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| Pittsburgh. City of steel. City of bridges. |
Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in December, and two I did not finish.
Book 1
1. Moving Can Be Good For You
Matthew had read somewhere – in one of those hoary lists with which newspapers and magazines fill their columns on quiet days – that moving house was one of the most stressful of life’s experiences – even if not quite as disturbing as being the victim of an armed robbery or being elected president, nemine contradicente, of an unstable South American republic.
Book 2
Richard Ainsworth was out of his depth and out of his comfort zone.
Book 3
It’s a drizzly Sunday morning, the day after my twelfth birthday, and my family – such as it is – has arrived at Swallowtail Island in the western end of Lake Erie.
Book 4
When Sheldon Russell Curtis told this story to his daughter, Rosa, she kept every word in her heart and was to retell it many times over in her long lifetime.
Book 5
Thousands of people came to New York City on 24 May 1883 to observe the formal opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Book 6
Not very long ago and not very far away, there once was and still is an invisible place right here with us.
Book 7
There was a buzz of excitement when I arrived at my Harvard office at 78 Mt. Auburn Street one June morning in 1972.
Did not finish #1
two phone calls and a funeral
Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blond Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six.
Did not finish #2
“Sprinkles, no!” Lexy hissed at her dog, who was wriggling through the gap in the backyard fence.
The titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
The Revolving Door of Life (44 Scotland Street Series #10)
Alexander McCall Smith
281 pages • first published 2015
Our seven-year-old hero gets a bit of a reprieve from some of the usual stresses in his life, a new character is introduced, and there is a more in-depth analysis of the inner workings of the Association of Scottish Nudists.
I am soooo grateful for this series.
A note on the first line: nemine contradicente is an archaic legal term that means “by consensus” , “with no one dissenting.” I had to look that up.
Book 2
Death and Fromage (A Follet Valley Mystery series #2)
By Ian Moore
320 pages • first published 2022
I was desperate for a light mystery, and this was on the library’s available list of kindle downloads. The author is a British comedian. This is the second book I have read this year which featured cheese prominently. Also, there are chickens.
The characters’ names, oy! One chef’s surname is Grosmallard, which I translated in my head every time as “Fat Duck.” (I was annoyed at myself because I wasn’t sure whether to pronounce the “s”.) And another chef is named Guy Garçon, which means “guy boy.” (When I learned French, we were taught that the way to summon the waitstaff in a French restaurant was to proclaim, “Garçon,!” I googled this and found, thankfully, that there are now gender-neutral words to use.)
There are some ludicrous situations which were amusing, but I did not like the characters overmuch. I kept reading this book mainly for the descriptions of food.
The name of the French town where the cheese-related murder takes place is “Saint-Sauver” which annoyed me because I kept thinking of La Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur (with a “u”), the cathedral in the town of Aix-en-Provence, where I lived for a few months. And there are 40+ towns in France and Canada named Saint-Sauveur. I suppose the author would have been sued if he had added the “u”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aix_Cathedral
Book 3
The Swallowtail Legacy: Wreck at Ada's Reef
(The Swallowtail Legacy series #1). Y.A. lit.
By Michael D. Beil
311 pages • first published 2022
I liked the characters, the setting and the writing. This book fit the bill for the type of mystery I was seeking. It is set in current times but reaches into the past to examine a suspicious event.
Book 4
Pink and Say
By Patricia Polacco
48 pages • Published 1994. Picture book (children’s lit).
A poignant tale of compassion, sadness, injustice and honor. It takes place during the US Civil War. One interesting aspect is that the Black man knows how to read, and the White man doesn’t. This book gives the reader, whether young or adult, a lot to think about.
I borrowed it from the library because in October my daughter referenced it when she helped me make the decision to attend an event where I would have the chance to possibly shake the hand of a very consequential person (I did go to the event, but I did not shake that person’s hand, and I am okay with that. I was very happy to just be there in the presence of this august person.)
Book 5
The Battle For Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel
By Paul Krause
584 pages (361 pages of text, excluding Appendices, notes, index, photos) • first published 1992.
This book is quite good, and I learned a lot. The events described echo to this day. I saw strong parallels between some people described in the book and some prominent rich people today.
That said, it was slow going, which could be either due to my reduced concentration level, or the writing/topic or maybe that’s just the reading speed for a proper history book. I got confused about the various labor strikes, not realizing until the author stated half-way through that there was a big geographical difference between Pittsburgh and Homestead (a vast 6 miles apart, but very close to each other these days) that had an effect on the outcome of labor strikes and management lockouts.
