Category: Non-Fiction

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:Artifacts From A Life by Michael Katakis

Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From a Life

Beautifully designed, intimate and illuminating, this is the story of American icon Ernest Hemingway’s life through the documents, photographs, and miscellany he kept, compiled by the steward of the Hemingway estate and featuring contributions by his son and grandson.

I have always been fascinated with Papa Hemingway. The legends are many and larger than life. What is true and what is just colorful tale? He was so many things besides a writer. 

I’ve read many books about the man and his wives and children. Some not so flattering. This author tells the story of his life through his own documents, letters and things he kept for his own reasons. There are photographs documenting his public and private lives, although he seemed to be pretty up front and public about everything he did.

He was driven to be in the middle of the action. To me he seemed to have an insatiable curiosity about everything and every one. The author has done a wonderful job of putting together all of these things and we get a really good look at the life of a man who was bigger than life.

Very Well Done!

Netgalley/ Scribner October 23, 2018

 

 

THE LIBRARY BOOK by SUSAN ORLEAN

The Library Book

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was Goodbye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. Investigators descended on the scene, but over thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Susan Orlean is an exceptional writer and her love for the written word and libraries is all over this work.

As she digs into the fire at the LAPL, this becomes a book about libraries and the people who inhabit them. The librarians and all of the ins and outs and backrooms and quirky people who make up the library. What she finds is something that we all have found at one time or another, a second home. A place of community, a place that levels the playing field for those who don’t have the luxury of buying a lot of books or resource material.

I often joke I would love to be locked in a library and after reading Susan’s book, I really want to do that! I associate the library with my childhood, my first library card, the smell, all the adventures I took in those books.

Librarians are really lucky!

I loved this book and I hope you do as well.

Netgalley/ Simon and Schuster October 16, 2018

BOOM TOWN by SAM ANDERSON

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis

Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis

A lively and introspective look into Oklahoma City, where colorful city officials business leaders, artists, and sports fans have turned an unassuming Southwestern city into a thriving metropolis with a dazzling basketball team.

Sam Anderson–award-winning critic and journalist–makes his long-awaited debut with a stunning, insightful, and raucous portrait of Oklahoma City, an iconoclastic outpost in America’s heartland.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. I’ve lived in Nichols Hills since Hurricane Katrina spit us out of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. The entire state has been a mystery to me.

I had never heard of Sam Anderson, sorry Sam, but I won’t forget him! This was the best unvarnished look at who makes the rules here and what the powers that be have envisioned for the city.  Oklahoma City is a huge sprawling area of tiny pockets of old-established neighborhoods. While there have been huge improvements to downtown OKC, beyond the city center the homeless linger under bridges and overpasses and oil and gas rules. Unemployment is rampant unless you are an oil field worker and even then you may only have a job until it’s bonus time.

From the Land Run to Aubrey Mclendon’s spectacular exit from his oil and gas woes to the Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne, whose house I have been in and it is just as weird and wacko as Sam will tell you about.

I laughed so hard all the way through this book. Sam has captured the city perfectly as well as all of its most colorful residents.

Very Well Done and I look forward to more from this author!

Netgalley/August 21st 2018 by Crown

 

Vaccines, Autoimmunity and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness by Thomas Cowan M.D.

Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Assault on Childhood

This book could not be more timely. The vaccine debate is sometimes a polarizing one. Pitting the Anti-Vaccers against the ones who choose to vaccinate.

Cowan not only looks at the ways childhood disease has changed with the onset of vaccines which are made by companies and pushed by them and the government. Sometimes knowing they are not safe. But when there is big money to be made, we all know how the big Pharms operate.

He offers a different look at the spiritual side as well. He questions the whys and hows. He asks especially why did we have a polio out break between 1916 and 11918? And those answers are extremely interesting.

He speaks to autism and childhood diseases. Some which in the past have contributed to a healthy immune system.

