Ponder: L.A. Weather

L.A. Weather ©2021 is a new release in Hispanic America literature described by the author María Amparo Escandón as follows:

In L.A. Weather, I tell the story of the three Alvarado sisters and their parents trying to make sense of their lives as they realize how much they need each other. I also used L.A.’s droughts and fires as metaphors for the secrets and heartbreaks of this Mexican-American family."

New this week to the New York Times Best Selling book list, L.A. Weather is #14. Kirkus reviews quotes it as “A warmhearted domestic drama with political undercurrents [which] makes for fun reading.”

After completing seventeen books in the Gamache series by Louise Penny, I was in dire need of branching out in my reading choices. I became aware of L.A. Weather as a September pick by the Reese Witherspoon book club. I tend to like this book club's selections as being a bit more upbeat than those on Oprah's roster. Indeed there are a lot of heartbreaks in the Alvarado family, but the way the family all cling to and support each other throughout substantiates my statement about  Reese's Book Club. 

The book reads like a telenovela, a Spanish soap opera of sorts, and the author admits to having been raised on that genre. The dramatic events in this novel are numerous: near drowning, divorce, failing lethargic marriage, miscarriages, in vitro fertilization, infidelity, bankruptcy, cleptomania, brain tumors, teenage pregnancy, gender identity, drought, flood, fire, El Niño, global warming, loss of culture. The assortment and quantity is quite amazing for one book. 

All is far from negative, however. Three daughters have successful careers. Claudia the eldest is a famous television chef, Olivia the middle is an architect with a great talent for flipping homes, Patricia the youngest is a whiz at social media and forecasting trends. The mother Keila is an upscale sculptor, profiting from the sales of her creations in galleries. The father Oscar is an astute business man, descendant from a wealthy family of landowners. Oscar's family background reminds me of the Italian heritage of the family in the 1995 movie A Walk in the Clouds and the vineyards that were their land legacy.

All of the Alvarado lifestyles are described through a hispanic perspective. Food choices are drawn from a litany of Spanish and Mexican dishes many of which I have never heard of; in truth, my eyes would glaze over while skimming those menu recounting paragraphs. Sunday dinners where the family faithfully gathers are to be envied. They are like the stereotypical New England clambake get togethers or the Gone with the Wind southern barbecues. These communal meals remind me of the Sunday meal scene from one of my favorite movies, the 1997 Fools Rush In, where Mathew Perry gets indoctrinated to Salma Hayak's Mexican family. Per imdb ... along with the marriage comes compromise of one's own cultural traditions.

Flipping houses by Olivia also reminds of the scene in Fools Rush In where, as a wedding gift, the family convenes to paint the modernly beige, conservatively neutral, interior of the couple's rental a riotous array of Mexican colors. Olivia in L.A. Weather admits that her "updating" the architecture of hispanic homes involves a nagging of cultural guilt due to compromising her heritage.

I enjoyed the immersion in another culture but the question still looms as to what is the storyline. The short answer: life. Oscar is now wallowing in a zombie state glued to the weather channel and the underlying mystery is why. How the family negotiates its trials and tribulations, submersed in the hispanic culture and cuisine, traveling the roads of adversities while driving on the freeways of the Los Angeles area, makes for an engaging story. Having been to and through Los Angeles, I recognized many of the street and freeway names such as Mulholland Drive and I-405; I suspect readers local to the area will be familiar with many more, likely even groaning at some of the bumper-to-bumper backup traffic memories. Initially scoffing at the improbability of the sheer quantity of misfortunes in the Alvarado family's lives, I decided to settle back and immerse myself in the ride, soaking in how they handled each problem as a team, in an enviable "no man is an island approach". As I wrote this review, my opinion of L.A. Weather rose, once I recognized what happened was not important. How the family responds, is what is endearing. I wavered between three and four stars but settled on four stars.

★★★★☆ Really good; maybe only one weak aspect or limited audience

Ponder: The Madness of Crowds

I eagerly awaited the publication of The Madness of Crowds ©2021, novel #17, by Louise Penny in the murder mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his inspector team of Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste. In the words of Louise Penny in her September newsletter:

This latest book explores what happens when a crazy idea takes on the sheen of legitimacy when voiced by someone in authority. And is repeated. And repeated. What happens when normally rational, decent people accept an indecent proposal? What happens when they lose their good sense? When they lose their minds. When madness is normalized?

