Do Men Write Books Anymore?

Posted on 26/06/2023 by Grumpa Joe

There was a time when the book shelves were loaded with the work of authors with names like Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, James Michener, James Patterson, John Grisham, William Faulkner, Nickolas Sparks, and Jack Kerouac. Where have they gone? To me they have lost the battle of words to the ladies, at least in my library they have. When I search the shelves for new work it seems that the ladies outnumber the men by at least four to one. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against ladies, but the tone of their pen is not as exciting as that of Tom Clancy telling a suspenseful espionage story. I have to admit that when the story involves a tender love scene the ladies have an edge over us. Perhaps there is something we can learn from them. On the other hand, if the scene involves hot sex, a man can tell it better.

Nine of the books I have read this year have been by women, and thirteen have been by men. I rate each book on a five star system, and the average rating for the men is 4.2 while the women scored 4.5. The story telling ability of ladies is obviously appealing to me. If I exclude everything but fiction from the scoring the ladies still win the war 6 to 5. I suppose that I could argue that the men take on more serious non-fiction like history, biography, and science leaving only the mushy stuff to the ladies, but that would be chauvinistic. One of the best historical fiction books I read was The Last Train to London, which I reviewed on this blog, and it was penned by a lady.

I began writing this piece thinking I would report on how poorly women write compared to men, but I have convinced myself with my own data that women authors rock. I love them and will read more of their work, I am woke to their ability to tell a story a man will like. Now it is time to return to the library to pick another fictional novel written by a woman.

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Looking Into the Mirror

Posted on 25/06/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Today I completed reading The Last Train to London, by Meg Waite Clayton. It left me saddened. The title caught me when I first picked it up at the library, as do most of the books I read. The premise of this one is what I call historical fiction which by my definition it is a fictional story based on historical events.

The story is told through the eyes of a Dutch woman Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer who preferred to be called Tante Truus (Aunty Truus). She is responsible for rescuing ten thousand Jewish children from the Nazis during World War Two by transporting them to Holland and then to England between 1933 -1940. The story is beautiful and inspiring, but the ruthlessness of the Nazi regime that perpetrated their racism upon so many people made me sad.

Deep seated emotions of hatred were opened in my mind by remembering WWII and Nazi atrocities. War stories and news reels of the fighting taught me to hate all Germans and Japanese. It was a struggle to unlearn and reprogram my mind to believe that not all Germans were Nazis. A few years after the war ended my brother Bill was drafted into the army, and was sent to serve in Germany. He spent two years there in the peacetime reconstruction period. He wound up bringing home a German girl to marry. It was she who taught me to separate the average German citizen from the Nazi’s. I thank her for changing my mind.

When I watched our own American people terrorizing cities over the last couple of years with their “peaceful” protests it mirrors the action of the Nazis who “peacefully”(I use the term “peacefully” as sarcastically as possible) took over Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Holland with their “loving” treatment of the local citizens who dared resist. If one didn’t do and act as they were told they were shot, beaten, sent to work camps and treated like slaves. Violence, confiscation, and destruction of personal property, torture, and imprisonment were the order of the day. Of course Jews were the primary target, but so were non-jews who resisted or, God forbid, helped a Jew. The one difference between a Nazi demonstration and a BLM, ANTIFA, or George Floyd demonstration was the American protests were totally conducted by citizens, while the Nazis were done by the full German military.

No doubt, it will take me several days to get over this emotional reaction to a story, but I am glad I read it. The phrase “never again” becomes meaningful. The trouble as I see it, is that it has been eighty-five years since these atrocities took place, and there are not very many people remaining alive to be able to reawaken these emotions. It frightens me to think that it will take a new Nazi-like movement in America to reteach us the lessons of damage that can be done by perpetrating such racist hatred.

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Wine Country Romance

Posted on 17/06/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Topics that turn me on when searching for a book to read are bicycles, wineries, Napa and Sonoma Valley California, and adventure stories. One of my favorites is, (i.e. movie) “Under the Tuscan Sun.” There is something special about seeing miles and miles of grape vines growing on rolling hills, and the sides of small mountains. There is always a special story connected to those bucolic scenes which is emotional and beautiful. My latest read is titled “Looking for Leroy,” by Melody Carlson, even the author’s name is a turn on for me. The story she crafted is not the usual love plot, but rather somewhat of a drama about a family running a winery in California. Everything she wrote about turned me on, and I couldn’t put it down. In fact, I set a record by finishing this book in three days.

I won’t write anything about the plot or the characters because it would become a spoiler. I do recommend this story as an entertaining read. The author painted some beautiful scenes of Sonoma Valley. It reminded me of a bicycle trip I took with my oldest son some many years ago. It was a week long trip which meandered through wine country north of San Francisco. We ended the ride by crossing the Golden Gate bridge and landing at the Presidio. Crossing that bridge by bicycle was a thrill I will never forget. I never heard of the Presidio, and that in itself was also a thrill. Once a military base, the Presidio is now a public park situated at the North end of the bridge. My intention is to write a trip report about that adventure, luckily I saved the daily diary I kept. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures to go with the story.

