Shopping list

Most of us who go shopping, especially for food, have shopping lists. Otherwise we are certain to forget something we need. I seem able to remember two items, but not three or more. I need a list even when I shop for clothing.

On my list

And I also have a shopping list for books, but it is more than a sheet of paper. It is a small notebook that can fit easily into my shirt pocket, one reason I prefer shirts with pockets.

Whenever I see a book or hear about a book or read a review of a book that interests me, I write the title and author down in my notebook. Sometimes I see a clothbound book in a bookstore that looks like something I might want to read. I enter it into my notebook while waiting for the paperback to come out.

For fiction, I list the books alphabetically by author. Thus there is an A list, a B list and so on. I usually put all nonfiction in one long list.

When I buy a book, I cross it off the list. Sometimes, after finding a book in a store, I decide I don't really want it after all. I cross it off my list. There are some books I never find, or I must resort to Amazon.

On my H list right now I have Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz, Burn by Peter Heller and The Life Impossible by Matt Haig. Many other titles have been crossed out. Every title on my E list now has a line through it. Obviously I buy a lot of books.

Serial books about serial killers

Sometimes one serial killer is not enough, or so Alex Grecian seems to think in The Harvest Man (2015) and his other novels

Jack the Ripper remains at large in London in 1890, but he has rivals who also enjoy cutting people up. One of these is Alan Ridgeway, an obvious copycat. Another is called the Harvest Man, an original. He is a small man who thinks himself still a child, and he is looking for his parents. When he finds couples who look something like his parents, he hides in their attics, then attacks at night, rearranging their faces with his knife before killing them.

Scotland Yard has a Murder Squad assigned to tracking down these killers, and the quest occupies a series of novels. In this one, Inspector Walter Day  is still recovering from injuries sustained through torture in The Devil's Workshop. He has a wife and two small daughters he needs to protect while still trying to find the killers. Nevil Hammersmith is a former cop who still acts like one, determined to track down Jack even without a badge. Dr. Kingsley is the coroner who has more work than he can handle in these books. Fiona is Kingsley's daughter, who loves Hammersmith even though he seems too preoccupied to notice.

I tend to prefer novels that have both a beginning and an end, rather than those with stories that, like those serial killers, just keep going and going and going.

Accountability

He'd made a mistake and she could choose to dissect and examine every particle of his actions, or she could try to move on.

Phaedra Patrick, The Little Italian Hotel

The Little Italian Hotel (2023) is the first novel by British author Phaedra Patrick that I've read that I have not enjoyed, and the line above helps explain why. It is all the husband's fault.

Adrian, Ginny's husband, does make a mistake, certainly. He tells her early in the novel that he is leaving her after 25 years of marriage. "There are cracks in our marriage and they are getting wider," he says. He has joined a dating site.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Ginny, who makes a career giving advice on a radio show, has scheduled a holiday in Italy without discussing the trip with her husband beforehand. The money is nonrefundable.

Such controlling behavior suggests the kind of widening cracks Adrian refers to. Yet her actions are never mentioned again in the novel. Everything is his fault, which may satisfy Patrick's female readers, but to this male reader it all seems a bit unfair, especially after Adrian returns to Ginny and apologizes and after she has developed a passion for her Italian hotel keeper. As far as we know, he has never so much as kissed another woman, but we witness her kissing another man. She, of course, never apologizes.

The gist of the novel is that Ginny, because the trip in nonrefundable, goes to Italy without her husband, inviting along listeners to her program who have also suffered heartbreak — one who has lost a daughter, one who is losing a mother to dementia, one who has lost a dog and one who knows he is dying. The real question, of course, is not whether Ginny can help the others feel more positive about their own situations, but whether she can patch up her own life.

Female readers may read Patrick's conclusion differently than I did.

Behind Heller's novel

Novels, especially first novels, are often as much fact as fiction, and that was true of one of the best novels to come out of World War II — Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Patricia Chapman Meder tells us about it in The True Story of Catch-22 (2012).

Meder is the daughter of Willis F. Chapman, the model for Colonel Cathcart in Heller's novel. This relationship gave her an inside connection with many surviving veterans of the 340th Bomb Group, in which Heller served as a bombardier. Heller, who died in 1999, contributed little to this book other than quotations from his novel, but many of those who served with him in Italy were able to tell their version of events, describing where the novel and the truth parted company.

The term catch-22 was an invention — Heller originally called it catch-18 — but the idea behind it was real. The number of bombing missions required before a flier could be sent home kept increasing as the war went on because of the need for veteran fliers. The only way to avoid these dangerous missions was to claim insanity, which was proof you were not insane. That was the catch.

