Recent Books Read

 

Bleak House

 

I had been thinking to myself I need to brush up on some nineteenth century British literature to fill a hole in my own reading history.

I reached out to a friend and asked what the best Dickens was to him, and he said Bleak House.

So, I bought the book, and it is a big brick of a book, almost a thousand pages.

I learned some things. Like I have joked in the past that Dickens got paid by the word and you can tell. I do not think that it is really a joke. I just think the expectations about what a book looks like are different. I still remember in high school keeping a reading journal for myself reading a Tale of Two Cities because there was so much going on. I think that instead of thinking of something like Bleak House as a novel it’s more like a TV show now, where it is episodic and driven by that kind of arc even if now we talk about them as novels. Like the Soprano’s or something.

I also joked that the thing was very character driven, but not in a good way. The writer of the afterward notes that there is 48 characters, and you feel it. The first half of the book is basically a character introduction and twenty pages of focus on them and then a new character. There is not a lot of narrative momentum, and if I were editing this for adaptation to film, there’s dozens of characters who could go out the door.

Because there is really nothing that happens. People die and get married and have disfiguring illness, but it is not until page 483 that something of note really happen. And then it feels incidental to the plot. The whole overarching thing holding the book together kinds of resolves weirdly and unsatisfactorily.

The weird thing is that overall, it is not bad. It just does not cohere in a big picture, so it took me forever to read. But I did read it, so it was good enough I wanted to keep carrying through with it.

 

 

The Calculating Stars     

My library does this yearly one book celebration where the community reads a book in parallel and invites the author to talk about the book. I missed participating in it this year because I was reading something else, but I am sad I missed out on speaking to the author because I really liked the book.

The Calculating Stars is an alternate history where the space race still happens but for a slightly different reason. There was a big meteor that hit the Atlantic Ocean and it went from going to ice age to runaway global warming. The goal in the book is to build up the space program for off world habitation as fast as possible. It is a fun pro-feminist text that parallels real life examples in the female astronauts that did not get their moments of glory because the best of the best forgot half of the people.

The only real plot point that really doesn’t feel organic is the idea that people would use resources to build up for space colonization, especially at the scale that would be needed in the case of a planet killing impact. It does feel right in how people are able to go about their lives as the world around them is changing – nicely done but not too heavy handed. I would recommend this book and I am excited to read the next book in the series.

 

Runaway Horses

About eight years ago one of my friends told me I needed to read this book; it was one of the best books he had ever read. So, I bought it and put it on my shelf until recently.

 

With all the craziness that has been going on in the world, I have been turning to fiction to try to escape it all. So, I picked this off my shelf without really knowing what the plot would be. Let me tell you, if I had known it was about the fanaticism of a group of young men in the runup to the second world war in Japan, I might have not picked it up. It hit a little close to home as we are in the aftermath of the 2020 election and have nationalists in the streets.

 

I must give credit to both Mishima and his translator, since even with too timely subject matter, it is a beautiful book and amazing psychological portrait of both the leader of the young men and those in his orbit. There’s a weird structural bit where there’s a book that is important for the formation of the young men’s ideology that Mishima includes as full text in the novel that kind of interrupts the flow, but it is important for the plot.

 

One thing that I did not know at all was that this book is the second in a four-part series. It works pretty well as a stand-alone book, but there are some references to the previous text that stick out and it would work better and thought I was able to piece together context clues I think it would make more sense if I had read it first. I have ordered the book and plan on reading it as much to fill in the gap as I enjoyed this book and like’s Mishima’s style.

 

A Little History of Religion

I received this as a birthday gift this year. Though it would not be something I normally would buy for myself, as a definite atheist, it is not bad to have a look back and see what you are missing out on.

 

This book is a good survey. It hits on a lot of world religions and takes them on their own terms for the most part. The only real problem is structural in its purpose of being a survey, right there in the title is that it does not go into enough depth. I would say that it is also a little Eurocentric and too focused on Christianity as being at the center of the story. This is a quick read, and it is something I would recommend for a precocious preteen who wants to learn about the world’s religions.

 

Solaris 

I had not read it and the only real association I had in my mind was that it was a Gorge Clooney movie from a while back and the movie was not sold as one of those science fiction movies that make you think. Which is weird because it was not that long after the Matrix blew up the multiplexes and our minds.

