Quiet.!: Introverts Unite.! by Susan Cain

There are 5 reasons I have rated this book on a scale of   0 – 10   as: a    - 3- .

While sucky at writing, Ms. Cain is passionate and superb at marketing.  I’m sure her next book will be better.
1 – The topic is trite.
Research into dichotomies is middle-school level writing. 
OK, maybe at a good middle-school.  

This kind of stuff may be acceptable for the Sunday supplement.

I was actually surprised that Susan Cain didn’t delve into correlations between Taurus Introverts versus Sagittarius extroverts.  All this stuff is easy to research these days.  I look for more than dichotomy in non-fiction textbooks.

2 – The material is dated.

The bane of text books is that they are only as relevant as the length of the publisher’s production cycle.

 It used to be two years for many disciplines.  

2 – a.)     This is certainly a textbook.  I’d say Sociology 1A.  This would be required reading, to be covered for a day or two in week 6 of a 15-week course.

2 – b.)    The author, being a journalist, is well aware of these factors and has recently re-issued the book [our paperback copy].

2 – c.)     Her actual material still seems 25, 50, and 75 years old, updated with anecdotal references from the past decade.

3- The merits of what is purportedly an academic book are thin.

I’d guess that there were 300 references/examples cited to support Ms. Cain’s ideas.  These appeared in one of the following three formats: 
1-                   Two-person anecdotes
   a.                   Celia and her husband on page 229
   b.                  or Don Chen on page 45
   c.                   or Greg and Emily
2-                  Multi-Person Small Studies
   a.                   Story Brook University: (p.134) 18 people studied on sensitivity
   b.                  Berlin Academy: 3 groups on solitude
3-                   Famous Name Anecdotes
   a.                   Ghandi (p.98)
   b.                  Al Gore (p.150)
   c.                   Eleanore Roosevelt (p.131)

4. - I’m already clearly on record as finding that journalists are terrible at writing books.!.!.!.

a.)        They do things like include quizzes and self-tests, which might be popular in a Home Edition newspaper.
b.)    In a blind test across twenty books² written by journalists⁶ and read by twenty-five Guerneville Regional Library Brown Bag Book Club members³, only 10% (2 of 20) books⁴ were found to be worth reading by at least 4% (1 of 25) of the readers⁵.

5.      This is a Sunday article expanded well beyond its worth or value..!.!.!.

Neither the premise, the research findings, nor the conclusion bear any merit whatsoever.
It’s nice to re-tread the halls of corporate America.  I was there in the 50’s and 60’s; and its fun to rehash the 60’s and 70’s as Silicon Valley gave birth to its name.  This well-worn regurgitation of sociological clap-trap and personality studies might be great fun for a newspaper journalist like Susan Cain.  Maybe this worked for her as a Doctoral thesis.  No.! Wait, she’s not an academic.!, and there are no insights to probe or new theories.
Unfortunately I can not concur with the “Broadway Publishers”’s note at the back of the book:
·                her writing is not passionate,  it’s droll;
·                her research is not superb, it’s worn out;
·                her stories aren’t indelible, they’re forgettable.

The Seduction of Holly Blyss by Susan Jane Terry

This is a not a great literary masterpiece.  However, it’s a fun tell-all story. 

The novel captures a three-month period in the history of the “VACATION WONDERLAND”. 

Jamie Hart closed her business across from the “Emerald Triangle Garden” in the fall of 2009.  She had called it Bloomers, a garden shop. 

Possibly a decade too early in the legalized pot revolution, a group of Marijuana users rented the location for a Pot Garden.  This is their story.

My 2₵ worth of comment on this story and book is that Jamie moved into my house, 300 yds. east of the Gardens, after she closed Bloomers.  As a neighbor, I watched the activities at the Pot Garden for that next summer of 2010, but I was also on the Board of the Monte Rio Rec & Park, along with “Sugar” (Suzi) and “Mike”, side-line players in the novel’s action. 

Monte Rio is a small town in the wine country, population under a thousand.  Not much ever goes on here, so there is a stable market for gossip.  Thus a book like this is great cannon-fodder for a few months, while people try and figure out who’s who within the many characters of this book.  Who’s good and who’s bad.  Who’s revered and who’s disparaged.

The author makes it easy for the local reader to think they know some of the characters, if the reader already knows the real fictionalized person.  Vowel changes are common like Don becomes Dan.