Heller, the model for Yossarian in the novel, only wanted to survive each mission, his former mates recalled. Whether his bombs actually hit their targets did not matter much to him.

In the end, Meder's book is more military history than literary history. Those with an interest in both will no doubt appreciate it more than those interested in just one or the other.

Authors in person

Just about everyone who gets an opportunity to meet with an author in person ends up feeling mildly let down, and in some cases, grievously disappointed.

Neal Stephenson, Some Remarks

Heroes can disappoint us. Writers who spend hours crafting perfect sentences may not be nearly as engaging in person. I understand what Neal Stephenson is saying above. I just don't agree with him.

I have met and spoken with many authors over the years as a book reviewer and as a frequent attendee at literary events, and for the most part, they have impressed me, or at least not disappointed me. Most of them seemed like ordinary people, and I liked that. It was reassuring somehow. I don't want my heroes to be superheroes.

Novelist Ann Patchett has appeared at a couple of events I have attended. She was the key speaker both at an event at Kenyon College in Ohio and another at Eckerd College in Florida. I found her bubbly and personable and intelligent. Whether giving a prepared speech or answering questions, she had something interesting to say.

Jess Walter

Jess Walter is an introverted former journalist, just like me.

Laura Lippman is another former journalist who loves reading books, again just like me.

Mark Winegardner grew up in northwestern Ohio, also just like me. His high school was one of my high school's rivals.

I enjoyed talking with Alan Hlad, Cathie Pelletier, Tony D'Souza, Dandi Daley Mackall, Christopher Moore (a phone interview), Walter Tevis, Jack Mathews, Les Roberts, Donald Ray Pollock, Carla Buckley, Thrity Umbrigar and others.

I was impressed listening to talks by Richard Russo, Russell Banks, Alexander McCall Smith, David McCullough, Stewart O'Nan, P.J. O'Rourke, Susan Isaacs, Lee Smith, Amor Towles and others.

I can't think of any author who actually disappointed me in person. Perhaps if you don't put authors on a pedestal when you read their books, you will be less likely to be disappointed when you meet them in person.

Something in common

The Girl by the Bridge (2018) is another in a series of fine mystery novels by the Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason.

There are three different mysteries from three different periods that would appear unconnected, yet have common threads.

In the present there is the drug death of a young woman who had been involved in smuggling drugs. Was she murdered? Was it accidental? Was it suicide? Danni has lived with her grandparents, who seemed to have taken excellent care of her. So why had she hated them?

The novel's title refers to a girl whose body had been found near a bridge years earlier. Her doll was found nearby. Her death was called accidental at the time, and records tell very little. Konrad, a former cop, wonders if she might have been murdered. Meanwhile, Danni's grandparents ask him to look into the death of their granddaughter.

At the same time Konrad has his own personal mystery that has bothered him since his youth. What kind of man was his father? Who had murdered him so many years ago? And why?

Indridason shifts his focus from one case to another and back again, gradually revealing what all three have in common.

American readers will be challenged by many of the names in the novel. This is not a book you will probably want to read aloud to somebody else. When you read this fine story to yourself, however, you are allowed to skim over the names.

In pursuit of a killer

Paulette Jiles has become one of our best writers of western fiction, and she does it again in Chenneville (2023).

The plot seems simple enough, familiar to anyone who has watched many 1950s western movies. A Union officer comes out of a coma after the close of the Civil War and struggles to regain his memory. Recovery is slow, but gradually he regains his health, then heads back to his home near St. Louis. There he learns that his sister, her husband and child have been murdered by a man named Dodd. The rest of the novel tells of his long pursuit of Dodd into Texas. He aims to kill Dodd, whatever the consequences.

Yet Jiles throws in enough complications to make this simple plot interesting, even if not always unpredictable.

It's winter, and John Chenneville must struggle through the frigid temperatures and deep snow. Dodd rides horses until they wear out, then gets another. Chenneville is kinder to his animals, and thus slower. Even so, he sometimes gets ahead of Dodd. Along the way he picks up a dog with puppies. He gets very sick. A telegraph operator whom he meets later gets murdered by Dodd after he leaves, but Chenneville becomes the prime suspect. A U.S. marshal pursues him. Thus he is wanted for murder before he has a chance to commit one.

And then the best complication of all — Chenneville meets and falls in love with a female telegraph operator in Marshall, Texas. Can she dissuade him from his vow to avenge his sister by becoming a murderer? Or will she help him?

The author's News or the World was turned into a Tom Hanks movie. This novel could be turned into another fine film. Where's Randolph Scott when you need him?