 

Solaris is a planet that is being studied by scientist because it is a weird planet. It orbits a twin star system, and it can maintain a steady orbit somehow and there is an ocean of goo and it seems like this goo itself might be sentient. The readers get to see the arc of one visitor, Kris Kelvin, as he has his own encounter with the planet. The whole thing is a mind trip and Lem builds out this whole edifice, not just of the planet and the setting, but what amounts to several generations of what the various scientists have done in trying to understand what Solaris is and what its existence means to humankind. The book is a monumental act of worldbuilding. But as a book it leaves something missing in terms of plot. Because you read all this and you are waiting for something to happen as a reader in the 21^st century, but it is more psychological. No wonder the people who made it into the George Clooney movie focused on him in the marketing material. Well, him and the attractive woman.  

 

The Great Believers

 

I cannot remember who recommended this to me, but I should find out who it was and thank them.

The Great Believers is an amazing and heartbreaking story of a group of men coming of age in the 80s in gay Chicago. I must admit that a part of the enjoyment was recognizing areas and bars mentioned in the text, but the pull of the book is much more than that. Makkai really puts you there, living in a different sort off plague that hits close to home here in 2020. It broke my heart, several times, even though with the subject matter you know it is going to find your gut and just punch you in there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lathe of Heaven

I have been working on an academic project about science fiction and this book kept coming up as one of these foundational books in terms of science fiction that makes you really think – science fiction but also philosophy. It is in the same ballpark as Solaris or the Foundation Books.

 

In the book, the main character is in trouble because he has been taking drugs. But the reason he has been taking drugs is that the dreams he has sometimes reshape reality, he does not know what to do with that. So, he goes to a doctor and instead of trying to cure him, the doctor tries to plant suggestions in the main character’s mind so that his dreams will improve the world. The result is that each thing he tries to do ends up with some sort of ironic side effect. For example, to create peace on earth, an alien threat is created.

 

Ultimately, it is a quick and fin read but it falls in the same sort of trap that Asimov and Lem fall into – once you create this world, just what do you do with the people you have living in it. This is so much so that references to the book hit at the idea created in the text and not the plot of the text itself.

Three Quick Takes

 Wretched of the Earth

I picked this off my too read shelf since it had been too long and with the resurgence of the BLM movement this summer I thought I should read something that dealt with the issue. Here is it’s a little oblique, but overall Fanon’s work is still relevant today.

Sartre and Bhabha help put the work into context, and the essays of the book have an amazingly contemporary feel – much to my chagrin that we haven’t put these issues in the distant past. The only real critique is that there doesn’t feel like an overall arc, but I think that was more my expectations of the book being a singular theoretical text prior to reading it. 

The Book of Dust

I bought this because it was a Philip Pullman book that was a prequel to the Golden Compass series.

If you’re a fan of the series, this is a nice setup for the series as it delves you deeper into the world. I think it would also work if you had not read the series since it is a stand alone chase narrative. The only thing that might throw you off is some of the world building that was done in the original series, but that’s explained here just in less depth.

Overall, a fun read.

The Secret Commonwealth

I bought this because it was a Philip Pullman book that was a prequel to the Golden Compass series, and I had just read the Book of Dust and enjoyed it.

This one subverted my expectations a bit. The Book of Dust took place before the action of the Golden Compass, but this takes place after the action. So, the main character is four books in at the point and a surly late teenager. It was a bit jarring and it really took me a while to get into the book because there’s a central conflict between two characters that really didn’t feel right within the universe and in prior characterization. But once it does get going it is a page turner, just feel like Pullman stuck a bit of a wrong note here. 

It does, however, make you want to keep reading into the series, so it does play its role as a bridge effectively.

The Last Time

 

I was at my in-laws house

I took a walk of the property on a warm winter’s day

Their house was a home away from home

Memories and more – the ground where I was married

They sold the property and now it is someone else memories

 

The last time I saw my father

We watched a lot of television

He in his chair and the family in their seats

Not making memories but spending time

I don’t remember the last thing I said to him

Too worried to get on the road and head towards home

 

Many last times we’re conscious of

Able to hold our friends and loved ones

Tears knowing it will never be the same

Not after this. But other last times

Slip on by, dialing that phone number

And hearing that voice

One more time.

TOPOLOGY

If

There was a way

To capture 

In words

The way the morning sunlight

Only half reflects

And the other half mingles

On the curves 

Of your naked body

As I draw my fingers 

Softly along the dips 

And rivulets – 

A map of my entire world

I would write those words

And destroy 

That paper as truths

Too dangerous for the world

No Tidy Arc: Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle"

So, like somehow, I missed a lot of books that some people read in school. Like I didn’t read Mockingbird or 1984 for class and had to come around to them later. The same thing happened with Steinbeck – he’s a homegrown Nobel Prize winner and all that I was assigned from him was Grapes of Wrath for summer reading before my sophomore honors English class.

