Book of the Day Roundup: April 17-21, 2023
The Wisdom of Morrie
Living and Aging Creatively and Joyfully
Morrie Schwartz
Rob Schwartz, editor
Blackstone Publishing
Hardcover $25.99 (324pp)
979-820081345-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
With advice garnered from his luminous career in sociology and his personal experiences, Morrie Schwartz’s The Wisdom of Morrie is a thoughtful treatise that is filled with insights about aging with joy.
Throughout the book, Schwartz addresses the erroneous idea that people are somehow made less by the aging process. He explores difficulties that are often related to aging, too, including physical decline, loneliness, and ageism. Looking to his own experiences, including an asthma diagnosis, and incorporating anecdotes from others, like the story of a man who wanted to maintain his independence after an accident, Schwartz illustrates how problems can manifest and how they might best be handled. He shares helpful suggestions for improving one’s quality of life—for instance meditation, which can lower blood pressure and improve concentration.
The last chapters in the book discuss the key components that Schwartz identified as necessary for being happy in later life. These include making a contribution to society, continuing to grow and learn, and finding something beautiful or joyous to appreciate every day. Included are some profound discussions on living ethically and morally, making some type of spiritual connection, and striving toward self-actualization, all while recognizing one’s place in the greater landscape of humanity.
The book is aimed at older people who are generally of sound mind and body. However, there is thought-provoking content here for anyone who has an elderly friend or loved one, or who is simply troubled by thoughts of their own aging.
Edited by his son Rob Schwartz after the author’s death, The Wisdom of Morrie is a thoughtful examination of aging with practical advice on how to make the most out of one’s late stages of life.
CATHERINE THURESON (April 17, 2023)
The Night Tent
Landis Blair
Margaret Ferguson Books
Hardcover $18.99 (40pp)
978-0-8234-5098-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Pale yellow stars twinkle against dreamy backdrops of blues and purples in this enchanting bedtime tale. One night, while struggling to sleep, Watson finds a magical world under the “night tent” of his blankets; because he’s not tired—not a bit—he enters and explores. Deep forests, harmless monsters, and a winding trolley are depicted in cool tones, with pops of muted yellow and black crosshatching applied to add depth and texture.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (April 17, 2023)
Any Other City
Hazel Jane Plante
Arsenal Pulp Press
Softcover $19.95 (352pp)
978-1-55152-911-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Hazel Jane Plante’s novel Any Other City puts a transgender punk idol’s story to the page.
Tracy St. Cyr lives in a city that could be “any other city” that features creative and queer communities. Her story is structured like a vinyl record with two “sides”—A, which takes place in 1993, and B, which takes place in 2019. On side A, Tracy addresses a lover whom she left behind in her hometown and the revelations enabled by life in her new city, where she begins to understand and explore her sense of self. She wants to study art, which leads her to contact a favorite artist of hers for a mentorship; she falls in with a tight-knit group of transgender punks who help to shape her future. And on side B, Tracy addresses a different lover whom she left following emotional abuse. Now an out trans woman and a famous punk band leader, she tries to recalibrate her life once again in the unnamed city that made her who she is.
In the forward to Side A, Plante introduces herself as the “creative conspirator” to St. Cyr’s writing. The device helps the novel read as an authentic depiction of a real-life person’s tale. Tracy St. Cyr is vivified from two years’ of memories, built in focused fragments, that are woven together to form a coherent narrative. Song lyrics, song compositions, and detailed descriptions of visual art give the book a sense of physicality. It is a space worth lingering in.
Any Other City is a novel that’s reminiscent of a captivating concept album, becoming itself like a city, with nooks and crannies that beg to be explored.
MICHAEL ELIAS (April 17, 2023)
The Archivists
Daphne Kalotay
TriQuarterly
Softcover $20.00 (232pp)
978-0-8101-4608-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Daphne Kalotay’s short story collection The Archivists showcases grief and loss alongside sublime moments of human connection.
In “Relativity,” an American social worker helps Holocaust survivors access end-of-life services while grappling with the loss of the child who he and his wife so wanted. Trauma and mourning appear elsewhere too: in “A Guide to Lesser Divinities,” a woman feels responsible for her best friend’s death; in “Seeing,” a woman survives an encounter with a sexual predator, is haunted by gruesome images, and deals with catcalling during her daily walks; her life seems to narrow into a series of disempowering interactions.
Interwoven snippets come together with family stories at their heart. Herein, people are complex beings, hiding secrets from others and sometimes themselves. Women date younger men, sometimes going to the extremes of lying about their ages to do so. And queer characters face social consequences or worse for being out.
Even when their circumstances are depressing, though, the stories themselves assume a meditative posture. They flow from sad moments into funny ones. People muddle through house parties, dating applications, career changes, and a pandemic. “A Guide to Lesser Divinities” chronicles, in acute detail, the degrading experiences of contingent academics, from sharing office space to being cornered by eminent scholars who have sexual rather than intellectual engagement in mind. In “The Archivists,” scientists work to document the epigenetic effects of trauma on the children of Holocaust survivors, while across the US a retired dancer helps to recreate an archive of dances about the war that could be lost to time.
Transcendent and triumphant, the short stories collected in the The Archivists reveal human beings at both their lowest and highest moments; they seek connections, even knowing that love might hurt them the most.
JEANA JORGENSEN (April 17, 2023)
The View from Half Dome
Jill Caugherty
Black Rose Writing
Softcover $21.95 (286pp)
978-1-68513-180-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Jill Caugherty’s novel The View from Half Dome, a girl makes plans to fills the void left by her father and sister.
Isabel moves into a rundown apartment in Depression-era San Francisco with her mother and her sister, Audrey. Her father has died; her brother, James, helps to support the family by working in Yosemite. Isabel and Audrey long to escape their circumstances, dreaming of an imaginary, magical place, the Isle of Castaways, to do so.
When Audrey dies while under Isabel’s supervision, Isabel hides the circumstances. Her guilt feeds into a decision to catch a ride to Yosemite. There, she befriends Mrs. Michael, a ranger and the first woman naturalist, who becomes her mentor. She also meets other people whom she wants to emulate; Ansel Adams quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson and tells her about his desire to preserve the national parks while photographing their natural beauty.
The book’s pace is dictated by Isabel’s steps toward her goal. At first, she refuses to talk about how Audrey died, and the world around her feels bleak. But Yosemite’s quiet grandeur, which she sees during hikes with Mrs. Michael, calms her. She finds it to be a forgiving environment in which she is able to admit her part in Audrey’s death. The tension of the book’s first half gives way to conversations between Isabel and her mother about her education and career plans; Isabel risks speaking her truth. However, the heroine’s attempts to tie feeding the poor into her budding aspirations are underdeveloped—and somewhat at odds with her quest for independence.
Working toward a practical resolution, the historical novel The View from Half Dome follows a determined teenager as she pursues the incremental fulfillment of her dreams.
MARI CARLSON (April 13, 2023)
Barbara Hodge
