The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best Kept Secret by Kent Harman  292 pp.

Many people do not realize that a large portion of the popular music recorded in the 1950s, 60s, & 70s was really performed by a collection of very talented studio musicians who were never credited on the albums featuring their talents. With the exception of a few, like Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, and Billy Strange, who went on to have successful musical careers outside of the studios, they are names few recognize. However, their music is known by millions from recordings by Sinatra, Streisand, The Beach Boys, Johnny Rivers, The Mamas & The Papas, The Carpenters, Simon & Garfunkel, and so many more. Some members of the Wrecking Crew toured in the bands with a variety of big name acts. Others moved into the production end of the business. These talented musicians were paid well for their work but also worked long hours, frequently late into the night. This is a very readable and fascinating look at the unsung heroes of the music industry. I enjoyed reading about what went into recording the songs I grew up with. And how many remember a thirty year old Glen Campbell being called an "overnight sensation" after he'd been working in the business since he was sixteen years old? Ah, show business.

Chestnut Street

Chestnut Street / Maeve Binchy 384 pgs.

In this series of short stories, all set somehow on Chestnut Street in Dublin, neighbors and acquaintances cross paths but each story stands on its own.  The relationships on display here vary from family, friends, neighbors, and even enemies.  All are trademark Binchy, some people have problems and often they are solved...some problems go unresolved.  Most of the stories are uplifting and positive but not sappy.  Binchy has a way of making you think you really KNOW the character even though the details are light.

I listened to this on audio and loved the reader's accent.  Very pleasurable audio.

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Infinite Home

Infinite Home / Kathleen Alcott 315 pgs.

Edith has been a good landlady to a group of misfit renters for many years.  But now Edith is the one with the issues.  She is sinking into dementia and her evil son is trying to evict everyone and take over the property.  The various tenants are all dealing with their own problems.  Adeleine is agoraphobic and hasn't been out of house in months, Thomas is an artist recovering from a stroke.  Paulie is developmentally disabled, Edward is a depressed former stand-up comic...none of them have any place else to go but how can they stand up to the evil Owen and save Edith and their home?

This book follow the interesting stories of each character and how they work together to save an old lady and a life worth living.


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Just Kids

Just Kids by Patti Smith  278 pp.

This is a beautifully written memoir of the author's life and relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe beginning with their meeting on a NY street in the '60s and pretty much ending with Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in 1989. Having only known of Smith through her music and Mapplethorpe through the infamous photo exhibition that caused such an uproar, I was unaware that the two were lovers, friends, and cohorts, as well as supporters of each other's varied artistic endeavors. It was a magical time to live in New York City and this book shows why. Tales of the other denizens of the Chelsea Hotel, Smith's work at Brentano's and Scribner's book stores and her evolution from poet into performer are all described in a lyrical way. I fully understand why it was a National Book Award winner. The disappointment for me was in listening to the audiobook read by the author. Smith's delivery is almost in monotone and heavy with her New Jersey accent. Her incessant use of the word "drawling" for drawing is off-putting along with other mispronunciations that abound in the reading.

Bastards

Bastards: A Memoir by Mary Anna King, 248 pages

When she was little, Mary King lived in New Jersey with her mom, her older brother, her baby sister, and sometimes her dad. But when it becomes to much for her mom to handle, the baby sister is sent to live with Mary's grandparents in Oklahoma. A few years later, Mary and her brother join their little sister in Oklahoma, and Mary and her sister, Becca, are eventually adopted by their grandparents. Meanwhile, Mary's mother keeps getting pregnant, and ends up giving up four baby girls for adoption.

Bastards is Mary's account of losing and finding family, of trying to find her own place in her convoluted family. As someone who's intimately familiar with family trees that are shaped more like bushes, I found this to be an insightful memoir that doesn't shy away from the realities of stitched-together families.

Submission

Submission by Michel Houellebecq, 246 pages

It's 2022 and Francois is a 44-year-old academic who is, as he says, "about as political as a towel." His world revolves around 19th-century French novelist J.K. Huysmans, young coeds, and drinking vast amounts of wine. But while he's concentrating on these obsessions, a national election puts the Islamic party into national power, throwing France--and Francois--for a loop. Soon he's out of a job (since only Muslims can teach under the new regime) and becoming increasingly isolated and impotent (the modest dress imposed on French women certainly isn't helping in that regard). Should he throw aside all that he believes to convert and thus become employable? Or should he just drink himself to death? These seem to be his only choices.

