September's Schedule

August was a busy but memorable month. Plus it was one of the few where every book on my list was read and reviewed right on time (including two holdovers from the previous month!)

September is going to be an interesting mixture. I will begin with a Forgotten Favorite an ensemble romance about an annual September gathering (perfect for the month). I will also explore a very strange novel which covers several periods in history and the future with several characters who are connected in unusual ways.

This month I will also read three biographies featuring noted Americans. The first involves a group of female African-American mathematicians who were able to help NASA win the Space Race. Then I will review biographies about two iconic childhood figures Barbie TM and Mickey Mouse and the people who created them: Ruth Handler and Walt Disney.

I will also honor Banned Books Week, September 24-29 by reviewing the four most challenged and banned books of 2017 each week. They are some of the most thought-provoking challenging YA books and cover such topics as suicide, racism, LGBTQIA, and war.

All is said, it should be an interesting and very busy month of reading. I can't wait to get started.

1.Forgotten Favorites: September by Rosamund Pilcher
2.Weekly Reader: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win The Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
3. Banned Books Special: Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

4. Weekly Reader: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
5. Banned Books Special: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

6. Weekly Reader: Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her by Robin Gerber
7. Banned Books Special: Drama by Raina Telgemeier

8. Weekly Reader: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neil Gabler
9. Banned Books Special: The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini

Weekly Reader: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell; An Engaging But Deeply Flawed Psychological Thriller About A Toxic Friendship

Weekly Reader: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell; An Engaging But Deeply Flawed Psychological Thriller About A Toxic Friendship

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: How well do we know the people we term our “best friends?” Do we know their childhoods and if there were any traumas that caused them to be the way they are now? Do we know if there are any oddities or issues in their current lives to cause them to do seemingly crazy things? How far would we go to help them?




These questions are asked in Darcey Bell’s engaging and thought provoking but at times flawed novel, A Simple Favor. Stephanie is a widowed “mommy blogger” who posts entries about the pleasures and difficulties of raising children. One day picking up her son, Miles from school she meets Emily, the mother of Miles’ best friend, Nicky.




Emily is everything that Stephanie isn't. Where Stephanie is casual and naive, Emily is refined and elegant. While Stephanie spends her time in Connecticut blogging advice to other moms about quality time with children and keeping them entertained in the summer, Emily works for a fashion designer in Manhattan. While Stephanie mourns her deceased husband, Davis and her half-brother,Chris who was her “best friend”, Emily appears happily married to Sean, a British architect.




Despite their differences, Stephanie and Emily retain a close friendship until one day when Emily calls Stephanie for a simple favor: could Stephanie pick up Nicky from school and keep him at her place until Emily comes and gets him? Stephanie agrees and waits for Emily. And waits. And waits.

Emily is eventually declared officially missing and the plot follows briskly along through several questions. Where did Emily go and is she coming back? What about that life insurance policy that Sean took out in her name? What about that dead body at Emily and Sean's cabin? Was it Emily and if so how did she die?




While the plot is pretty suspenseful, the strongest suspense is found in the characters particularly Stephanie and Emily. The female deuteragonists are experts at acting in one way and behaving differently.




While Stephanie appears to be a bubbly naive former housewife in her blog, the chapters which report her thoughts give a different portrayal to her public persona. She announces to her fellow moms in her blog that she and Sean have decided to move in together. She states “the heart wants what it wants” and that she and Sean want to give Miles and Nicky some stability. What she fails to tell her blog readers but tells the novel’s Reader is that she has been in love with Sean since Emily's disappearance and they slept together many times before they made it official.




The strongest difference between Stephanie's public and private persons deals with her feelings for her late husband, Davis and half-brother, Chris. She posts a half-truth on her blog that the two had an argument and drove off to the nearest steakhouse when they were killed in a traffic collision.

What Stephanie doesn't tell her blog readers is that she and Chris had a sexual affair from the time they met as adults and realized they had the same father but different mothers. (Even weirder part of the reason, she is so fond of Sean is he reminds her of Chris.) She also recalls that Davis found out about the incestuous affair and planned on killing Chris taking himself with him.




Emily also keeps her true feelings concealed to all but the novel's Readers. She is much like Amy Elliot Dunne in Gone Girl in that she is a maestro at manipulating people into doing what she wants. She appears to have had s cultured sophisticated background free of any close family members. However, the Reader learns she had abusive parents and a weak-willed drug addicted sister that Emily loves but doesn't mind using for her personal needs.

