The Caine Mutiny Movie, Virginia Book Ban Dismissed, Quote of the Day, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom Review, Obit for Barbara Ehrenreich and Sterling Lord, Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen, Stranded: A Romantic Time Travel Mystery by Rosalind Tate and Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May

Welcome to September! Last month was pretty rough for my entire family health wise, but we're hoping that this month we will all begin recovering and start to enjoy cooler temps and longer nights of rest and relaxation. There's a lot of tidbits in this weeks post and some of my reviews at the end.

I remember reading the Caine Mutiny and watching a couple of movies made from it, but nothing was ever as evocative as the book. Let's hope Wouk can rectify that with this latest version starring the delicious Kiefer Sutherland.

Movies: The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) will direct and Kiefer Sutherland (24) will star (as Lt. Commander Queeg) in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscAXew-wI6aoxchp1HA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jCDMKkpoMLg-gVdw, using a 50-year-old play script written by Herman Wouk from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Deadline reported that the project "is being plotted for a January start, and casting is just getting underway.

Annabelle Dunne and Matt Parker are producing. Sutherland's deal is being finalized."

"I've looked at a lot of scripts in the last 10 years, and I haven't seen anything I really wanted to do," said Friedkin. "But I think about it a lot, and it occurred to me that could be a very timely and important piece, as well as being great drama. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is one of the best court-martial dramas ever written."

The original novel, the 1954 film with Humphrey Bogart and a Robert Altman-directed 1988 TV adaptation of the play were set during World War II, but Friedkin said: "The original piece was written for WWII, and Wouk included all the pent-up anger in this country over Pearl Harbor.

I've updated it so that is no longer Pearl Harbor. I've made it contemporary, involving the Gulf of Hormuz and the Straits of Hormuz, leading to Iran."

He added: "There never was a mutiny in the United States Navy. Herman Wouk virtually created the first and only mutiny in the United States military. His dialogue is terrific, right to the point. It's set at a trial, but it's all really by the book, in terms of accuracy. But there never was a mutiny in the United States military. He invented it and all that would take place around it, based on the laws that cover it."

YAY! Fascists LOSE! Freedom of speech wins! Censorship is EVIL.

'Total Victory': Virginia Book Ban Case Targeting B&N Dismissed

In what defendants called "a total victory," a Virginia Beach Circuit Court judge yesterday dismissed the case brought earlier this year https://www.shelfawareness.com/ct/x/pjJscASIlbkI6aoxch53Sw~k1yJoKX-hs8x6jDWpTxpoMLg-gVdw seeking to have Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer: A Memoir (Oni-Lion Forge) and Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Mist and Fury (Bloomsbury) declared obscene and to bar Barnes & Noble from selling the books to minors without parental consent--an expansion in the current efforts to ban books in schools and libraries.

In dismissing the case, judge Pamela S. Baskervill ruled that under Virginia law the court didn't have the authority to declare the books obscene and that applicable Virginia law was unconstitutional because its use of prior restraint violates due process. She also threw out a previous order finding probable cause that the books might be obscene.

The plaintiffs were two Virginia Republicans: Tommy Altman, who lost his bid for Congress in the June primary, and his attorney Tim Anderson, who serves in the Virginia House of Delegates. They had filed a motion for a temporary restraining order against B&N.

Defendants included the authors, publishers and friends of the court, including local booksellers Prince Books in Norfolk and Read Books in Virginia Beach, as well as the American Booksellers for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, the American Library Association, the Virginia Library Association and the Freedom to Read Foundation.

AMEN to this quote...I don't regret all the money spent on books, either.

Quotation of the Day

'I Am Poor Because of All the Money I’ve Spent in Indie Bookstores, & I Don't Even Regret It'

"Independent booksellers have taken so much of my money and I'm not

complaining about it. I have never not gone into a bookstore and spentall my money there! Honestly, I love it. The thing [with] independentbookstores is that you can get so many book recs and you can really findso much stuff. I tend to gravitate toward romance novels, and I have apretty good idea of what's out there, but there are so many other thingsthat I just don't know are out there. I usually find out through booksellers and opportunities at independent bookstores.

"As an author, I can't even begin to thank independent booksellers for

the way that they have sold my book and generally talked it up. So it'sreally twofold the way they have impacted me. Mostly the fact that I am poor because of all the money I've spent in indie bookstores, and I don't even regret it."

--Ali Hazelwood, whose novel Love on the Brain (Berkley) is the #1 pick for the September 2022 Indie Next List 

 

I really want to read this memoir, it sounds wonderful. And as someone who has been a larger person for most of her life, I know how it is to be harassed and abused because you're bigger than other people and don't live up (or down) to their expectations of all women being thin and waifish and powerless over their own bodies.

