by Richard Subber | Oct 31, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading, Language
sassy, salty, and singular
Book review:
The Kingdom of the Kid:
Growing Up In The Long-Lost Hamptons
by Geoff Gehman (b1958)
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY 2013
238 pages
I stepped outside my comfort zone to read Geoff Gehman’s memoir about some of his childhood years in the “long-lost Hamptons.” I’m glad I did.
If you have a particular point of view about memoirs, either for or against, try to forget it and pick up The Kingdom of the Kid, and just settle in for the ride.
This is more than a prosaic romp through childhood memories, it is a paean celebrating a child’s-eye-view of life.
Gehman is a writer who likes to “linger over words,” that’s my kind of writer. His prose, his stories, his memories…sassy, salty and singular.
Gehman is a poet, too. Repeatedly, he offers lush insight into his industrious youth, his friendships with the young and the old, his affinity for the place, the “long-lost Hamptons” where Geoff and his pals spent the good old days.
He describes the scene as he observed mourners in the Wainscott Cemetery:
“…I sat on my bike in the school parking lot, shaded by grand sycamores, and watched visitors treat the cemetery with reverence. They placed flowers by graves, prayed on their knees, cried on their backs. They stared at the sky, held séances in broad daylight, eavesdropped on eternity.
“Those pilgrims taught me the morality of mortality. Without asking anyone I learned to walk around the stones, to respect the dead as if they were alive.”
In every chapter he offers another little piece of his heart.
The Kingdom of the Kid is good reading. Real good.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
look elsewhere.
by Robert Waller
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 26, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
a “start feeling good” book
Book review:
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus (b1957)
New York: Doubleday, 2022
390 pages
Lessons in Chemistry is not a “feel good” book.
It’s a “start feeling good” book.
Of course, there’s a message, and there’s a good story, and the message doesn’t get in the way of the story, and the story doesn’t obscure the message. (Guys, everybody can be a scientist, no matter which bathroom they use).
I think I need to mention that I’m not a dog person, so I confess that Six-Thirty isn’t my favorite character, but he’s more human than some people I know, so he’s important. Just think about this: maybe dogs can talk, but they choose not to.
Lessons in Chemistry is 390 pages of telling the centuries-old truths about the failures and the bitterness of the culture of male domination.
Some readers may think it’s all too much (and the “Supper At Six” TV show is a bit much), but the story evolves into a good story, and we need more inspiration to understand that some girl baby born somewhere yesterday may have what it takes to be the best scientist ever.
Elizabeth Zott has the words.
She says:
“Let’s get started.”
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 19, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History
the first Army nurses…
Book review:
The Nurses: Episodes 1-16
by Janet M. Kovarik, 2017
The Nurses tells some of the other stories about the American Civil War. You probably know about Dorothea Dix, the courageous activist who became Superintendent of Army Nurses during the war.
The Nurses invites you to understand the lives and the spirit of the women who rushed to serve under her leadership. Emmelda Poole and Livinia Atwater are two marvelous women created in Kovarik’s imagination, but they are real enough.
The author writes pleasing stories about believable women who helped their fellow man in ways only women could have done in the middle of the 19th century. Women like Emmelda and Livinia offered to suffering soldiers the kind of loving care that the doctors and the surgeons couldn’t or wouldn’t provide.
If you’re a Civil War fan, dig in to The Nurses.
If you just like good storytelling and remarkably credible dialogue, dig in to The Nurses.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: Address Unknown
A friendship corrupted by Nazi hatred in WWII
by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 15, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, Politics, Power and inequality
the birth of “big business”
Book review:
The Essential Alfred Chandler:
Essays Toward a Historical Theory of Big Business
by Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (1918-2007)
Boston: The Harvard Business School Press, 1988
538 pages
Chandler offers a deep and dispassionate inquiry into the genesis of “big business” and the “big multinational corporation” in the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
There’s much of interest here, even for the casual student of history and the “non-business” types.
Much of the motivation and much of the opportunity for the development of what Chandler chooses to call the “modern business enterprise” was circumstantial and related to geography and the exigencies of human and animal labor.
The author chooses to avoid the legal/illegal, moral, and philosophical aspects of the rise of big business, and the vastly maldistributed benefits of the same.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
iambic pentameter, y’know?
da DUH, da DUH, and stuff…
“In search of”…my poem
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Oct 3, 2023 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, World history
a nightmare in slow motion
Book review:
Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War
by William Manchester (1922-2004)
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980
401 pages
Manchester’s quietly passionate memories of being a young Marine fighting in the Pacific theater in World War II are terrible to behold.
He tells all of his story, the good, the bad, and the really hard to read parts.
Reading Goodbye, Darkness means watching another man’s nightmare in slow motion.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: An Empire on the Edge
by Nick Bunker
The British wanted to win
the Revolutionary War,
but they had good reasons
for not trying too hard…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 28, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, History, Politics, Power and inequality, World history
the unknowable future begins tomorrow…
Book review:
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari, PhD (b1976)
New York: Spiegel & Grau, imprint of Random House, 2018
372 pages
Harari considers many of the questions that are plaguing 21st century liberal democracies, and the other folks, too.
Perhaps the predominant takeaway of 21 Lessons is that things are changing rapidly, and the unknowable future will be on us during our lifetimes.
If we do not try to deal more effectively and more urgently with the frightful challenges of burgeoning infotech and biotech, and the inescapable constraint of manmade climate change, and our own social, economic, and political shortcomings, we’ll unavoidably learn that we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Harari is a deep thinker, a provocative intellect, and a blunt writer who calls you to risk learning more truth.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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