The setting was the familiar Three Pines near Montreal; the villagers were a comforting presence but did not play a major role. Although usually best to read Penny's books in order to see how the core characters morph and grow, The Madness of Crowds stands well on its own. Family relationships are key to some extent, but the reader is well informed of pertinent background information. It was more detective work-centric than character development focused. I enjoyed the book greatly and I took my time reading it. Having rushed through three previous books in rapid succession (8/27/21 multi-post) I'd learned to stretch out the reading pleasure. Slowing down was a good call. The murder crime in this book was very convoluted and required concentration to follow and solve.

The novel's time period occurs after the pandemic, thankfully. Since I tend to read for entertainment and escapism, I did not want to be immersed in the COVID viral drama that is still ongoing. Also, seeing that there is a satisfying life after the pandemic gave me hope that normalcy will exist in the future. The story occurs in the time between Christmas and New Year. Hearing the descriptive accounts of rosy-cheeked children and adults tobogganing, skating, and laughing while enjoying snow-filled, winter fun activities is encouraging. In this book the days of isolation and social distancing are over. Toasting  marshmallows over bonfires and waving sparklers at New Years Eve are delightful images. The artistry by MaryAnna Coleman on the endpapers of the hardcover book capture the magical feeling of celebration within the woods of Three Pines. 

However, there remains an after effect addressing economic recovery. One voice spreading economically-promising but morally-repugnant, statistic-based theories gains a foothold in the minds of people renewing their life styles but still shell-shocked from the pandemic. Someone associated with these theories is killed; whether the victim is murdered intentionally with motive, or accidentally due to mistaken identity, is yet to be determined.  I found that The Madness of Crowds proved to be very timely and thought-provoking. It builds heavily on current struggles both international (pandemic related) and American (national divisiveness). I am intentionally being vague about the particulars in this book to avoid divulging spoilers. Character interconnections to each other play key roles in ferreting out the killer. Multiple suspects are under serious consideration, each displaying a strong set of condemning factors associated with credible motive and means.

Crowd responses in some barely credible situations do not seem so far fetched, having seen some disheartening real-life news events on television and internet within the past several years. Some scenarios can't help but bring to mind political rallies and rampages of late. Parts of this book also made me uncomfortable due to some of my personal experiences. Despite some disturbing events – what murder mystery can be devoid of unpleasantness? – I still give The Madness of the Crowds a high five-star rating. As with Penny's works, it is sprinkled with a few lighter nuggets of thought on which to ruminate. View these tidbits as somewhat of a palate cleanse.

• "Having sex did not define an intimate relationship, any more than not having sex prevented one." [Chapter 14]
  
  
• "Beauvoir, who loathed what this woman stood for, quickly searched his feelings for any sign of pleasure at her pain, and found none." [Chapter 21]
  
  
• "Scientists might appear rational, but they were in fact completely at the mercy of their emotions. Because most never learned to face them." [Chapter 45]

★★★★★ Great! Read it!

Ponder: News of the World

My husband often claims that you must remove one star on a movie rating if you watch it on an airplane. I cannot confirm or deny if that is true – it has been so long since I have been on a flight – but I guess the one star deduction is valid. There exists for me a similar analogy for books. Not to offend those who are Kindle fans, but my personal experience has been that I lose enjoyment of a book when I read it on a screen instead of having the physical feedback of turning paper pages. I read News of the World ©2016 by Paulette Jiles several months ago with Kindle app on my Mac and forgotten I had done so. 

The plot is addressed quite succinctly in the Wikipedia entry for the novel, saving me from relaying it in my own words

The book opens in 1870 on the wild border between Texas and Indian Territory, where a 10-year-old girl has been released after four years of captivity. Kiowa raiders had killed her family and taken her hostage, eventually raising her as one of their own with the Kiowa name Cicada. The girl is entrusted to freedman Britt Johnson, who then hands her over to his acquaintance, 71-year-old Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. Kidd agrees to take the girl to Castroville, Texas, where her aunt and uncle live. Captain Kidd makes his living as a news reader, traveling between towns and charging a dime per person to read aloud from newspapers. His profession pays little, and Kidd is also struggling with family problems: his daughters are still living in war-torn Georgia, and he has yet to reclaim land in Texas that once belonged to his late wife, the daughter of Spanish landowners.