While Emily compliments Stephanie to her face calling her solid and dependable, privately she thinks she's witless and boring but the perfect unseeming patsy for her schemes. She is skilled at using people to get what she wants: independence, freedom, money, and eventually custody of Nicky.




While A Simple Favor is strong in terms of characterizing it's two lead characters, it falters in many ways. When we find out about the reason behind Emily's disappearance, it is hoary and clichéd, and is extremely familiar to viewers of film noir and detective novels of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s. (That's how long this plot angle has been around.) While Stephanie's incestuous affair does a good job of capturing her character, there is no resolution to it. It just becomes a red herring and a missed opportunity to the point it was almost unnecessary.




The ending also leaves something to be desired as another dead body is found and more questions are raised. There is no finality as once again Emily and Stephanie open up new revelations about themselves that have no time to be resolved.

Weekly Reader: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane; A Thought Provoking Thriller About The Effects on Crime Towards Three Friends

Weekly Reader: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane; A Thought Provoking Thriller About The Effects on Crime Towards Three Friends

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: There are some mysteries and thrillers that are whodunnits: A murder where the characters have to learn who killed the victim. There are some that are whydunnits: Where the killer is known, at least by the Reader, so we learn how the crime happened and what motivated them to commit the murder. Then there's what I call, for lack of a better word, whatdunnits: In which a violent crime occurred, but the emphasis is on the grieving family members and friends as if saying “ Someone's dead. What are you going to do about it?”

The Oscar winning film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is one example. In it a grief stricken mother, orders three billboards to place outside her home posting damming messages against the Sheriff for not solving her daughter's murder. While the movie hinted at a potential killer, the daughter's murder is never truly resolved. It becomes a story less about solving the crime than it is about a mother dealing with her grief, succumbing to near insanity, and ultimately coping with the fact that she may never learn who killed her.




Mystic River by Dennis Lehane is another example of a whatdunnit. While there is a murder and the killer is identified in the end, the emphasis is the impact of the murder on three men and their families.




The three men: Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle grew up together in the same neighborhood though Sean grew up on the rich side and Jimmy and Dave on the poor. Sean and Jimmy became friends because their fathers worked together. Dave often just tagged along with the other two.




Two important events shaped the trio’s lives. The first occurred when they were 11 years old. A pair of strangers offer the boys a ride in their car. Sean and Jimmy refuse but Dave hops inside only to be missing for four days. He returns to much fame and notoriety and a fearful disturbing personality that haunts him for the rest of his life.




The second event occurs later when they are adults. Katie Marcus, Jimmy's beloved eldest daughter goes missing after making plans to elope with her boyfriend. After a few days of tense searching, Sean Devine now a State Homicide Police Detective finds the girl shot, beaten, and brutally murdered.




Katie's death sends the three men into downward spirals as they question their lives. Sean tries to solve this case using legal and investigative means to learn who killed Katie while coming to terms in his career and marriage.

He has just returned from suspension and is separated from his wife, Lauren because he doubts that he’s the father of their daughter. He is determined to solve Katie's murder to find some sense of order in his life amidst the random chaos of a faltering marriage and the seemingly senseless murder of a young girl.




Jimmy, Katie's father, has the most emotional journey in the novel. While he is trying to retain a strong front for his younger daughters and his second wife, Annabeth (his first wife, Katie's mother died a long time ago), he is willing to give into his past reputation to resolve Katie's death. He was a delinquent as a teenager and served time in early adulthood. Though he owns and manages a convenience store, he hasn't left his illegal past behind. Instead he embraces vigilantism as he and his brothers-in-law use violent means to resolve the murder.

In one chilling passage, he is so filled with rage at a potential suspect that he kills him without any thought only to discover later that he was the wrong person. Though he is so far gone in his anger and desire for revenge that he justifies his kill as saying the other man was “probably” up to something and would have eventually become a killer.




If Jimmy had the most emotional journey and Sean had the most procedural, then Dave’s is probably the creepiest. He still suffers from nightmares about his abduction as a child and the molestation he endured from his kidnappers. He thinks of that time as something that happened to someone else to “The Boy Who Escaped The Wolves.” He seems to have Dissociative Identity Disorder separating that kid from his current life as a businessman and family man.

