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Absent Friends is a collection of short stories by Frederick Busch. Some were good; some weren't. There were, however, several sentences and/or thoughts worth comment.

1) One story, "Ralph the Duck," had an absolutely terrific opening sentence. "I woke up at 5:25 because the dog was vomiting." (page 66) That book I read on writing, Hooked, kept giving examples of first sentences. The author would then ask something along the lines of "who could read that and not read further?" I'd usually raise my hand or else say, "Me." But when I read the opening sentence of "Ralph the Duck," I knew what the Hooked author was talking about.

2) The narrator in "Ralph the Duck" is a college maintenance man. He likes the job, where one of the benefits is that he can take one free course per semester. He figures that in twenty or so years he'll have a college degree. At one point in the story there's a fierce winter storm that causes the college to close. "Everyone else had gone home except the students, and most of them were inside. The ones who weren't were drunk, and I kept on sending them in and telling them to act like grown-ups. A number of them said they were, and I really couldn't argue." (page 77) I like the idea of the person-in-charge actually understanding, even while correcting, the behavior of the students in his charge.

3) In "Naked" the narrator is talking about the troubled relationship between himself as a teenager and his father. At one point the narrator thinks, "I was the usual thirteen." (page 128) I was happy to read that sentence because I believe age thirteen is, for many (myself included), the worst year of a young person's life. Anyone else hold that belief? Just curious.

4) In a story titled "In foreign Tongues" several people are sitting around talking after they have completed a group session in a psychologist's office. The author writes, "Or all of those short stories where people just sort of talk very tersely and not a lot happens, but you know something's supposedly been said, something important, you know? And then the story's over and nobody knows what happened except self-control was exercised?" (Page 143) Truth be told, I pretty much felt that way about most of the stories in this collection, especially this one. Another book like this, and I'll delete short stories from my reading.

5) Question. Also in "In Foreign Tongues" a character talks about his father's absences from home. "I forget the name of his boat. I forget where the hell he sails in. Whatever they do in submarines—do they call it sailing?" (Page 148) What do they call traveling in a submarine? I have no idea.

6) In "One More Wave of Fear" the narrator tells of a time when his childhood home was overrun with squirrels in the attic. His father traps them, and he and his mother go to a nearby park to release them. After doing so, the squirrels race up into the trees' branches. The narrator describes his mother: "She diminished, staring up at them, like the pretty girl in a horror film who at last understands what has come for her." (Page 209) I like the sentence although I find equating being found out to have been a communist to the return of released squirrels pretty far-fetched. Maybe my own short stories don't sell because I keep aiming to amuse rather than confuse. I'm not real big on hidden meanings.

7) On poetry: "Of course, you could argue that while poetry comes from a natural impulse—to talk!—it either sounds natural, like us, or it doesn't." (Page 252) That might be why I don't like most poetry; it doesn't sound natural. But I love Robert Frost—and e. e. cummings. "anyone lived in a pretty how town"? Absolutely love it. Go figure.


Words

1) Spansule. "He (a doctor) ordered it by spansule." (page 181) According to dictionary.com: "a modified-release capsule of a drug." And now I know that capsules can be divided into types. Not sure why, but I figured a capsule was a capsule was a … And so on.

2) Pileated. "They forced me to stroll through Prospect Park while searching, say, for the pileated woodpecker." (Page 199) Woodpeckers come in types? Like capsules, I always figured a woodpecker was a woodpecker was a… I Pileated means crested, according to dictionary.com. Strange, I always thought all woodpeckers had crests. My gut feeling is that the writer was trying to sound knowledgeable.

3) Cataclysm. I have only known it as a religious term, so "Cataclysm was really all a kid had going for him until he was taller than his parents" (page 204) made no sense. OK, dictionary.com says, "any violent upheaval." Looking further, I did recognize various forms of the word. Ah, I figured it out. I was mixing it up with catechism. I never realized how similar those two words were.


So, do I recommend? Nah. Not unless you've got a WHOLE lot of time on your hands.

Everything Cats Expect You to Know by Elizabeth Martyn, another birthday present, was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Many, many dog-eared pages. Some designate information that was new to me, others words I didn't know (the author being British), and a third category–a big one, which will not be part of the review—information I want to check out on the computer, mostly artwork and stories.