Although the book is essentially a western – not my favorite genre – I still had definitely wanted to read the novel before the movie of the same name came out. The book was boring, with long winded segments describing a route followed by the two-war veteran and the girl through the dusty, dry, sun-bleached western countryside and small towns. There is one action-filled, shoot-out scene among rocky, boulder-strewn cliffs and the occasional torrential rain storm to spice up the narrative, but overall I found the book a big snore.

The movie was not much better, with scene after scene of a covered wagon bouncing along the bumpy roads through various similar cliché western landscapes. The readings from the newspaper to the town gatherings broke up the monotony for me. Tom Hanks' playing the lead rescued the movie somewhat, mitigating a total disaster. His acting was top notch even though I felt he was not given much to work with. The ten-year old girl's performance was worthy of praise. Helena Zengel is a German actress and I would not be surprised to see her in future films. The film outcome and some poignant scenes were altered from the book, which annoyed me since I felt it changed the tone and the intended message.

Per Amazon, the novel averaged 4.5 out of 5 by 13,969 readers. Per IMDB the movie was rated or 6.8 out of 10 by 71,951 viewers. Me? I do not follow the crowds. I was disappointed. I was expecting more. I rated both the book and the movie low:

★☆☆☆☆ Awful but I read (and watched) most or maybe even all of it

Ponder: Pack Up the Moon

Read this book with a large box of tissues! I cried throughout the whole thing. Pack Up the Moon ©2021 is written by Kristan Higgins, a New York Times best-selling author whose novels I had never read.  Totally unfamiliar with even her genre, I googled it and learned per wikipedia that Kristin Higgins  is recognized for "humorous contemporary romance". 

Per her link among the NY Times best selling authors she describes herself thus: 

The proud descendant of a butcher and a laundress, Kristan lives in Connecticut with her heroic firefighter husband. They own several badly behaved pets and are often visited by their entertaining and long-lashed children.

The storyline of Pack Up the Moon is that of a young, newly married couple who learns that the wife has a terminal illness with a life expectancy of three or so years. Joshua and Lauren try to make the most of those years with the guidance of a quote from the movie Shawshank Redemption "Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying." The novel is written in a two-timeline approach which I found clever and surprisingly easy to follow. Joshua's timeline is forward moving after her death; Lauren's feelings are revealed backward beginning with the time closest to her end of life.  Chapters are headed as either Joshua's or Lauren's.

Lauren also had been writing letters to her deceased father, who died five to eight years prior to her composing letters to him, giving her thoughts, fears, and hopes as the time of her own end of life approaches. As the book progresses Lauren's letters are presented in backward order with chapter headings such as "Eight days left"..."Twenty-five months left"... "Fifty-seven months left", time durations unbeknownst to her. Chapter 1 of the book  is Lauren's and opens with

LAUREN – Eight days left, February 14th :

Dear Dad, I'm dying, my husband is go to be a widower, and this has been the most wonderful year of my life. How's that for surprising?

Joshua receives letters from his wife that she had written prior to her death, instructing a friend to give to him, one a month for the year after her death. It is so touching how she thinks ahead to try devise a plan to help her husband cope with his loss of her, physically. Each letter suggests something to help him continue his life without her, while letting him feel close to her through these monthly doses of connection. In these letters she expresses her love for him and gives him assignments that are wise, poignant, challenging, stretching. The outcomes can be humorous, seemingly disastrous, wildly successful, but in each a case well worth pursuing. I could name them but they are best discovered in the timing and wording of Kristan Higgins. No spoilers divulged here! 

The novel has great narrative and storytelling beyond the letters and has humorous episodes interspersed. Pack Up the Moon is not just sad at the ending like Love Story or Romeo and Juliet. It tugs at your heartstrings throughout the entire book both with joy and melancholy. Far from being the Harlequin type of hormone-driven romance, it instead epitomizes deep-caring, uplifting love. People often need to use tissues at a wedding, not because it is sad, but because it speaks of something rich, enduring, timeless. I wondered about the book title. I associated it with the movie It's A Wonderful Life when George Bailey first meets Mary, and they are gazing at the moon in the following YouTube clip, I'll give you the moon, Mary. I guess in the case of Joshua and Lauren, the moon must be packed up "to go".