Review:  Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat and Family

Fragrant, delectable homemade Pakistani dishes are central to Rabia

Chaudry's touchingly warm and intimate narrative in Fatty Fatty Boom

Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat and Family. A woman who grew up besieged by harmful comments about her weight and appearance, Chaudry is an uplifting storyteller and her humor-laden anecdotes balance the underlying gravity of her story with grace and skill.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Chaudry moved with her parents to Northern

Virginia when her veterinarian father was offered a job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1970s. Misguided efforts to make their scrawny toddler look like her American counterparts included feeding her two bottles of half and half daily and letting her gnaw on frozen butter sticks. Her family discovered the U.S. through their taste buds, astounded by the bounty, affordability and convenience of fast food offerings. A neighbor introduced them to the cheesy deliciousness of Italian-American cuisine.

As an overweight girl with a dark complexion, Chaudry was constantly reminded of her "future unmarriageability" by an immigrant community preoccupied with their daughters' marriage prospects. She got married early, while in college, to an unsuitable boy in an effort to disprove the naysayers. Food was Chaudry's family's love language; her cherished memories include restaurant hopping with her feuding uncles, feasting before sunrise and after sundown during Ramadan, and drinking copious amounts of steaming chai.

Chaudry is an attorney, podcast host and author of Adnan's Story: The

Search for Truth and Justice After 'Serial'. An advocate for Adnan Syed, the young man convicted of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend in 1999, Chaudry was an executive producer of an HBO documentary based on her book. Being in the media spotlight made her self-conscious about her weight and frustrated that she couldn't take control of her own body.

Eventually, her path toward improved health and fitness and inner contentment, plagued with many false starts, came with the hard-won wisdom of someone accustomed to being criticized for her appearance. It turns out that, for Chaudry, wresting control of her own narrative from those eager to pass judgment ultimately opened the door to self-acceptance.

Readers of Chaudry's memoir are in for a treat at the very end of Fatty

Fatty Boom Boom: she shares easy-to-follow recipes for some of her favorite foods, complete with the extra touches that have made the author a cooking legend among her family and friends. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer

 

The nest two obit notices are for literary titans. Ms Ehrenreich's book was ground breaking and brilliantly written. I remember thinking this was the first time I'd ever read a book from a reporter who understood, through her own investigation, how hard it is to work minimum wage jobs and try to have a decent place to live and food to eat and, in my case, medicine to take for your asthma. There were many times when I had one of the three, or, if I was lucky, two of the three, and otherwise I had to sleep on the streets, or go without meals or go without any medication for my breathing in a city of smog and polluted air. It's frustrating as heck that many of the most important jobs, like teaching or being a CNA and taking care of the sick and elderly or disabled children is paid so little and valued so little that you're left worse off than those who are jobless and getting welfare checks and government housing. RIP to this amazing author. 

Obituary Note: Barbara Ehrenreich

Author, journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscASLkusI6alnIhAjGw~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jDWZOjpoMLg-gVdw, whose Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001) is considered a classic in social justice literature, died September 1. She was 81. The New York Times reported that the book's genesis was a casual lunch meeting at which Ehrenreich "was discussing future articles with her editor at Harper's magazine. Then, as she recalled, the conversation drifted. How, she asked, could anyone survive on minimum wage? A tenacious journalist should find out. Her editor, Lewis Lapham, offered a half smile and a single word reply: 'You.' "

The resulting book, Nickel and Dimed, was "an undercover account of the indignities, miseries and toil of being a low-wage worker in the United States." Working as a waitress near Key West, Fla., Ehrenreich "quickly found that it took two jobs to make ends meet. After repeating her journalistic experiment in other places as a hotel housekeeper, cleaning lady, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart associate, she still found it nearly impossible to subsist on an average of $7 an hour. Every job takes skill and intelligence, she concluded, and should be paid accordingly," the Times wrote.

"Many people praised me for my bravery for having done this--to which I could only say: Millions of people do this kind of work every day for their entire lives--haven't you noticed them?" she said in 2018 in an acceptance speech after receiving the Erasmus Prize.

In more than 20 books, Ehrenreich tackled a variety of themes: the myth of the American dream, the labor market, health care, poverty and women's rights. Her motivation came from a desire to shed light on ordinary people as well as the "overlooked and the forgotten," said her editor Sara Bershtel.

Ehrenreich quit her teaching job in 1974 to become a full-time writer, selling a number of articles to Ms. magazine in the 1970s. In addition to her essays and articles for many publications, Ehrenreich's critically acclaimed books included The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (1983), Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (1989), The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (1990) and Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (1997).