He separates those two lives until the night before Katie's disappearance, he comes home covered in blood. He tells his wife that he fought a mugger outside the neighborhood bar. Celeste begins to doubt his story especially after she hears reports about Katie Marcus's murder on the news. Did the loving and seemingly meek man she shared a bed with and fathered her son brutally kill an innocent girl? As for Dave, he has to come to terms with his earlier kidnapping and molestation to understand his later actions and the actions of “The Boy Who Escaped from Wolves.”




While the murder is solved, it comes out from nowhere to the point that this Reader wonders if Lehane didn't intend for the resolution to be important. The most important aspects of the novel are how a young woman's violent murder affects her vengeful father and his friends, one who is trying to rebuild a new life and the other still suffering from the scars of the past.

Classics Corner: Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt; True Southern Gothic Tale is Filled With Eccentric Characters and a Sense of Place

Classics Corner: Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt; True Southern Gothic Tale is Filled With Eccentric Characters and a Sense of Place

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: It is hard to treat Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as a nonfiction book. It is a true story with real people and involves a real crime: The shooting of hustler, Danny Hansford by his older on-and-off lover, antiques dealer, Jim Williams. But it is not written like a non-fiction book filled with dry facts, statistics, and interviews, court reports, and newspaper articles about the shooting and the people involved.

Instead Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil reads like a novel, a nonfiction novel. Like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Alex Haley’s Roots, and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil uses various literary techniques such as setting, plot, characterization, and dialogue to tell it's story and does it very well. It turns a true crime into a Southern Gothic story.




Author John Berendt really made Savannah, Georgia come to life in his book. He described the beautiful antebellum houses, the humid atmosphere, and the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world (because at the time, traveling to Savannah was hard except by crossing one bridge.) expertly. He also recounted Savannah's history and transformation from the pirate’s den in Treasure Island, to the “Grand Old Southern Lady” of Gone With The Wind, to its then reputation as a place that was so caught up in tradition that it's residents refused to let Big Businesses move in. This book no doubt did wonders to Savannah's tourism and if Berendt's characterization of the locals is anything to go on, it was probably not a good thing.




Besides the setting, Berendt perfectly wrote the residents of Savannah as a group of eccentric oddballs. Everyone had so many unique quirks and characteristics that one must wonder if a phrase is written in Savannah's bylaws stating “Thou must be eccentric to reside in these city limits.”

There is Luther Driggs, an amateur chemist who hinted that he created a poison that he could pour into Savannah's water supply and kill everyone. (The real-life inspiration behind Driggs said that though he was an amateur chemist, he created no such thing and blamed Berendt for giving him such a reputation.) Emma Kelly, a pianist who was known as “The Lady of Six Thousand Songs” and who knew and played everyone's favorite song. Joe Odom, an attorney owned Sweet Georgia Brown, a piano bar with Mandy Nichols, a lovely lady that Odom forever promised to make “his third wife.” Sonny Seiler, a defense attorney who was so devoted to the University of Georgia Bulldogs football team that he owned a pit bull, Uga IV (there were three previous Ugas) that became the team’s unofficial mascot. Then there's Lady Chablis, a saucy drag performer who called herself “The Grand Empress if Savannah.” She enjoyed flirting with Berendt and making herself the center of attention, including in one memorable moment crashing a debutante ball of Savannah's African-American elite much to Berendt's embarrassed chagrin.




Standing in the center of this cast of fascinating weirdos was Jim Williams. The 52-year-old antiques dealer loved giving the impression of coming from old money by showing off his collection of antiques and buying the house built by songwriter Johnny Mercer’s great-grandfather. When asked if he minded being called “nouveau riche”, Williams said that “it's the riche that's the important part.”




Williams also went to extremes to stand out in the crowd. During the filming of a TV movie about Abraham Lincoln, Williams draped a Nazi flag over his house to ruin the shot and to protest the anger that Savannah's residents had about movies being filmed there with the constant changes to location and the often pushy cast and crew. Williams was also known for his Christmas parties which were the highlight of the year so much that people worried throughout the year whether they would be put in his “In” box or “Out” box.

Williams also loved to show off his collection of rare weapons and guns as though daring to be shot. This revealed a certain sense of danger in Williams, almost a death wish.




