for pleasure, although there is some work related travel, such as a month-long stint at Banff as he leads the literary journalism program for the fifth year.

Of course aging is a recurring topic, as is health issues, and studies that show what declines and what point – generally everything sooner than you think, just the results don’t start showing until later. Other topics he keeps returning to is sex, his family (a given) and money, worrying about enough to retire. But the primary topic seems to be his own death is on the horizon.

It's quite the readable book, and well done, especially for a diary, but it’s not just a diary. It was written and edited with an eye to publication from the start.

Review 489: Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes

Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive by James Parker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a collection of short essays each on a subject as an “Ode”. They are a positive reflection, a way of acknowledging something in a positive light in a light-hearted and quirky way. Most of these first appeared in the Atlantic magazine are collected here for publication as a book.

I had not read anything by James Parker before but the idea and the cover hit my funny-bone for a moment so I picked up the book. I read a few “Odes” a day which is a good way to get through this book.

As with other collections, some are better than others, some will appeal to one or other. I didn’t like the ones that delved deep into soccer and sports, but some fans will likely appreciate that more than myself.

These daily things one would not expect to appreciate held a wide range an example of some - an Ode to: Middle Age, Rushing, Sitting There, Not Meditating, and so on.

Thanks to W.W. Norton and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 488: Rednecks

Rednecks by Taylor Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An accurate portrayal of the most violent labor strike in the US that has been ignored. There was an all out war in the mountains of West Virginia against King Coal, the mine operators, the hired detective agencies and all else who fought against the miners and union men who wanted to be their fair due for working the mines.

The book is quite violent and told like a war story, and that is because this union strike turned into a war.

The book was well written, had some great phrases and descriptions, however my one gripe is the other side was shown as completely in the wrong with no redeeming quality. Not every person is fully evil or bad, and having a bit of humanity in portraying the other side does lend for a better read.

That said, this book returns a history that has been forgotten and needs to be remembered.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

However, I did listen to the audiobook version from my local library. An excellent way to read this book.

Initial quick review:

read the audiobook
Quite more violent than I expected, but reading some of the history this book stays true to what happened. Shocking!

Review 487: The Forest People

The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo by Colin M. Turnbull
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has been in my life since I can remember, sitting on a bookshelf. When I was very young my parents took some classes at the local college and this was required reading. When I got older the book somehow migrated to my personal bookshelves. Safe to say this will be the oldest book I owned unread until now.

I expected this to be a dry academic book but was pleasantly surprised that is not the case. This is a very readable, well written book.

The author, Colin Turnbull, lives with the Pygmies in Congo for many years. They are his friends, they accept him as one of them, and let him observe all of their rituals and ways of living, even sometimes going outside of tradition. This book is of how they lived their lives and how they interact with the villagers nearby that work plantations.

They are called Forest People, as that is their home, their life and it contrasts to the villagers who are afraid of the forest, who would rather cut it down than live within it. The people Turnbull lives with are the BaMbuti who live in the Ituri Forest. The villagers and BaMbuti live symbiotic lives, the villagers tend to believe they “own” certain Pygmies, but this is truly not the case. The relationship is more complicated. The BaMbuti know how to hunt and get meat, which the villagers are not skilled at, so the rely on the BaMbuti for this and in return they are given other types of food that is grown on the plantations. Sometimes the villagers need extra labor to help with he planation and if willing some BaMbuti will help out his “master”, but he cannot be forced to do so. There are some rituals the villagers want the BaMbuti to carry out in certain times, such as in marriages, for a death, or for the ceremonies when the children are adults. If it suits the BaMbuti they will go along with these rituals, but a village wedding is not accepted until the man gives meat to his in-law family.

The BaMbuti are generally a happy people, and sing seemingly all the time. Of course certain songs are sung for particular ceremonies. One of the strangest ceremony is the with the molimo, an trumpet but also a ceremony to the forest. The molimo cannot be seen by women, so it comes out of hiding from the forest and played when all the women and children are inside their huts for the night. The men dance and sing all night, or nearly, until the early hours when they get a few hours sleep before being awaken by the molimo from the younger bachelors. This ceremony goes on for weeks or months, until the elders believe the forest is happy again and they can hide the molimo away. The one used here ends up being a long steel pipe about fifteen feet long. Turnbull is surprised by this, thought it would be a bamboo trumpet elaborately carved but was told this one sounded good. Besides wood rots and then you’d need to make another one. What counted was the sound it made.

There’s so much more to say, but these notes are getting long. It was a fascinating book, glad I finally took the time to read it after all these years.

Initial quick review:

Was quite surprised at how readable this book is. This book has been in my life since I can remember, sitting on a bookshelf. When very young my parents took some classes at the local college and this was required reading. When I got older the book somehow migrated to my personal bookshelves. I expected it to be a dry academic book but it is entirely not that.

I will like to say more about this book, but going to leave it here for a moment.

Review 486: In the Country of Women

In the Country of Women by Susan Straight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This autobiography is a different sort than I’ve read before. It is a chronicling of family history, focused on the author’s own personal history for the majority of the book. The book is written for her three daughters, sometimes addressing them directly, even recounting what they did when young. This premise is so personal that it sounds like it wouldn’t be very interesting to read about another person’s family. Yet the author is a skilled writer it was an absorbing read.

Susan Straight grew up in Riverside California and still lives in the same neighborhood. She married her high school boyfriend and members of his extended family lives in the area as well. They are a mixed-race couple, so their backgrounds are quite divergent. Her mother immigrated from Switzerland, while his family were slaves back in the mid-1800s.

The author’s story is mostly from her younger days towards the present, but when it came to the parents, grandparents, and other ancestors is not necessarily linear. There is an abundance of characters in this book, and found it at times difficult to keep track of everyone and how they were related. I ended up giving up in that task, and just went along with the narrative flow.

I enjoyed the book, wished my family had more detailed information like this, so perhaps it made me a bit envious. I listened to the audio book which was well done by the narrator, but had a copy of the print book. This was handy as there are family photographs throughout the book.