Information first:

1) In the battle of Pelusium, 525 BC, Cambyses of Persia attacked Africa. Knowing that the Egyptians revered cats, "he ordered his men to strap live cats to their shields, then advance." (page 13) His strategy worked; the Egyptians "had no choice but to lay down their bows and arrows because, for them, to injure a sacred animal was a serious serious offense." (page 13) Historical rumor says that no one was killed, but a study of skulls found differences in each group of warriors. Whatever. I still find it an interesting strategy for war.

2) "Neither of them (cats and chickens) can taste sweetness." (page 51) Betcha didn't know that.

3) Occasionally maxims/adages appear. Among the best was, "A cat who wants breakfast/has no snooze button." (page 66)


Words:

1) Bollard. "Sympathize with the neighbor who crashed into a bollard while swerving to avoid cat." (page 32) Dictionary.com: "British . one of a series of short posts for excluding or diverting motor vehicles from a road, lawn, or the like." Ah, got it. (Like I'll remember?)

2) Mog. "Every domestic mog in the world today…" (page 48) Again it's part of the odd way British people speak English. Moggy is "noun, plural -gies. British Informal . a cat." I guess mog is an even more informal form of moggy. (How informal can you get? "These Brits," she says, shaking her head. "Why can't they speak English correctly?")

3) Astrakhan. "It looks as if it's wearing its very own astrakhan coat,…" (page 92) I think it's a loopy type of weave, and I may have looked it up before, but here goes (again?) From dictionary.com: "as tra·khan –noun 1. a fur of young lambs, with lustrous, closely curled wool, from Astrakhan. 2. Also called astrakhan cloth . a fabric with curled pile resembling astrakhan fur." I was right. Next time I run into it I might even have confidence that I actually know what it means.

4) Panto. "You know the story; you've seen the panto." (page 118) Short for pantomime? Yep. Maybe I'm starting to grasp this weird use of English.

5) Kerfuffle. "Chris Mulloy nearly got away with it in the kerfuffle caused by his traveling companion…" (page 142) Hassle? Dictionary.com: "commotion; disorder; agitation" Close enough.

6) Solipsism: "Where sopilsiism is concerned, cats knock celebs into a cocked hat." (page 203) I should know this one, but don't think I do. Dictionary.com: "–noun-1. Philosophy . the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist. 2. extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption." Nope. I didn't know it. But cats sure have it--in spades.

I do, however, have a major disagreement with the title of this book. I think all cats expect you to know is how to fill and clean the litter box, how and where to put down water, and how and where to put down food, the latter being on demand and wherever the cat is at the moment.

Recommend? Only for serious catofiles.

Last fall I took an online course on writing the literary short story. The teacher was a Clifford Garstang, and In an Uncharted Country is a collection of some of his short stories. Damn good short stories, I might add. They are about various groups of people, geographically related, as well as connected within their own individual stories. That made reading fun. You'd read about one set of people, then move on to another story about other people. The third story might concern people in the second story, those in the first story, or another group of people that will again appear in future stories. The farther in you get, the more people you meet, and you begin to see the inter connections among all the people.

But the collection of short stories is not only interestingly structured; many of the stories appeal as much to the emotions. In fact, as conscious as I now am about writing styles, I actually teared up in three places. That I consider to be high praise for the writer.

Recommend? Wholeheartedly!

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen is a meticulously researched—and interesting—biography. I'll present a few passages and events I found interesting and a section on what I found to be the most fascinating thing in the book. Curiously enough, it turns out to be medical.

Passages and/or events:

1) "… her imagination was her greatest comfort, and her refuge even in her last days, when she wrote in her journal, 'Lived in my mind where I can generally find amusement…. A happy world to go into when the real one is too dull or hard.'" (page 5) And at that point I identified and fell in love with Louisa May Alcott. But then, I have always been a fan.

2) Louisa May Alcott and other members of her family were among the early abolitionists and activists for women's rights. Her concern about abolition began early when as a child she had been playing with a hoop near a river, lost control, and went into the river to retrieve her toy. An undertow caught and pulled her under. A young black boy pulled her out. Louisa's father, a teacher, placed the boy in his school. Soon other parents heard of their children attending school with a black child and threatened to pull their children out. Bronson Alcott would have no part of that. The boy remained enrolled, the other parents acted on their threat, and school closed. (pages 50-51) One has to admire such devotion to principle—even if the man's family was hungry and close to homeless.