Nickel and Dimed, however, "resonated with working Americans and became a turning point in her career," the Times wrote. After the book's success, Ehrenreich "applied her immersive journalism technique to works about the dysfunctional side of the American social order," including Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream (2005), Smile or Die (2009), and a 2014 memoir, Living with a Wild God. Her most recent book, Had I Known: Collected Essays, was published in 2020.

Ehrenreich ultimately came to believe that individuals could tell their own stories if they had greater support. She created the Economic Hardship Reporting Project , which focused on helping the work of underrepresented people get published and providing economic assistance to factory workers, house cleaners, professional journalists and others who had fallen on hard times.

Sharing the news of his mother's death on Twitter, Ben Ehrenreich wrote: "She was, she made clear, ready to go. She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell."

 If you've been a bibliophile for as long as I have, and you've read the classics, you will have heard of high powered agents like Sterling Lord and their high powered editor friends like Maxwell Perkins or Harold Ross. There are so many stories that float around in publishing about the book gods like Lord, that you can't not appreciate his amazing over half century of work at the pinnacle of publishing. RIP, Sir.

Obituary Note: Sterling Lord 

Sterling Lord, who for more than 60 years was one of New York's most successful and durable literary agents, died September 3. He was 102. The New York Times reported that although the list of well-known writers he represented is long, "his success began with an unknown named Jack Kerouac and his hard-to-sell novel On the Road."

Lord was a fledgling Manhattan literary agent in 1952 when Kerouac "walked timidly into his office, a basement studio on East 36th Street, just off Park Avenue.... Inside Kerouac's weather-beaten knapsack and wrapped in a newspaper, Mr. Lord recalled, was a manuscript that Kerouac handed gingerly to him. It took Mr. Lord four years to sell the book, for a measly $1,000. But at last count, On the Road has sold five million copies and burned just as many gallons of gas as generations of young people have set out in search of either the America Kerouac saw or the ones that have taken its place," the Times wrote.

In 1987, Lord joined the agent Peter Matson to form Sterling Lord Literistic. Although Lord gradually yielded day-to-day management of the company and eventually sold his stock, "he continued to work, and into his 90s remained the highest-earning agent in the office," the Times noted, adding that his "last years with the agency were unhappy, however, as he came to feel that some of his colleagues were undermining him. In 2019, though suffering from the macular degeneration that had stopped his tennis game, he set up a new literary agency on his own."

The late Joe McGinniss said in 2013 that "Sterling's career encapsulated the rise and fall of literary nonfiction in post-World War II America. He was the last link to what we can now see not so much as a Golden Age, but as a brief, shining moment when long-form journalism mattered in a way it no longer does and may never again."

His client list included Jimmy Breslin, Art Buchwald, Willie Morris, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Howard Fast, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gordon Parks, Edward M. Kennedy, Robert S. McNamara, Frank Deford, David Wise, Nicholas Pileggi, Jeff Greenfield, Ken Kesey and the Berenstain Bears, among many others.

Lord "embraced Merry Pranksters and mobsters as well as more conventional types," the Times wrote, noting that his clients "appreciated his gentility, which appeared in ever-sharper relief as the book business became increasingly commercial and cutthroat. Dining with him, Mr. Greenfield recalled in another 2013 email, 'you felt as if you were in a different time--as if Maxwell Perkins might show up for coffee.' "

"A number of things about this business have really caught me and made it a compelling interest, https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscASMkOwI6alnIk90GQ~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6jDXpGkpoMLg-gVdw" Lord told the AP in 2013. "First, I'm interested in good writing. Second, I am interested in new and good ideas. And third, I've been able to meet some extraordinarily interesting people."

 

Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen is yet another triumph of magic realism married with a lux romanticism that absorbs you into the story and will not let you go until the final chapter. I've read everything that this author has written, and have yet to find one word, one comma out of place. Her prose is filled with beauty and light and her plots are like a calm, sparkling lake at sunset...perfection. Her characters are always fascinating, whether they're quirky or odd or just layered in mystery. Here's the blurb:

From the acclaimed author of Garden Spells comes a tale of lost souls, secrets that shape us, and how the right flock can guide you home.

Down a narrow alley in the small coastal town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, lies a stunning cobblestone building comprised of five apartments. It's called The Dellawisp and it's named after the tiny turquoise birds who, alongside its human tenants, inhabit an air of magical secrecy.

When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother's apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors including a girl on the run, a grieving chef whose comfort food does not comfort him, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and three ghosts. Each with their own story. Each with their own longings. Each whose ending isn't yet written.