This sense of danger probably explained Williams’ relationship with 21-year-old hustler, Danny Hansford. Hansford was an Eighth grade dropout with a hair trigger temper and who was described by a former girlfriend as a “Walking streak of sex.” He also did odd jobs for Williams and was implied to be his lover. When Hansford entered the Williams home, it was almost a guarantee that he would be drunk, lose his temper, fight with Williams, and break something of his. Williams’ sense of danger did not seem to mind Hansford's temper, in fact seemed to enjoy it, until one night when after a fight, Williams shot Hansford to death.




Williams was arrested and charged with murder, though he claimed it was self-defense because Hansford threatened to shoot him.Thus began his trial or rather trials. Williams’ case was given four separate trials each time because of technicalities or legal issues. The miscarriages of justice are present throughout the trials as Williams,found guilty during the first three trials,looked for any reason to reopen the case. There is also a sense of fatigue as the trials go on leading to the possibility that Williams was acquitted the fourth time so they wouldn't have to go through the case again.




Williams not only used legal means to gain victory, he used supernatural means. He contacted Minerva, a voodoo priestess, to provide him good luck and to curse the prosecuting attorney. In one of the most memorable passages in the book, Minerva, Williams, and Berendt visited a cemetery in Beaufort, South Carolina where Minerva used her abilities to not only hex the attorney but to get the spirit of Hansford to lay off of Williams by getting Williams to admit good things about the young man. Williams responded by mentioning Hansford's Camaro, artistic talent, and sense of humor.




An even creepier passage occurs later in the book after Williams was acquitted. Minerva and Berendt went to another cemetery to speak to “the head man” that Minerva suspected was “working against Williams from beyond the grave”: none other than Danny Hansford. Minerva begged and argued with Hansford's spirit to leave Williams alone but the spirit continued to laugh at Minerva so she gave up in frustration.




Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil stretches nonfiction by offering an account that is so bizarre that it seems like it couldn't have happened in real life. But it did, with all of its weirdness, bizarre cast, and unique situations. The final irony gives an almost literary twist to this strange story: Shortly after his acquittal, Jim Williams suffered a fatal heart attack right in the study where he and Hansford had their final confrontation and in the exact spot where Hansford would have shot Williams if Williams hadn't shot him. You just can't make things like this up.

Weekly Reader Bonus: Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Bert V. Royal; A Realistic Brutal Story of Growing Up From Our Favorite Comic Strip Characters

Weekly Reader Bonus: Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Bert V. Royal; A Realistic Brutal Story of Growing Up From Our Favorite Comic Strip Characters




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: I suppose I should call this the Weekly Viewer since it's a play rather than a book. But many consider plays as important parts of literature as do I. In various previous Lit Lists, I have cited plays like A Raisin in the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead, Medea, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys, and A Midsummer Night's Dream as some of my favorites. I also like a challenge so I thought this would be a good try.




There are many of us who wonder what happened to our favorite fictional characters later in life. What if they were hit with real world problems? What if the kids grew up or what happened when the adults were wayward youths? Such books as the Thursday Next series and films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the upcoming Happytime Murders show what happens when our favorite literary, animated, and puppet characters come face to face with such problems as sexuality, segregation, domestic violence, and crimes. Fanfiction writers explore various possibilities of their favorite characters in different sometimes angstier settings. Last month, I reviewed The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno which explored the adult life of a child detective based on Encyclopedia Brown. Exploring the pasts and futures of beloved characters raise interesting questions which invite various possibilities.




The latest characters to have their later lives exposed and dissected for the world to see are Charles Schultz's Peanuts gang. In the play Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, unauthorized by the Schultz Estate, Bert V. Royal explores the teen years of Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and the gang and we discover it's a biting grim darker world than the one they knew when they were children.




Because of the unauthorization, none of the characters are called by their real names but we the audience know who they are. When one character called “Van” mourns for his lost blanket we know he's the quiet philosophical Linus. When one character, “Beethoven” retreats to the music room to play his favorite composer, it's not too hard to assume that he is the once musical prodigy Schroeder. Knowing who these characters were makes what happens to them all the more moving and heartbreaking. If Charlie Brown can have an unhappy adolescence, anyone could.




The play begins with the death of CB’s (Charlie Brown) dog and proceeds to get worse from there. First CB graphically describes to his Pen Pal the death of his beloved beagle (Snoopy) after getting put down because he contracted rabies and ate a yellow bird that CB believed “was the beagle’s best friend.” (Woodstock-I told you it would get worse.) The dog’s death sends CB into grief as he questions what happens after we die. While Peanuts often took a philosophical at times spiritual outlook, this play puts those questions front and center as CB ponders the meaning of death.