The Kindle version which I got from the library is rife with typos.
The names of the rich people, who also managed the political machine in the area, endure to this day. Christopher Magee was the Pittsburgh city treasurer and political “boss” of the area (Magee Hospital, where some of the Common Household kids were born; Magee named it after his dear mother). William Flinn was owner of a large construction company and chair of the Pittsburgh Republican party (William Flinn Highway, a.k.a Route 8, a road I drive on frequently). And of course, Andrew Carnegie, immigrant from Scotland who owned large steel mill operations (he has numerous libraries, a university, a town, and other stuff named after him). Tellingly, I was unfamiliar with the names of the labor leaders, and to my knowledge nothing is named after them; for example: John McLuckie, Thomas W. “Beeswax” Taylor, Thomas Armstrong. McLuckie had to leave the US - the text says “he was last seen in 1901 in Mexico, where he worked as a miner and well driver.” (page 4)
Local politics was rife with favoritism, political machines, and graft.
Then there is Philander Knox (1953-1921). He was a lawyer, counsel for Carnegie’s companies, and eventually a US Senator, Attorney General, Secretary of State. He was the Michael Cohen of his day: “He provided more than just expert advice; he functioned as a field lieutenant who could handle unseemly details in utter confidence while simultaneously maintaining a gentlemanly public posture.” At the suggestion of Andrew Carnegie and his evil twin Henry Frick, Knox was appointed Secretary of State (1909-1913 under President Taft; the book says that Knox was the one who actually directed the Taft Administration). During his tenure the US dominated the so-called “banana republics” in Central America, a policy which still affects all our lives today.
The book takes Thomas “Beeswax” Taylor and some other labor leaders to task for abandoning the labor movement and becoming an entrepreneur, real estate salesman. But just how much did he earn at those endeavors? Did Taylor oppress other workers the way his compatriot Andrew Carnegie did? How many children did Beeswax Taylor have, that he had to support? I found nothing on the internet about Beeswax Taylor, other than references to this book, and to tailor’s beeswax. I can’t imagine Taylor ended up with vast wealth earned on the backs of workers, the way Carnegie did.
Gingerbread depiction of
Pittsburgh, the City of Bridges. 2023.
Book 6
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
By Patti Callahan Henry
368 pages • first pub 2023
For book club.
Started slow. When it got to the chapter describing the bonfire, I got more interested but I can't say why. The premise of the novel is that the stories we tell ourselves (about a fantasy world or about ourselves) can either help or hinder us in managing our lives. I believe that, but maybe the point was overblown. I felt very sorry for Barnaby. I thought he deserved better. There is much tea drinking, which I always appreciate in a novel. This one has an over-the-top happy ending, which is just the type of ending that I needed to read right now.
Book 7
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
By Doris Kearns Goodwin
496 pages (405 pages of actual text) • first pub 2024.
I thought this memoir/historical look back was interesting. Kearns Goodwin is a very good writer. I have really appreciated two other books of hers - No Ordinary Time, and Team of Rivals. The most fascinating parts of this one, to me, were the incident with Che Guevara, and the meeting with the Civil Rights leaders. The description of the Democratic Convention of 1968 was gripping. Some parts were slower going. I was compelled to finish it because I waited for a long time to get it on kindle from the library, and I had only a few days left before it would be snatched away.
Did not finish #1
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - By Marina Lewycka
326 pages • first pub 2005
Billed as hilarious, but I wasn’t in the mood for it in December 2024, partly because of what is likely to happen to Ukraine, but mostly because I did not need to read about nasty battles between siblings.
Did not finish #2
Killer Cupcakes (Lexy Baker series #1)
By Leighann Dobbs
146 pages • first pub 2012
Murder mystery about as light as cupcake icing. The dog is named “ Sprinkles” and therefore I just could not continue.
1 comment:
I enjoyed A Short History of Tractors, but I read it ages ago. It's possible I'd feel as you do if I tried reading it now. And the title "Killer Cupcakes" sounds charming. My neighbor gal met Doris Kearns Goodwin this fall at a conference in Boston and she was SO THRILLED! Her writing is amazing, she has a magnificent mind, IMHO. Appreciate your reading list, heavy on the light, which is where I'm at these days, too. I'm nearly finished with The Reindeer Hunters, the second book by Lars Mytting, a sequel to The Bell in the Lake. It astounds me how something can still be so beautifully written after it's been translated into English.
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