When one of her new neighbors dies under odd circumstances the night Zoey arrives, she's thrust into the mystery of The Dellawisp, which involves missing pages from a legendary writer whose work might be hidden there. She soon discovers that many unfinished stories permeate the place, and the people around her are in as much need of healing from wrongs of the past as she is. To find their way they have to learn how to trust each other, confront their deepest fears, and let go of what haunts them.

Delightful and atmospheric, Other Birds is filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won't let you go. Sarah Addison Allen shows us that between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways.

Even Allen's ghosts are bizarre and sometimes sweet, but never dull or uninteresting (or one dimensional). Each character is so well delineated that you feel like you know them, that they're real people, by the end of the novel. Though this is supposed to be Zoey's story, I found Charlotte, Mac and Frazier equally, if not more fascinating. I was especially fond of Mac, with his rescue cat and his corn flour-dusting ghost, and his kind and generous way of making people food to love and nurture them, just as he was loved and nurtured by Camille. I'd give this perfectly delightful novel an A, and recommend it to anyone who loves magic realism or light contemporary fantasy. 

Stranded: A Romantic Time Travel Mystery by Rosalind Tate is book one of the Shorten Chronicles, which I managed to get for a very low price for my Kindle. I wanted to love this ebook, but I found that it started to flag and become predictable and dull halfway through. Here's the blurb:

One million pages read. Time travel meets Downton in this acclaimed fantasy series!

Sophie Arundel is stranded in history, stuck in a grand house in 1925 England. Thankfully, she has her faithful dog Charlotte with her. Oh, and fellow student Hugo, annoying and charming in equal measure.

Baffled by upper-class rules, courted by boring suitors, Sophie is desperate to get back to the twenty-first century. But the only way home is through a hidden portal — and she must work with Hugo to unlock its secrets.

As one clue leads to another, Sophie and Hugo discover that history is unfolding differently. Mobs rule the streets. And when chaos turns into a deadly revolution, anyone in a grand house is fair game.

I didn't find any of Downton Abbey's lovely upstairs/downstairs drama and delightful characters in this book, but the mystery was what kept me reading past the first 100 pages. The ending leaves you hanging, and I don't really think the book inspired me to go further in the series. The prose was pedestrian and the plot uneven and slow in spots. I'd give this novel a B-, and only recommend it to those who are seriously interested in 1920s England and semi-cozy mysteries.

Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May is one of those books that is mutton dressed as lamb. The PR people are hyping it as a tale of wicked, haunting and thrilling dark magic, when it's actually the tale of a wimpy, wispy mouse of a woman named Annie who comes to Crow Island to deal with her estranged father's estate. What she finds there instead is madness and chaos caused by her truly narcissistic and sociopathic friend Bea, who is just an awful person (but no one seems to see her that way because of her supposed dazzling beauty and charm...I felt that she had neither, but everyone else pants after her like she is the last woman alive).  Bea has essentially used the Island's "witches" or magic practitioners to get her an abortion and to get her a rich and powerful husband whom she wants to love her like no other and marry her, which he does...but the reality of being obsessed with someone like Bea is that her husband ends up being violently possessive and abusive, which is not what Bea wanted...so now, instead of paying the blood debt she owes for these two magical influenced things, she demands that they be undone, and refuses to pay the blood debt (to be collected from her husband) so that Emmeline, the lesbian witch who is also obsessed with her is now bleeding herself dry, nearly to death, instead of Bea owning up to her responsibility.  Here's the blurb: In a world of 1920s decadence and excess, Francesca May's irresistible debut weaves a glittering tale of dark magic, romance, and murder. 

On Crow Island, people whisper that real magic lurks just below the surface.

Magic doesn’t interest Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s on the island only to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one.

Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the most mesmerizing may be her enigmatic new neighbor. 

Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of Crow Island’s extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.

To those who are bright and young; to those who are wild and wicked; welcome to Crow Island. 
 

There is very little focus on the "wild and wicked" and more on the consequences of magic, which are pain and suffering for the practitioners, who live a hand to mouth existence because their clients don't want to pay for the magic that they receive. Annie, meanwhile, is continually tempted and lured by her lesbian desires to Emmaline, with whom she feels she has a heart to heart connection. But, as with everything, Annie is a wee timorous cowering beastie who can't bring herself to actually confront her feelings or help her friend Bea or deal with all the magic surrounding her. She laments this constantly, being a cowardly mouse when she wants to be a lion...but that's all she does, whine about it instead of growing up and growing a spine and moving forward with her life. Ugh. I loathe wimpy female protagonists. It's sexist and stupid. I'd give this book a C+, and I can't really think of who to recommend it to, because the prose is dank and dreary and the plot plods along on tired and repetitive feet.