I am torn on this issue. But I believe in the right to choose your child’s health plan and belong to a Vaccination PAC here in Oklahoma where we successfully passed a bill that would put that choice into the hands of the parents. And to me that is where it belongs.

Any thoughts?

Netgalley/August 14, 2018 Chelsea Green Publishing

xx Patricia

NETGALLEY CHOICES FOR THIS WEEK

  For fans of The Woman in the Window and Gone Girl comes a twisted and addictive psychological thriller about a cunning wife, a damaged husband and a chilling murder that no one saw coming! March of 2019

 A seamstress who specializes in historical detail, Daria Dembrowski is happy to welcome the Highland Games to town—it’s all fun and games until someone gets “kilt.”  September 11, 2018

 The breathtaking barrier island of Melbourne Beach, Florida, is every tourist’s fantasy—until murder washes ashore . . .    September 25, 2018

 An unforgettable year in the life of a visionary high school science teacher and his award-winning students, as they try to get into college, land a date for the prom, and possibly change the world. September 04, 2018

That is what popped on my site this morning. They all look good in their own way so can’t wait to get started on them!

Anything really good I should get???

xx Patricia Books,Books,and More Books Reviews

INDIANAPOLIS by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic

Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man

A human drama unlike any other: the riveting and definitive full story of the worst sea disaster in United States naval history.

Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, days after delivering the components of the atomic bomb from California to the Pacific Islands in the most highly classified naval mission of the war, USS Indianapolis is sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea when she is struck by two Japanese torpedoes. The ship is instantly transformed into a fiery cauldron and sinks within minutes. Some 300 men go down with the ship. Nearly 900 make it into the water alive. For the next five nights and four days, almost three hundred miles from the nearest land, the men battle injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other. Only 316 will survive.

Coming from these two authors, I knew this was going to be a good book. And it was. I don’t usually do Military history. But something about this story pulled at me.

A true account of what happened to the ship and crew of the USS Indianapolis. After delivering precious cargo that would effectively end the war with Japan, she has limped on a course to complete the repairs that were not finished before they were pulled for a special top-secret mission. But they never made it. Torpedoed by the enemy and sank.

A story of bravery, of teen-aged boys stepping up when needed. Of the fight to survive for those left alive in the dark water surrounded by deadly oil slicks and sharks. I am not going to lie, it was hard to read some of this but then these young men sacrificed their lives and as we learn more about each one we become invested in their survival.

A story of how a crew and an enemy came forward to save their Captain from an unjust court-martial.

Any military fans will love this in-depth look at our military history. I know I will never forget this one.

Netgalley/ Simon and Schuster  July 10, 2018

 

from the corner of the oval by Beck Dorey-Stein

From the Corner of the Oval: A Memoir by [Dorey-Stein, Beck]

The compulsively readable, behind-the-scenes memoir that takes readers inside the Obama White House, through the eyes of a young staffer learning the ropes, falling in love, and finding her place in the world. (Blurb)

In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein is working five part-time jobs and just scraping by when a posting on Craigslist lands her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate D.C. outsider, she joins the elite team who accompany the president wherever he goes, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forges friendships with a dynamic group of fellow travelers—young men and women who, like her, leave their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president.

As she learns to navigate White House protocols and more than once runs afoul of the hierarchy, Beck becomes romantically entangled with a consummate D.C. insider, and suddenly the political becomes all too personal.

Against the backdrop of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart-broken, learning what truly matters, and, in the process, discovering her voice.

I wanted to read this book because of the behind the scenes look at Obama and what goes on during all of that travel.

While it began strongly, Beck gets caught up in the trap of drinking with and sleeping with her co-workers. I’m not sure how she got anything done as drunk as she always is and not really picky about who she is sleeping with.

We got a few interesting glimpses of Obama and other staff members, but it was all overshadowed by her almost teen-aged angst and sleeping with men already in relationships. It could have been something with some heavy editing.

So no, I wouldn’t recommend this one.

Netgalley/Spiegal and Grau  July 10, 2018