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PSA-230406-Book Report

Posted on 06/04/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Reading Main Street by Sinclair Lewis is another line ticked off my bucket list. I scored it four stars. Lewis was an accomplished writer and told a good story in Main Street, but I thought it was a little too slow. Of course that is exactly what he was writing about. His story takes place in a small town in Minnesota called Gopher Prairie. That name struck me as being a funny. I had to look it up. Gopher Prairie is a fictional town patterned after the author’s home town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

The main character in this story is Carol a native Minnesotan who gets the idea that she wants to change the world one town at a time. The problem is that she can only see that a town is not to her liking. She really doesn’t know, nor can she describe what an ideal town looks like, only that Gopher Prairie is not to her vision. She meets and marries a local man Will Kennicott a local country doctor who is several years her senior.

Although she agreed to live in Gopher Prairie with he husband Will, she never finds a single thing she likes about the town, or the people who live there. At best she tolerates the people and endures the simplicity of the town of three thousand people. As she described the town I got an image of a place I would like to live.

Carol and Will have a baby, a son. One would think that the child would change the mother’s attitude. Even though she loves the child she he does not change her idea about the town. In the mean time her husband being a country doctor is on the go and out of the house long and often. Carol is not satisfied with keeping a house and raising a baby, she wants more.

My personal opinion is that Carol needed a therapist, but therapists didn’t exist in Gopher Prairie in the early 1900’s. After suffering for several years with this dilemma she decides that the best thing for her to do is to move away to a big city where her vision of perfection would be satisfied. She reminded me of actress Cher in the movie Moonstruck when her fiancee is hopelessly complaining, and Cher hauls off and slaps him across the head, and shouts “snap out of it.”

I did enjoy reading this story, but I couldn’t give it more than four stars. It was slow at times and the author tried to get into the heads of his characters a little too much for my comfort.

Sinclair Lewis is a renowned author having won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, and Main Street was his most successful book. Regardless of Carol’s opinion about Gopher Prairie, I would have loved to grow up there. At the time the town population was 3000. That is very similar to the population of Frankfort, IL when I moved here. I thought the town was idyllic, quiet, pastoral and close to rural. Over the past thirty years it has grown, as has the entire surrounding area, and the charm is now replaced with excessive vehicle traffic, huge schools, oodles of franchises, and too many policemen. The historic district is where all newcomers want to live because it most closely resembles small town America. My ideal town is featured in an old movie titled “It’s A Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. This type of town still exists in the USA, but they are far away from big cities and are dying out.

With the current population influx of immigrants from everywhere, our small towns are all bound to grow as poor people look for places that are affordable, and free from too much regulation. Eventually, our cities will resemble those in China where cities like Shanghai exceed twenty millions souls. During the COVID 19 shutdown I researched Wuhan to learn that it is not a single city, but a cluster of several cities blending into one another for a whopping population of sixty million. They sure as hell can’t relate to the story of Main Street at all.

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Will I Ever Learn?

Posted on 23/02/2023 by Grumpa Joe

I find it humorous that it has taken me a lifetime to learn what a community organizer is, and I’m still not sure I understand it yet. In the latest book I read “In Dubious Battle,” author John Steinbeck created a narrative about 1930’s workers starving to death while searching for work. The great Depression had forced many people out of their livelihood and into desperation. People from all over the US had migrated to California where they heard there were jobs harvesting fruits and vegetables. The one thing these poor souls did not figure on is that there would be a hundred people ahead of them for each job that existed. The situation was a big benefit for the growers because the workforce was quickly available and they could reduce pay to a bare minimum. Workers who were broke from the long trip getting to the promised land accepted what ever was offered. As more, and more people came to pick apples the growers lowered the pay to those coming in last. The more pickers a farmer had the quicker his crop was harvested, and the shorter the work lasted.

In this story, Steinbeck follows a family who has been running from job to job only to learn that they could not earn a living at the wages paid. However, they were not alone. The encampment where the migrants stayed while at a farm was filled to the capacity with new workers coming in daily. Conditions were appalling, and hunger abounded. In come Mack, and his friend Jim, fresh off a boxcar from a town that was lacking in jobs. Neither of these men had any intention to become apple pickers, but they did harvest men to a cause. The growers referred to these men as “reds” because they associated themselves with the Communist Party of America. Mack’s sole objective was to organize this camp into a mob with a goal to get higher wages. Mack was good at finding men who were natural leaders, who people would follow. Mack also taught the leaders the tricks of staying out of jail.

The eventual outcome of this story is that the pickers went on strike. They were trained by Mack, a community organizer. I’ll stop exposing the story here. Read the book to learn who won the Dubious Battle.

The first time I heard the term “community organizer,” was during the 2008 presidential campaign. It turns out that Barack Obama began his career as a community organizer before getting into politics. After reading Obama’s biography I learned that his job as a C.O. was in a neighborhood near my own boyhood neighborhood of Burnside called Altgeld Gardens. Other than knowing where Altgeld Gardens was I didn’t know a thing about it except that is was a dangerous place. After later research I learned it was a government housing project for poor blacks. As are most government projects this place was badly neglected, and a once proud community had become a ghetto. Obama speaks about his time there, but never really speaks about accomplishing anything other than to get a few people to meet as a group to identify common problems and to learn which government agency to call for help.

This month I scoured Netflix for a new series to watch, and found one called The English Game. This story too, has a theme of rich versus poor, and of course the rich are very organized and the poor are not. The rich mill owners face a downturn in business and they solve the problem in the only way they know which is to cut wages. The mill workers are a bit more sophisticated than the pickers of the western states, but they get the idea to strike without a formal organizer.

I figure that if I get enough of these messages from life, (movies, books, newspapers) I will eventually understand what a community organizer does. At this point I see the community organizer as one who helps the people of a specific community to help themselves.

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