The author has also used full literary license to raise the tie-dye realities of Monte Rio up three notches to Hollywood standards: all the women are beautiful and smart; all the men studly and desirable [I love this stuff: It’s Garrison Keillor: Where the women are strong; the men are good-looking, And all the children are above average], and the cars are usually Mercedes, the wine Dom Perignon in crystal.

This book follows in the tradition of John McCarty’s writings, like “In the Rough”.  This was also about the town elders versus the “people”, the focus being on a proposed plan to use beautiful Sheridan Ranch as an above ground septic processing plant.

  

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

I spoke about the Chief Inspector Gamache novels at our last book club meeting.  As a preparation to recommending the series of books, I checked the Library catalogue and found them all there, but all on hold, so I put a request in on half a dozen, thinking maybe I’d get one or two over the next month or two.  I was overwhelmed to find four waiting for me the next week.  I wanted to confirm that these books were as good as I initially thought they were.  A Trick of the Light is every bit as good as How the Light Gets In.  I found the deep psychological analysis even better.  These novels are definitely cerebral exercises without the thriller special effects that so many American authors employ.

Of all those I checked out I am returning this week A Trick of the Light and A Rule Against Murder, which is six years old now.  Based on my “Trick Light” experience I will try The Beautiful Mystery for my next serious read.  I haven’t had a serious read for a while now.  Maybe the Investigator Yashim Series by Jason Goodwin was the last, three years ago.  Of course I don’t include continued reading of JCO or Parker (a modern author: prolific in death), Gibson, Allende, Martin Cruz Smith, Anne Rice, or Patchett.  These are all automatics, when they write.

I found it pleasing and refreshing to note that Penny hasn’t fallen into the trap of continually escalating plotline scenarios as she develops characters in a series of books.  Robert Parker fell into that trap with his Spenser series.  In the end he had to start afresh (!?) with Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and a Cole&Hitch western sheriff series. 

This book wasn’t one of our monthly reads so I’ll provide a short synopsis.  All the stories revolve around the sleepy little Canadian village of Three Pines just north of the Vermont, USA border; not unlike Lake Woebegone in Minnesota.  This is a well-used, but still great foil for introducing a set of mystery characters like in the game “Clue do”.

This story examines two themes: (1) the Canadian art world: artists, critics, and galleries and (2) the world of addiction and AA are involved, specifically OxyContin, Alcohol, and Percocet.  Several of the Montreal elite of the art world come to visit Three Pines before and after the murder.  Three Pines has its own artists and addicts.  Even the Sûreté and the Justice System have addicts and suspects.  The twelve steps of AA are integral to the solution of the crime. 

What I love so much about this story was that the entire action takes place in Three Pines, surrounded by our familiar cast of regular players.  This book could easily be dramatized in four acts: The Murder; The Suspects; Cases are Made; The Solution.  Within town there is: The B&B; the Bookstore; the Park, and Peter&Clara’s house.  There is nothing much to get in the way of a truly cerebral mystery story.  There are just the interactions between characters (classic drama) to advance the plot: chess games of the mind.  Classic mystery story.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

What a great story, or series of nested stories, expertly woven together to create a wonderful summer diversion.  Yes, I think this is a book I can recommend to others as an enjoyable read. 

Take your pick of sub-plots, there’s half a dozen offered up, across space and time, in this 333-page-turner.  I found it difficult to put down; wanted to keep pressing on to the next episode.  There’s time-zones of the sixties, the eighties, and now.  There’s Love, Marriage, Hollywood, WW-II, and theater.

A few of the walk-on characters don’t make it across the time-zones, like Alvis Bender and William Eddy, Dick & Liz.  But the top six central characters all persist to the last chapter.  In order of adoration: Michael Deane (total self-love); Pasquale Tursi (Saintliness); Claire Silver (the everyman); Debra Moore (motherly love); Shane Wheeler (all our kids); Pat Bender (everyone else’s kids). 

Plot twists, which are many, don’t surprise you as they do in thrillers; instead they refresh you with new ideas from a different direction.  This is an innovative novel; no formulaic tale here.  And for me, each new directional shift was pleasantly accepted, “Why not?” or better “Why didn’t I think of that?  What a great idea!”.

Did this start as a wannabe memoir from some actor, writer, or director cast aside on their way to fame and fortune.? When is Michael Deane releasing the movie?

 = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Just to join in the half-a-century old, seven degrees of separation fun, I’ve attached here and will pass around for any interested, a 1964 response letter from one of Richard Burton’s staff [RB/jb] to my mother about Burton’s NYC Hamlet that year and a dropped hint about the film yet to come.

From Wikipedia:

“He then put his stage career on hold to concentrate on film, although he received a third Tony Award nomination when he reprised his Hamlet under John Gielgud's direction in 1964 in a production that holds the record for the longest run of the play in Broadway history (136 performances).^[ The performance was immortalized both on record and in a film, which played in US theatres for a week in 1964, as well as being the subject of books written by cast members William Redfield and Richard L. Sterne. Burton took the role on just after his marriage to Taylor. Since Burton disliked wearing period clothing, Gielgud conceived a production in a "rehearsal" setting with a half-finished set and actors wearing their street clothes (carefully selected while the production really was in rehearsal). Burton's basic reading of Hamlet, which displeased some theatre-goers, was of a complex manic-depressive personality, though during the long run he varied his performance considerably, as a self-challenge and to keep his acting fresh. On the whole, Burton had good reviews. Time said that Burton "put his passion into Hamlet's language rather than the character. His acting is a technician's marvel. His voice has gem-cutting precision."  The opening night party was a lavish affair, attended by six hundred celebrities who paid homage to the couple. The most successful aspect of the production was generally considered to be Hume Cronyn's performance as Polonius, winning Cronyn the only Tony Award he would ever receive in a competitive category.”

 

 

 

And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass

Was this book over-hyped.?

Everyone loved “The Three Junes”.

That was a unique story.  The plot lines here are a recently trendy topic – finding oneself after adoption or some other mysterious birth.

I found it slow moving.  Of course I had just finished “The Cairo Affair”, which was fast-paced, an opposite swing of the pendulum.

Besides the tempo, I was also put off by the supercilious use of language.  Some might like these sorts of sentences – I didn’t.

“With insulting alacrity, in his old domain sprouted the fifth Marc Jacobs boutique within a four-block radius, compounding the sense of real-estate déjà vu in a neighborhood where stretches of once-quite-idiosyncratic merchants have been replaced by a prolific redundancy of glossy, mirrored spaces and miniskirted mannequins, each new establishment about as distinctive as a slab of brie from Trader Joe’s.”

 

I think my timing was wrong for this book.  This might have been a great summer read, if only I’d been comfortable spreading it out over ten weeks, forty pages a week. 

 

 

 

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer

This book was very reminiscent of Lawrence Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet”, one of my classic favorites.  And this is not just because of the Egyptian setting; or post-recent “Arab-Spring wars”; but also because of the author’s deftness of handling multiple voices for narration, an always difficult undertaking.

Alas, this is not (yet) a quartet, albeit a riveting 400-page read.  As with Durrell’s book, the plot lines fall somewhat within the domain of the foreign services, the secret ones.  I’m starting this write-up only having arrived at page 100 of 400, but I’m already caught up in the depth of the plotlines, a myriad of them.  

The depth comes from thoughtful, human characterizations, of which JC Oates is my capable standard.  The reader feels that this story is so believably real, that even as characters are shot and killed, the others move on, as they must, as though this is a necessarily acceptable part of life.  The women are written really well: no need in the movie for reed-thin Eurasians, nor booby blondes.

I’ll tune back in half way through.

Just as le Carré is always saying, the espionage world messes with the minds and morals of those who engage within it.  Lying, cheating and deception are so engrained in their way of life that they can no longer tell up from down.  Even time becomes difficult to grasp ahold of, “What did I tell her yesterday and what will I say to her tomorrow?”

Wow.!  Good through the final page.!  Not a twist; but an unexpected outcome.

All of my early praise continued to be justified throughout.

 

 

The Age of Miracles

Reading at Spring time in California is inspirational.  The glorious month of May with Mother Nature reveling in her fecundity and looking forward to the joys of her summer sunshine along the River.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so, we have been given a small book to read to take away all our normally deterministic cares and concerns; our plans for future actions and deeds (good and bad).  In place of our hopes and dreams, we are provided with an argument for theological fatalism; an omniscient God(s) as found at the roots of historical religions.

I read about a third of this book, then switched into speed-read mode and finished it the next day.

Sorry, the narratives on girl-cliques, training bras, and cool guys, have become unenlightening to me in my dwindling years.

So, we’ve got permission to run the sprinklers all summer long, drink to excess, and run the air-conditioner at max all the time. 

Que sera, sera.