3) Not surprisingly, Abby Alcott—Bronson's life, Louisa's mother—kept a journal. At one point, annoyed with Bronson for being incapable/unwilling to support his family, Abby entered the following complaint about her husband: "'Why so much talk, talk, talk; so little give!' and 'Why are men icebergs when beloved by ardent natures and surrounded by love-giving and life-devoted beings.'" (page 63) Who says times have changed?

4) And much, much later: "'A philosopher is a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes, trying to haul them down.' Abby saw it in terms of male and female: 'how naturally man's speech seems to be in the region of the head, and the woman was in the pain and the heart and affections.'" (page 73) Wow! And that was way before 1850.

5) A clue to what Louisa May Alcott might have been like can be based on another entry in Abby's journal while speaking about a group of men who had visited her husband . "'The gentlemen discussed the overthrow of state government and the errors of all human government.' Louisa, exposed to this line of thought nearly every day, would grow up to regard civil law as more in need of reform than enforcement, and as a poor representation of a higher law that held all people equal status and rights." (page 82) Clearly the world needs more Louisa May Alcotts.

THE SERIES OF EVENTS THAT TRULY SURPRISED ME

Louisa May Alcott died in 1888, and in 2001 was diagnosed to have died of lupus. I found the events that led to that diagnosis absolutely fascinating, and, as you probably know, to me most things medical are not fascinating.

It turns out that during the Civil War Louisa May Alcott worked as a nurse in a hospital in Washington DC. During that time she contracted typhoid pneumonia, a disease then treated with calomel, which at the time was believed to leave a residue of mercury in the body. When, years later, Louisa began to feel pain in her legs, it was believed to be the result of mercury. Through out the rest of her life the pain worsened and ultimately in 1888 she died of a stroke.

Meanwhile, back in 1870 while on a trip to Europe, Louisa had a portrait made while she was visiting Italy. No one really liked the portrait because it showed up a sunburn below her eyes and across her nose. In a sequel to Little Women, Jo's Boys, Jo/Louisa had the painting made, disliked it and hung it behind a door.

Onward to 2001. Drs. Norbert Hirschhorn and Ian Greaves were studying theories about mercury poisoning that might have led to the death of Abraham Lincoln. In their minds facts were not adding up. Then they learned that Louisa May Alcott had died with some of the same problems. The facts in her case were not adding up either, so the doctors started looking for some autoimmune disease that might explain the similarities in both cases. For her they narrowed the field down to syphilis and lupus. Assuming syphilis was highly unlikely, they settled on lupus. Could they prove it?

A short time after deciding on lupus as the candidate, Dr. Hirshhorn was visiting Orchard House (the Alcott home), saw the painting and recognized the sunburn as butterfly rash, an early indication of lupus.

Cool, huh?

Overall recommendation? Sure, especially for those who were Little Women fans when they were growing up.

On the cover of W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz the Los Angeles Times is quoted, calling the book "A remarkable accomplishment." "To read" I feel compelled to add. Saying that Austerlitz is a "tough read" is an understatement. Sentences that run over six pages in length? Only for William Faulkner will I plow through anything like that. Specifics? Sebald mentions birds roosting in the cavernous ceiling of a railroad station. What follows is is a listing of every type of bird that may have ever appeared there. Quite often I felt I was trapped in Moby Dick, specifically the sections where Herman Melville catalogs the different types of whales. So why did I keep reading? I hoped/believed that such tedium would lead to a really emotional impact at the end of the book. Sadly, it didn't. But there were things I noticed. (BTW, the first surprise of Austerlitz was that the book was not named after the place. In Austerlitz, Austerlitz is the main character who searches the history of his own life in an attempt to understand the Holocaust.)

Stuff:

1) "… it is often our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the degree of our insecurity. The construction of fortifications … clearly showed how we felt obliged to keep surrounding ourselves with defenses, built in successive phases as a precaution against any incursion by enemy powers, until the idea of concentric rings making their way steadily outward comes up against its natural limits." (page 14) Interesting. All sorts of ancient forts come to mind. And even the Pentagon.