How should I rate Pack Up the Moon? On Amazon so far, 1,003 readers have rated it an average of 4.7 stars. I picked it up from the library, opened it, and was grabbed by the opening chapter. I read it straight through until the wee hours of the morning, pausing to blow my nose and wipe my blurry eyes so I could read on. Its audience may not be wide, but it is intense for those who enjoy books full of in-depth characters and succinctly described human emotions. Perhaps some would classify it as chick lit, books' counterpart of movies' chick flicks, but I think that pigeonholing it that way does it a disservice. Pack Up the Moon is an inspirational, glass half-full example of how to live life to the fullest allowed. True, it is most likely not everyone's cup of tea, and so I give it four stars, despite the evidence of my marathon reading of the novel.

★★★★☆ Really good; maybe only one weak aspect or limited audience

Farewell to NOT*BLU

This is a "Wander" post – not a "Ponder" post – because it involved traveling. The traveling was not by us, but rather by my old faithful car, a 2003 red Pontiac Grand Prix, affectionately called NOT*BLU. The following photo is from the last time she was parked in our driveway prior to her journey halfway across the country.

When we bought the car nineteen years ago, I chose a bright red color. All our our previous cars had been a reserved, conservative shade of blue. I wanted to shake it up a bit and also get vanity plates to make a statement. I played around on the California DMV website but, just about every name I tried with the word red or some variation of red, came back with a message that the letter sequence was not available. It was a frustrating experience similar to when picking a password and so many are rejected for one reason or another. It was our daughter Robin who came up with the name NOT*BLU back then. It was perfect, it was available, and it had the double entendre that, with NOT*BLU's sun roof and CD player, I was not blue when driving it.

With the purchase of our new 2021 Toyota Avalon (see post dated 6/21/21), the time had come to say farewell to NOT*BLU. I was not emotionally ready to abandon her at the dealer ship as a next to nothing trade-in for the new car. We thought instead we might donate her to the Make-A-Wish foundation and were set to do that when Robin expressed an interest in having the car out in Oklahoma. The paperwork for transferral was more complicated and scheduling the pickup took more effort than a mere donation would have; Make-A-Wish would have come within 24 hours for the car and handled all the paperwork. But I was pleased my car would be going to a good home. Here is NOT*BLU on the driveway next to her successor, the Avalon, which has not been given a name as yet. 

I texted Robin and Jeremy the picture with a rhetorical question and here was their reply about me and the cars.

Because the trailer transport vehicle could not turn around in our cul-de-sac I drove NOT*BLU out to our nearest cross street with a straight, more accessible layout. I parked her under our corner street sign. Then I took a photo of the ramp she would be climbing to reach her position on top for a great view during her travel. She would be the second of seven vehicles to make the journey so she would not be lonely.

I made movie of her ascent and uploaded it to this post.

NOT*BLU left Livermore on a Thursday August 19th and arrived three days later in Oklahoma City on Sunday, August 22nd. Robin sent confirming text messages and photos.

Robin registered the car with the Oklahoma DMV and got new plates, actually called "tags" in Oklahoma speak. The first three letters are "KSL" which inspired the new name, Kessel Run.

Robin, Jeremy, and their kids are Star Wars fans. KSL made them think of Kessel Run. Per a Star Wars fandom website

The Kessel Run was one of the most heavily used smuggling routes in the Galactic Empire. Han Solo claimed that his Millennium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". A parsec is a unit of distance, not time. Solo was not referring directly to his ship's speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance. By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs.

Kessel Run of movie fame is probably a modified namesake of a famous astrophysicist Donald J. Kessler, formerly a NASA scientist, known for his studies in space debris. I researched the preceding information based on Robin's text messages.

And it looks like he enjoys driving it, even if he is not skirting black holes.

As a tiny bonus they also got a Beach Boys CD I'd inadvertently left in NOT*BLU's CD player. I enjoyed her while I had her, and I was "not blue" when driving her!