Previously Untold Stories and Positively Unpronounceable Names: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XXII

 

STAR WARS FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW: The Empire Strikes Back
Various Authors

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back, forty storytellers recreate an iconic scene through the eyes of its supporting characters, from heroes and villains to droids and creatures. [This book] features contributions by bestselling authors and trendsetting artists: Austin Walker explores the unlikely partnership of bounty hunters Dengar and IG-88 as they pursue Han Solo. Hank Green chronicles the life of a naturalist caring for tauntauns on the frozen world of Hoth. Tracy Deonn delves into the dark heart of the Dagobah cave where Luke confronts a terrifying vision. Martha Wells reveals the world of the Ugnaught clans who dwell in the depths of Cloud City. Mark Oshiro recounts the wampa's tragic tale of loss and survival. Seth Dickinson interrogates the cost of serving a ruthless empire aboard the bridge of a doomed Imperial starship. Plus more hilarious, heartbreaking, and astonishing tales.

I was hooked from the first story. (The tale of one of the humanoids sifting through the visual data from the thousands of viper droids the Empire sent throughout the galaxy in search of rebels. You know...those floating probe thingies that found Han and Luke on the ice planet Hoth?) Some were better at incorporating dialog and scenes from the film into their own protagonist's POV than others, but each one offered insight into previously unexplored feelings, motivations, and connections. And yes, I have placed the other short story collections based on A New Hope and Return of the Jedi on my "to be read" list! Point of interest: in one of the stories, a bounty hunter identifies Chewbacca as the pilot of the Millenium Falcon and Han Solo as "his smart-mouthed sidekick." Point of frustration: The standard Star Wars practice of spelling names in ways that make it impossible to know how to pronounce them is rampant and earuhteighting (e.g., Seitaron, Tian Karmiya, Kashyyyk, etc.).

First Line: Pick any of the last ten transmissions you've looked at.

Page 56 / Line 5: She's been captured, corralled, tamed.

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: In any given situation, he knew, there were men who believed they were in charge, and there were men who truly were.

Last Line: The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space....

Freedom to Control Your Own Body

 

Not wanting my inspirational blog, Truth Is..., to become saturated with personal rants, please allow me to use this outlet to blow off a little steam.

I am grieved at the current political ads that use the phrase "the freedom to control your own body" as the patriotic-sounding code words for "the ability to kill an unborn human."

This is not a matter of religious faith, but of basic biology:

Some may say, "That's right, and I have the right to say whether I want to incubate someone else with my body."

Yes, you do, but the time to make that decision is before you get pregnant. Because the minute you conceive, you are now dealing with another person's rights, not just your own. You have every right in the world to flail your arms around at random, but that right ends at the point where your arms come in contact with someone else's nose.

You do not have the right to harm someone else, and that pre-born human is someone else, with their own DNA, fingerprints, and heartbeat.

Calling abortion "personal reproductive rights" does not change the fact that it ends a human's life.

Some may say, "But it's just a blob of tissue...a product of conception. It's not really human, is it?"

Again, I'm not espousing a religious belief, but basic biology. When two humans have sex and the female becomes pregnant, the product of that conception is human; no different from you or me except for their size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

So, my dear political candidate, when you smile into the camera and tell me I should vote for you because of your plans to uphold a woman's freedom to control her own body...it makes my stomach churn, my eyes water, and my heart grieve.

Oh, Rob!: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XXI

 

THE OFFICIAL DICK VAN DYKE SHOW BOOK: The Definitive History of Television's Most Enduring Comedy
Vince Waldron

What an unexpected pleasure to read a book on a subject about which I thought I knew everything, only to find out that I didn't. A very serious contribution to understanding what really were the best years of my theatrical life. I'd say it was a wonderfully scholarly work  -  but I won't, because I don't want to scare people away from a book that's as much fun to read as this is.     - Carl Reiner (Produce/Creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show)

I bought this book for our recent trip to Wyoming. I figured it would be a good choice for something I could pick up and put down with no need to keep a plot line straight or follow a logical exploration of a subject. I was half right. It was easy to pick up...but kind of hard to put down. Because of my level of admiration for the show, I was easily caught up in all the behind-the-scenes tales and "making of" legends. 

First Line: By six o'clock on the evening of January 20, 1961, the line of people waiting outside Hollywood's Desilu Cahuenga studios was already more than two hundred strong.

Page 56 / Line 5: Without a pause, Deacon uttered, "Yeecchh!"

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: It smelled like some silent movie star had died in there.

Last Line: "It was," he answered, "like going to a lovely party that you never wanted to end."

Real Life Is Real Messy: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XX

 

JESUS LAND: A Memoir
Julia Scheeres

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980's and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother  -  more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children  -  and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir, Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe  -  a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic  -  is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.

I read that description on the back cover and purchased this book on the opening day of a friend's local bookstore, Niche Books, in beautiful downtown Lakeville, Minnesota. Having grown up in rural Indiana, I felt a connection. Having a deep faith in Jesus and a respect for church things, I was interested to hear about the author's experiences. What I didn't bargain for was how engrossing her story is, which reads like a novel. Did I say engrossing? Maybe I should have said heartbreaking. It's hard to believe this is a true story about her actual experience at an infuriatingly abusive-in-the-name-of-religion "school" in the DR in the 80s. So sad that what feels like a work of fiction that, stereotypically, presents all the "religious" people as cruel, egocentric monsters, is an accurate account of the author's childhood and adolescence.