2) Related to the above: "Such complexes of fortifications… show us how, unlike birds, for instance, who keep building the same nest over thousands of years, we tend to forge ahead with our projects far beyond any reasonable bounds." (page 18) Does that make the score birds–1, humans–0?

3) Ponderings on animals: "We are not alone in dreaming at night for, quite apart from dogs and other domestic creatures whose emotions have been bound up with ours for many thousands of years, these smaller mammals such as mice and moles also live in a world that exists only in their minds whilst they are asleep as we can detect from their eye movements, and who knows, said Austeritz, perhaps moths dream as well, or perhaps a lettuce in the garden dreams as it looks up at the moon by night." (page 94) Okay. One reason vegetarians don't eat meat is because of the slaughter of animals. Perhaps a lettuce can dream. Now what? People will also give up veggies?

4) "A clock has always struck me as something ridiculous, a thoroughly mendacious object, perhaps because I have always resisted the power of time out of some internal compulsion which I myself have never understood, keeping myself apart from so-called current events in the hope, as I now think, said Austerlitz, that time will not pass away, has not passed away, that I can turn back and go behind it, and there I shall find everything as it once was, or more precisely I shall find that all moments of time have co-existed simultaneously, in which case none of what history tells us would be true, past events have not yet occurred but are waiting to do so at the moment when we think of them, although that, of course, opens up the bleak prospect of everlasting misery and never ending anguish." (page 101) After untangling the maze of words in that sentence, I'm pretty sure I found an interesting thought. BTW, that sentence pretty much illustrates the style of writing Sebald uses. (God, help us all!)

5) "… he waited with me in McDonald's until my train left, and after a casual remark about the glaring light which, so :evil: he said, aloud not even the end of the shadow and perpetuated the momentary terror of a lightning flash…" (page 113) Pretty cool description of a McDonald's, IMHO.

6) On language: "All I could think was that such a sentence only appears to mean something, but in truth he is at best a makeshift expedient, a kind of unhealthy growth issuing from our ignorance, something which we use, in the same way as many sea plants and animals use their tentacles, who grope blindly through the darkness enveloping us." (page 124) Yep. I often felt that way while figuring out which words best express an idea--or when reading this book.

7) And then there were the annoying moments when the writer wrote in French. Too bad, I guess, if the reader didn't understand. I also find it a ironic that the translator, translating from German to English, didn't bother translating the French. I guess those who read "literature" are expected to know many languages, one of which needs to be French.

8) A typical sentence: "This remarkably thin man—the first thing you noticed about him was that although he could not have been much over forty his head was wrinkled in fan-like folds above the root of his nose—went through the necessary formalities without another word, very slowly, almost as if he were moving in a denser atmosphere than ours, asked to see our visas, looked at our passports and his register, made an entry of some length on the squared paper of a school exercise book in laborious hand writing, gave us a questionnaire to fill in, looked in a drawer for our key and finally, ringing a bell, summoned as it seemed from nowhere a porter with a bent back, who was wearing a mouse-gray coat that came down to his knees and, like the clerk at the reception desk, appeared to be affected by a chronic lethargy which incapacitated his limbs." (page 208) Ick!

Words, lots and lots of words:

1) Dodecagon. "… we can see that towards the end of the 17th century the star-shaped dodecagon the high entrenches…" (page 15) Some sort of shape? "noun Geometry . a polygon having 12 angles and 12 sides." Okay. Actually, some sort of shape is good enough for me.

2) Casemate. "This casemate, in which you sense immediately…" (page 25) No idea. Something in a building? Yep. "noun. 1. an armored enclosure for guns in a warship. 2. a vault or chamber, especially in a rampart, with embrasures for artillery.

3) Defile. "… Through a narrow defile,…" (page 36) As a noun? No idea. Dictionary.com only has it as a verb. Anyone know?

4) Manse. "… in my narrow bed in the manse …" (page 45) A dwelling given to a priest, parson, etc.? Yep. I have of course read it many times and assumed I knew what it meant, but I thought I'd check it out and be sure.

5) Lanceolate. "… the lichen and the dried lanceolate willow leaves…" Apparently a type of willow leaf. "adjective 1. shaped like the head of a lance. 2. narrow, and tapering toward the apex or sometimes at the base, as a leaf." Hardly even close on that one—even if the word leaf is mentioned.