I don’t know if then I even read the whole thing. The book was long, you know. Even if I did read it, I didn’t appreciate it like I did when I just reread it twenty-five years later. I was looking for topical writing to try to keep my mind off of the pandemic and I read the Plague and then I bough a new copy of the Grapes of Wrath and was just blown away by it.

All that is just a way to preface this statement: Steinbeck is an amazing writer. Grapes was so good and well-constructed that I turned around and wanted to read more. The Steinbeck that I had read other than Grapes were some of the shorter works – Cannery Row, Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat – and I wanted to find a novel, so I got the one from right before Grapes, In Dubious Battle. Here’s why I think that Steinbeck wasn’t taught in my classes. It’s the people he writes about. Steinbeck is a proletarian writer looking at the people of the country that is mirrored a bit in someone like Flannery O’Connor but we really don’t see people’s relationships with their work that we see in Steinbeck.

Perhaps then, the work of Steinbeck is too far left wing, like here in In Dubious Battle where the two main characters are communist strike organizers. It sure is funny that they didn’t have this on our reading lists! But the thing is that none of the work is “Propaganda” with those scare quotes. Both here Mac and Jim the organizers or in Grapes any of the Joads or the Preacher Jim Casy are one dimensional heroes. They’re complex individuals facing their work and the larger context of depression-era America. That this implies questioning the idea of the American dream is not the subtle pro-American preaching that you find in the curriculum. Better to watch Jim and Huck and ignore some of those words they say – Holden doesn’t exist, ignore them.

Overall, this is a well constricted book moving from the introduction of the characters to their dubious battle that pulls the reader along. One thing to note is that Steinbeck liked to leave endings ambiguous, as if there was not necessarily the larger tidy arc of fiction but that slow roll of real life, where our stories have no ending up until the final curtain.     

Reaching (First Valentines Day After My Father's Death Twelve Days Prior)

Recent events hover over today
I’m still numb, reaching for words
I’m mad at myself for not talking to him more
Mad at him for not talking to me more
Mad at him for just giving up
And mad at the world for how helpless it all makes me feel
My pride in you and your hard work eclipsed by one phone call
A flower-smelling championship, forgotten
But there was a reason the first thing I did when I heard those words was reach for you
It is because you are the one I reach for 
The one I need, the object of all those clichés about love
You do, in fact, complete me
And if I had the words right now I could frame that in some metaphor
Telling you about the way we fit together but the words are not there
But the feelings of companionship and need and desire burn
A compelling to hold you close and to never let you go
An eruption of feeling in the mere nearness to you
And your scent and the way my arms wrap around your body
An animal requirement to have that closeness every day, 
You in my arms fragile yet strong and my arms strong yet grasping
A desire to crush you with my overwhelming tide of emotions
But I hold you clumsily – a child presenting a feather or a bird’s egg.
As I reach for you, first, every day. Not just in the ill light.

The Coffee Cup

I saw my father
In a dream last night
He stood there at the checkout
Buying a coffee cup
To donate to my charity drive
But he was much younger
The age I remember
Both my parents
So that every time I visit them
There is a little shock about
How much they have aged
It is the same shock
I have when I look into
A full-length mirror and wonder
About how much I've aged
And the weight I've put on
The only comfort now
Is that he will not be able to
Age any more

Charles Joseph Mihelic: A Life in Outline

It is with a heavy heart that we must share with the world the passing of Charles Joseph Mihelic, MD. On the second of this month, after a short illness, he slipped the confines of this mortal coil to challenge the deities of all canons to fistfights and matches of wits. We wish him well on his quest, but there are many here who mourn him. We have called him by many names: Joey, Chuck, Babe, Dad, ToeToe - maybe even Chas at a point in the 70s but a lot of things happened during the seventies that not everyone remembers. But we do know that in the seventies he met the love of his life on an April Day in a small town in Alaska. With her, Mary Douglass Bowman, he lived a life that would be hard to contain between the covers of a book, let alone be done justice within the limitations of this mournful missive. Any roll call of the lives he touched would be incomplete as he lived a life of service to the communities he lived in, seeing people sometimes in the worst day of their lives and using his training and native intelligence to save lives and try to mend what was broken. We can note those with holes in their hearts never again to be filled. Mary, with her constant companion gone. John Patrick Mihelic, a little brother now without his boyhood protector. Children Amanda Marie, Catherine Ann, John Edgar, and Norman Joseph left with only their memories. Grandchildren Bonnie, Joe, and Lilly for whom he will live through our stories. (Integrate this better w/ spouses and married names w/r/t genre conventions and those who proceeded in death).