Far from being the misfit put-upon bullied kid, CB is now a popular jock who does his fair share of bullying. He is best friends with Matt (Pig Pen) who is no longer the nice kid who walked around with a trail of dirt. Instead he is an Obsessive Compulsive bigoted, sexist, homophobe who hates to be reminded of his former life and nickname.

CB is also still best friends with Van (Linus) who is a pothead and has some of the funniest lines in the play. When Van explains that after his blanket was burned, he smoked it's ashes. (“My blanket and I are one,” Van says triumphantly.)

Matt, Van, and CB also hang around with Tricia (Peppermint Patty), the former tomboy turned airheaded party girl and her best friend Marcie (Marcy-the only character to go by her original name), who while still is smart has become  like Tricia, another Mean Girl.
Royal’s decision to make Matt, Tricia, and Marcie antagonists (and Matt is particularly villainous in how he taunts those he bullies) show that sometimes when people grow and change, they not only don't retain the characteristics that they once had but they change for the worse.




The most frequent target for Matt and the other's abuse is no longer CB, but Beethoven (Schroeder). Beethoven has withdrawn into himself since his father had been arrested for molesting him. Instead of sympathies and support, Beethoven's former friends mock, taunt, and beat him for being gay. Even though CB did not bully Beethoven, Beethoven chides him for being worse “because (he) watched it happen” and that of all people, CB would know what it's like to be an outcast. Instead Beethoven keeps to himself even during lunch,where he sits in the music room as he practices the piano. It is in the music room that after a tense moment, Beethoven and CB kiss.




The kiss causes CB to question his feelings and sexuality. He fears hatred and ostracism from his peers. The only person to give him support is the last person anyone would expect: Van’s Sister (Lucy). The best scene in the play is when CB visits Van’s Sister in the psychiatric hospital where she had been staying since she set the Little Red Haired Girl's hair on fire. In one of the two most heartbreaking monologues in the play, Van's Sister reveals that she set the Little Red Haired Girl's hair on fire because Van’s Sister had an abortion and discovered that the LRH Girl called her “a whore.”

The dialogue between CB and Van’s Sister reveals CB’s confusion about the kiss and how he isn't sure whether he loves Beethoven. Van's Sister alternates between common sense advice towards CB’s predicament and accepting her role as an “unrepentant, unremorseful sociopath and (she) has no choice but to believe it.” In their mutual stories of love and hate, CB and Van's Sister reveal themselves as two people trying to find an identity for themselves as people who long to be loved and accepted.




Maturity is a common theme in Dog Sees God. Along with that maturity is the search for identity and realizing who we are and who we want to be. This is revealed by CB’s Sister (Sally) who similar to her song “My Philosophy” in the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is always looking for a different identity. Like Van, CB's Sister is seen as a comic relief as she goes from being a Goth girl to a Gangsta rapper. She also does a melodramatic one-woman show “Cocooning Into Platypus." While her one-woman show is hammy at first, she reveals the theme of the play by showing us a caterpillar that transforms into a newly made human who could think, cry, feel, find and lose love.




Finding and losing love is what the play is about. Once CB and Beethoven’s relationship is revealed to the others, they realize how much they have fallen in love. Unfortunately, their happiness is cut short by an angry Matt who is furious that he thinks Beethoven “recruited his friend.” Matt hurts Beethoven in a way that is savage, brutal, and leads to horrible consequences.


The adult world that surrounds the Peanuts gang is a darker one than the days when the kids put ornaments on Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, or when Linus waited in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin, or when Snoopy stood on his doghouse writing a book or fighting the Red Baron. But the kids know, as everyone else watching them do, they have to grow up sometimes.

1.  But maturity is not always dark or sad. It can also be a world of warmth, kindness, and friendship. This is exemplified in the other great monologue in the play when CB reads a letter from his Pen Pal who tells him that through it all, he is a good man. The most touching moment of all is when the Pen Pal reveals his name as CS, implying that even when his friends taunt CB and his life seems horrible God (or rather Charlie Brown's God and Creator, Charles Schultz) hasn't forgotten him and still loves him.