I'll admit that I don't know a lot about French history or literature, and so felt a bit in-over-my-head in some of the discussions on those topics. However, Houellebecq presents an innately readable satire in his tale of a self-absorbed academic who is forced to consider politics on a personal level for possibly the first time in his life. Well worth a read.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin   260 pp.

When I started this novel about a curmudgeonly bookstore owner I wasn't sure I would like it but ended up loving it. A.J. Fikry, a widower, is the owner of a small bookstore on a Massachusetts island with a small year-round population and a influx of "summer people" in the warmer months. Fikry is very particular about what he sells and is, to put it mildly, a book snob. Needless to say, business is bad. When his precious rare copy of Poe's Tamerlane is stolen his life takes on a new sense of doom. But then the unexpected happens in the form of a small child left at the store with a note asking him to raise her there. The impossible becomes the improbable and Fikry ends up fostering, then adopting the girl. The whole town notices the change in him as he becomes more social and makes changes to his store. He even finds romance. I don't know what it is about this book that captured me so. Maybe it was the frequent references to different books that, for the most part, were ones I have read. Or it could have been some other indescribable quality. At any rate, I enjoyed it.

The Nightingale

The Nightingale / Kristin Hannah 440 pgs.

Vianne and Isabelle are sisters but have had a rough time of it after their mother died when they were very young.  Now war is afoot and different personalities and life situations put them in very different places.  Gutsy Isabelle almost immediately joins the resistance and puts herself at risk to save downed airmen. Vianne is struggling to keep her life together and her daughter safe while her husband is at war and her small town is taken over by the Germans including an officer her is billeted in her home.

The struggles of the time are horrifying but the heroic acts of both sisters are inspiring.  This is a pretty hefty book but every page was a pleasure to read.

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Tram 83

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, 211 pages

An always-open, always-busy bar, Tram 83 serves as the hub of an unnamed seceded African city, the place at which miners come to drink beers and meet prostitutes after work, the place where both legitimate and below-the-table business deals are reached, the place where you can find anything and everyone you might be looking for. The plot of this short novel revolves around three people: Lucien, a penniless writer who has returned to the city-state to write his stage-play; Requiem, a kingpin of the city-state's underground who lets Lucien stay with him, despite holding a grudge against him; and Malingeau, a publisher and foreigner who keeps changing the terms under which he'll publish Lucien's text. And then there's Tram 83, which serves as the setting for most of the scenes in the book and gives the book life through the ever-present refrains from prostitutes, waitresses, miners, and tourists.

Reading this book is not easy, and is more akin to reading a jazz song. There are familiar refrains that pop up throughout the book, mixed in with long comma-filled sentences that feel something like an instrumental solo. So while it's a relatively short book, I found it best to approach it in small portions; it may be best read out loud, in a cadence that might be found at a poetry slam. This certainly isn't a book for everyone, but for those who care to brave it, the lyricism and rhythms of Tram 83 (both the book and the business) create an experience that isn't often found in books.

Last Friends / Jane Gardam 205 pp.

The final title in the Old Filth trilogy mops up the story of Filth, his wife Betty, and his enemy, friend, and wife's love Veneering.  The focus shifts to Veneering, just dead from a fall while vacationing in Malta, and alternates with the story of his early childhood and that of the few stragglers the plot has left behind:  Fred Fiscal-Smith, an attorney and hanger-on to the group, and Dulcie, the woolly widow of Betty's godfather, the judge known as Pastry Willy.  Terry Veneering's story is as well drawn as that of Filth and Betty; he's born in the north of England to a coal-peddler and a crippled Russian acrobat.  He is doomed (or fated) to love one woman his whole life who happens to be married to a man he detests, Old Filth himself.  But much of this novel is a sort of fade-out on the group, telling of the last days of Dulcie and Fiscal-Smith who almost by definition are less vital to the story.  And I was disappointed to note quite a few editorial fumbles this time, in particular a lot of bizarre uses of commas.  (Yes, I am a nit-picky ass, and not especially gifted with commas myself, but I must call these things as I see them.)