First Line: It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50.

Page 56 / Line 5: She looks like that whorish new singer, Madonna.

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.

Last Line: David, I love you.

A Misplaced Essential: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XIX

 

THE LOST KEY: A Brit in the FBI Novel
Catherine Coulter and J. T. Ellison

In his first hour on the job in the New York field office, freshly minted FBI agent Nicholas Drummond and his partner, Michaela Caine, are called to investigate a stabbing on Wall Street. They must navigate their way through a labyrinth of deadly secrets dating back to an incredible theft during Word War I. They're up against a brilliant madman, Manfred Havelock, who will do anything to retrieve what's been lost for nearly a century. Only one person, a gifted hacker, knows where to look. And he's gone missing. John Pearce's cryptic dying words -- "The key is in the lock" -- set into motion an eleventh-hour race to solve the riddle of what key, and what lock, with Havelock one step ahead of Drummond and Caine, leaving mayhem and death in his wake. They must find the hacker and stop Havelock before he changes the world forever.

This book is the second in the series, but the third one I've read. (A statement which holds no importance whatsoever) I'm still liking the quick pace, short-ish chapters, and mostly-clean language. The action is well-described...so I can see it in my mind-movie, and the stakes are high...and almost believable!

First Line: Ansonia was dead.

Page 56 / Line 5: "I saw a photo in his bedroom of a boy maybe about eight years old, and the girl, she looked about fourteen or fifteen, their mother between them, hugging them close."

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: He stared at her in surprise, dropped his gun, then quietly fell backward onto the beautifully appointed foyer just as Penderley's tactical team burst through the front door.

Last Line: "Both of you."

A Manly Tome Indeed: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XVIII

 

THE POWER OF A PROMISE KEPT: Life Stories
Gregg Lewis

[In the 1990s,] in jam-packed stadiums across the country, men [were] accepting a powerful challenge  -  choosing to live by the Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper. But [did] it make a difference? [Did it change] the lives of their wives and their friends? In these pages are true stories of a few individuals  -  men just like you  -  who put their promise keeping into action every day and have found hope, encouragement, and healing. Their struggles are the same as yours. And their victories can be yours as well.

This book is almost 30 years old (hence the bracketed changes of tense in the publisher's description above), but the copy I purchased from the library ($0.25) looked like it had never been opened (which is probably why they sold it off instead of having it take up shelf space). However, I attended a couple stadium-packing Promise Keepers events back in the day, so my interest was piqued enough to invest a quarter. The stories in this book give evidence to the powerful impact Promise Keepers had...and make me wish they were still filling sports stadiums across the nation like they did back in the 90s. The good news is, I just checked and they are returning to arena-based programming this summer! (Click Here for Info)

First Line: This may be the most unusual book you've ever read.

Page 56 / Line 5: He was in and out of the hospital for months.

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: Don't you see that when men lift you up, they can also let you down?

Last Line: When I decided to let Him fight my battle for me, He went a perfect three for three.

She Did It Her Way: Books I "Read" in 2024, Vol. XVII

 

MY NAME IS BARBRA
Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in the history of popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In [this book], she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl to the long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. No entertainer's memoir has been more anticipated and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

With the tremendous scope of Streisand's career, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at how big this book is. It weighs in at 966 pages, and the audible version, which is what I experienced, is over 40 hours long! (And that takes a long time to get through when you mainly listen while driving.) A lot of that length is due to the depth of her details. I think she must remember every gown she ever wore to any premier, awards show, fundraising gala, or trip to the corner deli. I highly recommend the audio version. While you'll miss the photos included in the book, you'll get some extra material, like snippets of songs and what I swear is a running commentary on the book's contents as Ms. Streisand adds quite a few asides and "by the way"s while she's reading. That seems unusual for an author reading their book, but it's a fine example of what is made clear time and time again...Barbra Streisand does things the way they make sense to her, not necessarily the way any kind of establishment thinks they should be done.

And not necessarily the way any clear, logical person thinks, either. Streisand seems to operate with a strange mixture of faith, ego, and superstition. She talks about praying to God...and her dead father. She puts a LOT of emphasis on 24 being her favorite/lucky number. And in talking about her visit to Israel, she says her first stop was the Western Wall "a sacred place of prayer in the old city of Jerusalem. I slipped a note between the stone slabs, but I can't tell you what I wrote because then it won't come true." As if a written prayer is like making a wish while blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

One final note...I admit to fast-forwarding through some sections where Ms Streisand apparently felt we couldn't live without hearing all about her political convictions.

First Line: An "amiable anteater"?

Page 56 / Line 5: Right before I auditioned at the Bon Soir, I have a vivid memory of walking down the street thinking, This night could change my life.

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: Fame is a hollow trophy.

Last Line: I think I truly am one of the luckiest people in the world.