We mourn Doctor Mihelic because of these stories. We mourn a man who saw the world as it was and tried to create a new reality around him. He did things his way. He did this in part because he had to. Born in the South End of Saint Joseph, Missouri, options were limited. You could work at the slaughterhouses, or you can seek your story in the wider world. His ticket was the military, signing up to serve his country in 1969.

Charles Joseph MIhelic: Obituary

Charles Joseph MIhelic, MD, most recently of Shinnston WV, passed away on the morning of February Second, 2020. Doctor MIhelic lived a full life that would be hard to summarize in the space here. Joining the Army in 1969, he left his hometown of Saint Joseph, Missouri where he was born October 19th, 1951 and saw the world. With the experience gained as a medic, he was inspired to continue his education at the University of Missouri - Kansas City where he graduated with both a bachelor's degree in chemistry and an MD.  During this time, he met the love of his life, Mary Douglass Bowman while they were both living in Alaska, marrying September 13, 1977. The couple moved back to the lower 48 and he served communities in the midwest as an emergency room physician. From there, he rejoined the Army as an officer, serving in various capacities including aiding in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. Leaving the military, he made a home in West Virginia, touching many lives in a quarter century of work prior to his recent retirement.

Doctor Mihelic was preceded in death by both his parents, Carl and Catherine “Mimi” Mihelic (Waitkos) and his stepfather Cecil “Babe” Waitkos. Many are left who mourn him and in whose memories he lives on. A complete roll-call here would be impossible, but it starts with his loving family: Wife Mary MIhelic of Shinnston; brother John Patrick Mihelic of Saint Joseph; Daughters Amanda MIhelic and Catherine Schlobohm; Sons John Edgar Mihelic and Norman Mihelic; Niece Emily Mihelic; Nephew John Joseph MIhelic; Son-in-law Scott Schlobohm; Daughter-in-law Anita MIhelic; and grandchildren Lilly Rae Wissler, Joseph Gary and Bonnie Louise Schlobohm. We are remiss not to mention the many friends of the family for whom he served as a mentor and a father figure. He will be greatly missed.

Visitations will be held from 2 pm to 4 pm and 6 pm to 8 pm at Harmer's Funeral home in Shinnston, WV on Thursday February 6th, 2020. On Friday the 7th a Celebration of Life will be held at the American Legion in Shinnston from 5:30 pm to 9 pm. We invite all friends, family, and past coworkers to attend these functions and celebrate the life of a wonderful husband, father, healer, and friend to many in the community.

In lieu of flowers, he requests that donations can be made in his name to Wounded Warriors or the Harrison County Humane Society.

The day my father died

The day my father died was an unseasonably warm day where I lived.

The sun was shining for the first time in what felt like months.

We had stayed out late the night before, so we lingered in bed, and the cats enjoyed the sunbeams. We did our normal morning things - made love and I cooked pancakes and eggs.

We were watching a random episode of Bob’s Burgers and digesting as I reached over for the phone to mindlessly play with it, putting off the moment I would have to start my homework.

The day my father died was notable for others. The Chiefs were playing in their first Super Bowl since my father was a young man. Though I think almost thirty years of living in northern West Virginia made him more of a Steelers fan than the team of his youth in the northwest Missouri. 

The groundhog was to make an appearance, but the groundhogs are many and I still haven’t seen their answers. The date was funny, a palindrome of note.

None of that matters because I picked up the phone and I saw my sister was calling. I love her but we don’t chat on the phone. Not a good sign. She asked if I was in a good place to hear bad news, a thoughtful touch we learn in sales training applied to a different sort of phone call.

The day my father died was today, and I’m still not sure what to do. I cried. I cleaned some dishes. I took a walk. Just last night in the shower I was thinking of how little time there is left, for all of us. I lamented that I wasn’t closer to him but wasn’t sure how to start a conversation - he is very taciturn. Was, was very taciturn. Now more so. 

The good thing religion does is give us community, I thought. But then I realized today that it gives us ritual, a guidance on steps to take to mourn when we want to reach out but there’s nothing to grasp.