6) Palmate. "… towering cast iron columns with their palmate capitals…" (page 128) "shaped like an open palm or like a hand with the fingers extended, as a leaf or an antler" OK. Architecture was one of Austerlitz's passions.

7) Rank. "… underneath a taxi rank." (page 130) Stand? Dunno. Nothing in dictionary.com even comes close.

8) Rucksacks. "… carrying rucksacks or small leather cases." (page 141) A small leather case? Dictionary.com: "noun—a type of knapsack carried by hikers, bicyclists, etc." Just not of leather, I guess.

9) Anemones. "… these shade-loving are anemones…" (page 164) A shade-loving plant? "Any of various plants belonging to the genus Anemone, of the buttercup family, having petallike sepals and including several wild species with white flowers as well as others cultivated for their showy flowers in a variety of colors." I would have been just as happy with flower or plant.

10) Lapidarium. "On these occasions I usually visit to the lapidarium installed there in the 60s and spent hours looking at the mineral samples in the glass cases …" (page 180) A room designed to display minerals? Probably. Dictionary.com has lapidary mind as a person who works with stones. That's the closest word it had.

11) Stereometry. "… the rules of a higher form of stereometry …" (page 185) Absolutely no idea. Dictionary.com: "the measurement of volumes." Whatever.

12) Coloratura. "… into a positive verbal coloratura of medical and diagnostic terms …" (page 210) Dictionary.com: " runs, trills, and other florid decorations in vocal music." Okay. I knew what it was in music, but I thought maybe it had some other meaning when it came to language.

Overall? Not my type of book. Those who like description and highfalutin language might have a different opinion.

I read "Water for Elephants" on the way down to Florida and back. It was a good read. The next day I saw the movie. Some of the changes in the movie from the book I approved. Some I saw as bad. and the costumes? Why couldn't the main character and Rosie worn pink?

Thoughts of anyone else who has seen the movie/read the book?

Cristina Garcia's The Lady Matador's Hotel

In The Lady Matador’s Hotel the political situation in the country are a spine for a braided novel. Half the stories, the Colonel’s, the ex-Guerrilla, and the Lawyer are directly related. the Guerrilla assassinates the Colonel who is running for President. The Lawyer’s business of selling babies is a issue in the politics. The Poet, an ex-patriot Cuban, is involved with the Lawyer. The Maquiladora owner is also an issue in the politics. Everyone, but Suki Palacios, the Matadora, is pulled and twisted by the politics. Suki moves through the story oblivious to it.

It is the way that this story is told with characters whose path's cross but do not come together, that makes this story for me. I also enjoyed the subtle use of magical realism. It is a treat.

I read the book the week it came out. I passed it around and had fair comments on it. I will try it again but I doubt I will see the movie.

Hope you are above water and under an away from the tornadoes. I'm reading the new book on Palin. Nasty woman!!! I have 3 books open and waiting for me to pick them up again.

I enjoyed The Narrative of Frederick Douglas an American Slave—if it can be said that anyone "enjoys" a book about slavery. Still, I think it should be required reading for all middle-school students in this country. If nothing else, it would counter the textbook presentation of slavery where the slaves sang happily to "ol' massa," who was sitting contentedly on his plantation's white-columned front porch. (Okay, I'm taking that from a now out-of-date textbook, but a friend has a copy of what was used in his seventh grade history class, and the image is there.)

Specifics:

1) Frequently Douglas writes something that is eerily reflective of today. "They regarded it (the Great House Farm) as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field from under the driver's lash, that day (being selected for the Great House Farm) is deemed it a great privilege, one worth careful living for. He was called the smartest and most trusty fellow, who had this honor conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this office sought diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers in the political parties seek to please and see the people. The same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the slaves of be a political parties." (page 25) Today indeed!

2) "They (slaves) seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!" (page 31) Wonder why the thought of Alabama's and Auburn's fans, those who attended neither University, sprang suddenly to mind.

3) "I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example, I will state one of the many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture—'He that knowth his Master's will, and do it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.'" (page 57) Gotta love how the Bible can be used.

4) "I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,--a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,--a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,--and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection." (page 72) And the religion of the south seems to be at it again.


Overall? Strongly recommend.

Nice review Martha and glad you are well enough to share your reading with us. Stay well, my friend.