“It’s just books in there.”

Outside these days, it's "just" (beautiful) wild asters.

When I heard a woman out on the sidewalk in front of Dog Ears Books utter those words to her companion, I had to smile. Yep, it’s a bookstore, bookshop, a place full of pretty much -- “just books.” And that’s what today’s post is, too, my “Books Read” list for September, but if you missed the story and pictures from my pre-UnCaged morning and from Sunny Juliet’s teeter work at our last agility session, you can find that stuff here. Today, though? Just books.

Books Read in September 2024 

 

129.        MacHarg, William & Edwin Balmer. The Indian Drum: A Romance of the Great Lakes (fiction, 1917). This novel is a Michigan classic, and I had never read it before. Expecting a story of Native Americans, then, I was surprised to find the action centered on Lake Michigan shipping (over a century ago) from Chicago to the Straits of Mackinac. A young man who has been raised in Kansas is summoned to Chicago by a man he comes to believe must be his father. When the older man disappears, his secrets untold, the younger begins working lake boats in search of answers. While mystery drives the plot, it is the character of Lake Michigan and the men of its lakes that sustain a reader’s interest. A modern author “retold” the story, under a different title but with the same character names, to the distress and disappointment of readers of this, the original version.

130.        Stanwell-Fletcher, Theodora C. Driftwood Valley (nonfiction, 1947). See September 12 post for my very brief synopsis of this book, with a couple’s adventures beginning in 1937.

131.        Grinnell, George. A Death on the Barrens (nonfiction, 2004). At the age of 70, the author finally published his story of an expedition begun in July of 1955 by six young men who set out in three canoes to be the first to cross the empty, treeless, and largely unexplored area of northern Saskatchewan known as the Barrens. What some members of the team, Grinnell included, hoped would be an adventure became a brutal test of endurance that only five survived. This book is Grinnell’s tale of physical challenge, spiritual transformation, and a life forever changed. 

132.        Hawkins, Karen. The Book Charmer (fiction, 2023). I expected light chick lit, and that’s what I was in the mood for and basically what I got – but I also had tears in my eyes a couple of times, laughed a couple of times, and didn’t feel that my day off spent reading outdoors in the shade was wasted at all. And even though I could see the romantic happy ending coming right from the start, there were a couple of serious issues dealt with in a helpful, positive manner. Hawkins is a good writer.

133.        Boyd, James. Drums (fiction, 1925). Drums is a novel set during the period leading up to and through the American Revolution period of history, but there are only two major battle scenes, and both (one at sea, one on land) occur late in the story. This book is not analyzing the reasons for war or viewing its conduct on the battlefield but seeing how people of the time thought of the situation, chiefly through the eyes of a young man who is no more than a boy at the beginning of the story. Johnny’s Scottish father doesn’t believe war will come or, if it does, that anyone can beat the English. Johnny himself becomes more and more pro-English during the time he studies with a gentle English cleric on the East Coast and associates with English gentry living there. (I always want to put “gentry” in scare quotes. Really!) It takes the experience of living and working in England, where he was happy to flee the possibility of combat, for Johnny to become disillusioned with the British value put on titles and wealth. This is a difficult book to read by reason of its casual racist language and stereotypes. Despite the author’s negative and frankly appalling description of a “slaver,” when the ship carrying its dying cargo anchors offshore, he seems to accept the general establishment of slavery without a twinge, and as for Native Americans, the only speaking Cherokee character is shown defeated by alcohol, as well as by white westward encroachment on traditional hunting lands. Johnny himself, the protagonist, highly impressionable and with vacillating principles, is often hard to find sympathetic. It is his spiritual and intellectual journey to manhood, however, that makes the story, along with a wide variety of characters and the very different ways they meet their tumultuous times. My main takeaway from this novel is that ours is a country that was born splintered and divided. See a previous blog post for more.

134.        Henry, Emily. Happy Place (fiction, 2023). Not sure how I feel about this book. Henry’s novels are very popular, with love themes and happy endings, so I kind of knew what I was getting into and wanted a change of pace after Drums. I had not expected the high level of unresolved sexual tension throughout most of the book, however, and part of Emily’s two- or three-part decision at the end (I’m not doing a spoiler here) disappointed me, though regular readers of romance novels will probably not share my view.

135.        Murray, Albert. Train Whistle Guitar (fiction, 1974).* 

136.        Murray, Albert. The Spyglass Tree (fiction, 1991).* 

*See paragraph below. 

As you can see, my September list is short, only eight books long, owing to my frequent “locals’ summer” vacationing while the sun shone on Leelanau. This morning I reached the third and final section of Albert Murray’s The Seven League Boots, but that book will be on October’s list, because I haven’t yet reached the end. And there’s a fourth after that one, too, and then poems and nonfiction by Murray, so I’ll postpone further discussion of his writing for now, except for referring you to what's in my previous post, the one from UnCaged.