Required reading

A front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal recently read, "Books in English Class Shift Little in Decades." In other words, high school students today are mostly reading the same assigned books that their parents read.

I find this surprising. I had assumed that with feminism and wokeness dominating schools of education in recent years that high school English curriculums would now be mostly books written by women, people of color and homosexuals. Yet the article says, "All of the authors of the top 10 books are white, eight men and two women."

This probably has much to do with English teachers, administrators and school board members favoring the books they themselves read in high school. Sticking with the tried and true is usually easier and safer.

Literature favored in many high schools often includes The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and Hamlet.

The article concludes with a comment by an Illinois teacher, "I more than anything want to create a lifelong reader."

I think that should be the goal of all English teachers. Unfortunately much required reading may accomplish just the opposite. How many students forced to read Hamlet will then volunteer to read Macbeth? Probably not many. They might even avoid Shakespeare for the rest of their lives.  To Kill a Mockingbird might have a better success rate.

The ideal assigned reading for high school students should possess the following qualities:

1. It should be relatively short. Short books like Of Mice and Men are less intimidating. Students are constantly distracted by friends, activities, video games and social media. Short books are more likely to be actually read in full.

2. It should be meaningful. That is, it must bring out issues that stimulate the mind and make students want to talk about them in class.  It need not be a book about a contemporary teenager, but that might help.

3. It should be wholesome. I am talking about today's standards, not those of 50 years ago. Even so, there must be standards. Why invite controversy from parents?  A novel does not need graphic sex and four-letter words to be profound and engaging.

4. It should be interesting, even exciting. People read books because they enjoy them. When assigned a book that makes a reader want to keep turning the pages to discover what happens next, a student will be more likely to finish reading that book and perhaps even want to find another book just like it.

In that case, mission accomplished.

Bird brain

Scientists who study animals have traditionally underestimated them. Animals can't use tools. When Jane Goodall proved otherwise, others refused to believe it. And when Irene M. Pepperberg proved that Alex, her grey parrot, could communicate by speech, not just repeat words, and even do basic math, she was not immediately believed either.

Pepperberg tells their story in her 2008 book, Alex & Me.

Alex lived a shorter life than most grey parrots, yet it was a spectacular, headline-making life. Amazingly, the author had simply picked him at random among other parrots in a pet shop. She only wanted to examine scientifically just how good these parrots might be at language. One parrot, she thought, was as good as another.

She was trained as a chemist, earning a doctorate, yet had always loved birds and she was drawn to studying them, even though throughout her career she had difficulty finding teaching positions and getting study grants. Her success with Alex even seemed to work against her, as colleagues became jealous of the publicity her work generated.

Even Pepperberg underestimated Alex. Partly this was the result of the nature of science. Behaviors had to be tested over and over again before anything could be proven, yet Alex quickly became bored with repeating the same tests. Often he would simply refuse to cooperate. Or he would come up with something unexpected and clever.

Once when he was frustrated at not being given a nut, Alex said, "Want a nut. Nnn ... uh ... tuh." In effect, he had just spelled the word nut. At another time, he expressed the concept of zero without being taught. Pepperberg writes, "This parrot, with his teeny brain, seems to have come up with a concept that had eluded the great Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria."

Had Alex lived longer and had he been encouraged to learn more than he could with those simple tests he was put through repeatedly, who can say what he might have been capable of?

The author sums up her parrot's contribution to science in this way: "Birds can't learn to label objects, they said. Alex did. OK, birds can't learn to generalize. Alex did. All right, but they can't learn concepts. Alex did. Well, they certainly can't understand 'same' versus 'different.' Alex did. and on and on."

Save the music

Sometimes sounds turn me almost inside out with longing.

Kathleen Dean Moore, Earth's Wild Music

The sounds Kathleen Dean Moore writes about in the above line from Earth's Wild Music (2021) are the sounds of nature, Other naturalists write mostly about animal behavior or the visual beauty of nature, but Moore's focus is on what she hears when she steps outside.

These essays contain some of the most beautiful nature writing — or any kind of writing — one is likely to find. She writes about the songs of humpback whales, a rattlesnake's rattle, the calls of birds, the warning calls of various animals and even the sounds heard in one of the few places left in the United States where no human sounds can be heard.

"The whole planet sings," she writes. Yet the sound is getting dimmer. While the mission of her book is to call our attention to the sounds of nature, it is at the same time about making her readers aware that so many species are rapidly diminishing. Under the threat of expanding human development, pollution, climate change or whatever, animal life is simply not nearly as abundant as it once was. Our grandchildren will live in a very different world, one in which there is much less wild music.

"Our work is not to save our way of life," she writes, "but to save the world from this way of life's destructive power."