Classics Corner Bonus: The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda; A Strange But Spiritual Journey Between A Mentor and Student

Classics Corner Bonus: The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda; A Strange But Spiritual Journey Between A Mentor and Student

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: When Carlos Castaneda first met Don Juan Matus in 1960, he probably didn't think that either he or his mentor would become counterculture icons. But through the various books that he and other authors have collected recounting Don Juan's teachings, sayings, and journies, their readers learned about this strange, eccentric, visionary, and wise man.




Like many spiritual books, there is debate how much of the story is true. While they are listed as non-fiction, people have argued whether Don Juan Matus existed or whether he was an amalgam of several teachers, but also like many books of a spiritual bent, facts and truth aren't as important as the journey. Castaneda's first book about Don Juan, The Teachings of Don Juan: The Yaqui Way of Knowledge show the education of a confused skeptical anthropology student into a deeper thinking person of knowledge.




Upon Castaneda's first meeting with Don Juan, through an acquaintance, he was curious and confused. He only knew that the elderly man was an expert on peyote, something that Castaneda had been curious about and studying but not yet experienced. Not only does Don Juan want to teach Castaneda about peyote (which he called “Mescalito”), he also wanted to teach Castaneda about the way of the shaman.




While many Readers might be confused about why Don Juan would want to teach such a long, strenuous, magical path to a total stranger, an earlier passage gives an explanation. Don Juan mentions the existence of diableros, sorcerers who could take animal form. (Don Juan's mentor was one.) Castaneda then heard reports of a strange animal in the area. He interviewed various locals about the diableros and the possibility the strange creature was one. None of the witnesses believed such a creature existed. Some never saw one. Others believed they were tales told by the elders. This dialogue explains Don Juan's desire to pass his knowledge to Castaneda. In a world grown more scientific and technicological, he wanted to make sure that those ways would be written down and remembered, so they could not be forgotten.




That doesn't mean that his lessons were easy. His first lesson was for Castaneda to find a specific spot outside Don Juan's home that he could learn and meditate. Castaneda crawled and rolled on the ground during the day and night before he found the right spot, by the way the sunlight shone on it. He learned to trust more than his own sensations and body to find an answer.




Sometimes, Don Juan and Castaneda butted heads because of their different views. When Castaneda first sampled Mescalito, he saw a spirit take the form of a dog that played with him. He later asked Don Juan about the figure calling it a dog. Don Juan kept correcting him once hilariously shouting “Dammit, it wasn't a dog!”




Sometimes, Castaneda's desire for factual literal proof clashed with Don Juan's metaphoric esoteric training. During a meditation/peyote-influenced journey, Castaneda felt himself transform into a crow and fly. While he saw the world below him and felt the rush of being in the air, he asked Don Juan if he really flew. Don Juan asked if he felt that he did. Castaneda replied of course, but he wanted to know if anyone would have seen him fly. Don Juan said that what other people saw didn't matter. Castaneda flew and believed he did.




Some of Castaneda's lessons get incredibly dark. None were darker than Castaneda's encounter with a diableros. Don Juan ordered Castaneda to remain in his spot all night into the next day no matter what. While Castaneda waited, he saw Don Juan appear. At first, Castaneda thought his lesson was over early, but there were certain things that made Castaneda suspicious. He called Castaneda names he never used and he walked and stood in ways that Don Juan did not. Castaneda stood his ground against the diableros who disappeared.




Though Castaneda voluntarily ended his studies under Don Juan in 1965, subsequent books suggested that he had a lot more to learn and Don Juan had a lot more to teach

suggested that he had a lot more to learn and Don Juan had a lot more to teach.

Weekly Reader: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson; A Tight Suspense Novel With a Polarizing Protagonist

Weekly Reader: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson; A Tight Suspense Novel With a Polarizing Protagonist


By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Spoilers: About ten years ago, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was everywhere. My first semester at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, many people had a copy of the book in their hands. Suddenly movies and TV were filled with Swedish detectives and psychological thrillers involving torture and murder of women. Many debated about the actions of its protagonist, Lisbeth Salander (more on that later). It had been on my reading bucket list for some time. Now that I can check this title off, I can do it gladly because I found The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a tight suspenseful novel with an appropriate cold and somber setting and a protagonist that is polarizing but fascinating.





When the book begins, finance journalist, Mikael Blomkvist is in big trouble. He penned an article with questionable fact checking about a wealthy corrupt financier. On suspension from Millennium magazine, the magazine he helped create, Blomkvist is put on suspension and faces possible imprisonment. He is then contacted by millionaire businessman, Heinrik Vangar to cover a history of his family and to find out what happened to his favorite grand-niece, Harriet who disappeared when she was 16-years-old and Vangar believes she was murdered.





The book is rich in suspense even in the settings of Stockholm and Hedeby Island. Both are written to be cold unpleasant places where the weather is often dark, dreary, and the locations are filled with corrupt politicians, families who willingly admit to being Neo-Nazis, and where someone can hide a body and not be discovered until decades later.





The richness in Larsson's writing is also within his characters.


Blomkvist is the type of character that often heads books like these. Divorced and troubled but always one who wants to protect those who are suffering. As he visits the island in which Vangar’s family lives, he begins a romance with one of the Vangar family members seeing her as a victim of abuse. He is the type of man who also is driven to do the right thing and is willing to face the consequences.





During his investigation, Blomkvist meets the woman who not only helps his investigation but steals every moment she's in: Lisbeth Salander. The 24-year-old researcher/hacker is driven to help Blomkvist’s investigation because it relates to the potential murder of one or several women.





Salander had her own history of sexual abuse and has been diagnosed with several mental illnesses. After a youthful violent encounter, Salander was declared mentally incompetent and required guardianship. Unfortunately, her latest guardian physically, financially, mentally, and sexually abused her. When Salander has had enough, in an eerie moment, she binds her guardian and blackmails him that she will reveal the abuse if he doesn't leave her alone. After he agrees, she tattoos words like “I'm a rapist and a pig” on his body.





This passage brilliantly characterizes Salander. She is someone who has been hurt so much that her outlook on society is extremely skewered. By contrast, Blomkvist is more reserved and conventional. Salander behaves on impulse and believes that becoming violent and murderous towards sex offenders is her only option.


The Reader may not condone her actions, but her mental state, abused background, and violent tendencies are called into question. She is not likeable when she commits these acts but she is understandable as someone stuck inside her own head, is distrustful towards others, and is filled with hatred and vengeance. Lizbeth is an incredibly polarizing protagonist. One may not agree with her actions, especially when she commits murder (and is implied to have done it again in the final pages.), but also understands that she is someone whose warped sense of justice propels her to do such things because she can't trust that anyone else will help her or anyone else.





The mystery is filled with various clues that the two follow to a logical conclusion. A photograph of a parade on the day of Harriet’s disappearance becomes key to learning about what happened to her. Witnesses recall events with surprising detail of situations that happened over 40 years ago. In some of the book's weaker moments, Blomkvist and Salander rely on luck to get their answer such as when they listen to one member of the Vangar talking on the phone to another who conveniently provides a much needed solution to the mystery.





The book also has some major flaws. It runs far too long. After the Vangar murder is solved, there are still several chapters to go that deal with Blomkvist's dismissal and exposure of the man who made it happen. It's not an interesting subplot and it drags longer than it should.


Another issue with the book is the romance that develops between Blomkvist and Salander. While Salander has been damaged by others previously, she insists that she and Blomkvist begin a sexual relationship. It's unnecessary and falls into the cliche of “male female partners become romantically involved.” A father/daughter relationship would be a much better option and fills a need in both their lives (Salander had a kindly guardian that died before the events of the book and Blomkvist is estranged from his wife and daughter and doesn't see his daughter often.) The romance is forced on and unnecessary.


Also the resolution is somewhat easy to guess (especially if you are someone like me, who reads a lot of mysteries and psychological thrillers that also have the same ending.) However, the revelation of one character's motives is eerie and suspenseful especially with the realization that the character has been a serial killer for decades and that an older family member trained them in killing.





Despite its flaws, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a great book and Lisbeth Salander is a fascinating character. She is not only the most interesting character in this book, she is one of the, if not the most, fascinating female character in the psychological thriller genre.

Classics Corner: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; A Rambling Book With a Truly Horrible Lead

Classics Corner: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; A Rambling Book With a Truly Horrible Lead


By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Spoilers: Well with a title like American Psycho, you don't expect the protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis's classic psychological thriller to be a likeable kind-hearted hero. But the truth is, Patrick Bateman is a truly horrible hateful person whose journey presents two possibilities, neither of which are good: Either he is completely delusional and a complete vain and shallow character who believes killing people will satisfy his urges or he really is a deranged psychopath who gets his kicks slicing up prostitutes, homeless people, business rivals and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to be alone with him.





The book isn't really long in plot. Mostly it's a few months in Bateman's life in which he rambles on about brand names, his work as an investment banker, favorite musical groups, his obsession with reading about serial killers, parties with friends and cocaine, oh yeah and the times when he takes an unsuspecting victim to his apartment and stabs and mutilates his victim with an ice pick.





Naturally Bateman is not a likeable character, but he is also not a relatable, understandable, or even after a while an interesting character. He is written so broadly and farcical that it is really hard to be invested in such a character. Even some of the worst characters such as Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov, Native Son’s Bigger Thomas, and soon I will review The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which features Lisbeth Salander, a young woman who does not mind giving rapists and killers of women bloody ends. With these characters, you don't support what they do but you may understand why they do it. But with Bateman, that moment never comes. He is shallow and pretentious at best and a demented violent abusive bigoted misogynist at worst.





Bateman begins most days with a beauty treatment that even supermodels or pageant contestants might find a bit much. Paragraph after paragraph goes into his skin care treatment, specific hair care regimen, and names specific clothing by their brand names. (In fact, a running gag throughout the book are the paragraphs of non-stop product placements where Bateman just describes brand after brand comparing and contrasting them.) With his regimen and brand loyalty, Bateman comes across as a man who is completely vain and cares about little else but his personal appearance.





Even before he makes his first kill, Bateman is about as darkly comic character as can be. While we are told he is an investment banker, we see him barely at work except in a few conversations with his secretary whom he believes has a crush on him.Instead he spends more time at endless clubs and dinner parties where he takes cocaine, flirts with the female guests, and constantly confuses arriving guests with other people in his life. The confusion suggests either Bateman is so self-involved that he doesn't care who the people are around him or his brain is addled that he can't recognize people anymore.


He also displays psychotic tendencies. If something doesn't go his way, Bateman will shout obscenities and describes how he wants to kill the person who offended him.


In one passage, Bateman and his colleagues show off their business cards and Bateman jealously considers killing those who had better cards than his.





The thoughts are only thoughts until Bateman makes his first kill. It is actually suspenseful as he follows his prey and overpowers her. This leads to other murders that become broader and uncomfortably more farcical as the book goes along. It is disconcerting when Bateman describes an extremely bloody kill in one chapter and then reviews the best and worst songs by Whitney Houston in the next. Bateman is so detached from his bloody work that he retreats to his status symbols instead of the moral, legal, and ethical implications. Even when Bateman is driven to confess, it’s less out of guilt than fear he will be caught because he killed people out of his usual M.O. a business rival and a child rather than prostitutes, homeless men, and bedmates who he shows little remorse for.


While American Psycho makes for interesting reading to get into the mind of a serial killer, after a while the murders get repetitive and the book runs far too long. After the tenth kill, the Reader thinks “Okay, okay we get it! Patrick Bateman is a murderous SOB. Are we done yet?”





While Bateman describes his kills in a graphic manner, there are implications that he is not as violent as he appears to be. When he goes on his murderous rants about killing other people, his friends don't react very much. This suggests that they are as soulless as he is or that he really didn't say or do those things and he is imagining his life as a serial killer. The latter possibility is also suggested when after Bateman meets a friend that he confesses the murders to, the friend laughs in his face and says that he had lunch days ago with the man Bateman believes he killed.





So either Patrick Bateman is a violent murdering psychopath or longs to be one. Neither possibility is good and neither make him interesting.

August's Schedule

July went surprisingly well considering I had three editing assignments along with my reviewing. I am missing a review. (I typed it on Google Docs but it seems to have disappeared. Well rather than go back to it, I will continue on my merry way)

This month I am focusing on some psychological thrillers and True Crime. It's an interesting genre and these are some pretty chilling books to cool those hot end of summer days. Many of the books have become successful films and one has become a movie to be released in September. But to get to the real fear, nothing works better than inside your mind. You could see the horror on screen but picturing the horror can be a lot worse.

Next month, I am thinking of doing some housekeeping by catching up on books that I intended to review this year but for one reason or another was unable to. So stay tuned and as always happy reading!

1.. Weekly Reader: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsen

2. Classics Corner: American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

3. Weekly Reader: A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell

4. Weekly Reader: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

5. Classics Corner: Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil by Jonathan Berendt