Richard

Gay Jewish lawyer makes bad choices.

Revisado: 08-21-23

When we first meet our hero Marc Mendes he is at a crossroads. His work as a partner in a San Francisco law firm is not fulfilling and his relationship with his lover of eight years is just coasting. On top of that Marc keeps flashing back to some event that happened in Israel many years ago. Then almost all at once his lover's claim to asylum from El Salvador where he escaped from is now up for review. This is coupled with a sexual harassment case filed by a rather sensual young man against a former boss. This gets Marc's juices flowing.
While there is the bones of an intriguing story here it all collapses under the weight of bad writing, terrible dialogue, and confusing plot points all of which are emphasized by an awful narrator. I honestly couldn’t differentiate between whiny Marc whose story this is, whiny Jacob, his El Salvador his lover/partner and whiny Silva the manipulative con man from México. Luckily the author uses their names a lot so we don’t lose track of who’s talking. Fortunately the narrator doesn’t try for accent’s very much except for a female immigration lawyer who I guess was supposed to be British. She sounded like what the English would call posh as they snickered.
Though out the book every time Marc is confronted with a some important choice he always makes the wrong one. He tries to justify it to us, the reader, but every time I kept thinking ‘you’ve an idiot'!
By the end I just was glad it was done.

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A director’s eye gives us too much detail

Revisado: 08-11-23

Because James Ivory is the director of some wonderful movies like "A Room With a View", "Maurice", "Howard’s End" and more, I was hoping to learn about the making of these films. Or at least some fun stories about the famous people he and his partner Ismail Merchant knew over their forty four year relationship. Instead we get for about half the memoir, Ivory's early life growing up in a small town in Oregon. We hear about his parents, family, friends, classes at school and teachers along with the parties he was was invited to and those he wasn’t. Lots about boys he liked and might have liked him back. As he moves on to university we hear more about boys he likes and how some of them he was almost having sex with. Finally after Ivory goes into the army and to Europe do we get descriptions of men he does have sex with. He also decides to become a film maker. So we kinda learn how he started making movies along with the guys he has having sex with. After a while, between the penises, parties and premiers I was tuning out perking up when he talked about making certain films like "The Bostonians" starring Vanessa Redgrave. That was few and far apart.
In this book, Ivory has the ability to make even the most interesting people sound mundane. A story about JD Salinger goes nowhere along with eccentrics like Maria St. Just the hated literary executive of Tennessee Williams estate.
Part of the problem is also Mr Ivory was 93 when he recorded this book and he has an old man's voice. I know that this sounds callous but our voices do change as we age (I’m 71) so it’s very disconcerting to hear someone that old talking about his youthful adventures in such raspy monotone voice. Others might disagree but that’s how this came across to me.

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Arab against Arab and the rise of Israel

Revisado: 07-26-23

A factual description of how centuries of Arab hidebound tribalism and religious absolutism allowed the State of Israel to go from a dream to a reality in fifty years.
Told mostly through the eyes of one Palestinian boy we see how his dreams of a peaceful existence with a wider world are destroyed over and over again by a people determined to be seen as victims of that world.
Interestingly, the current situation in Israel in 2023 mirrors so much of the Arab self-destructive infighting of the last 100+ years that there might not be a recognizable democratic country in 10 years time.

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A heartbreaking story beautifully told

Revisado: 12-07-22

The reverberations from this classic novel of World War I still hold today.

Frank Muller’s narration brings us right to the battlefields, the home front and the makeshift hospitals that make up the life of one German soldier, Paul Bäumer. It is through Paul’s eyes do we see the horror and wreckage that war brings.

The tragedy of this book is that the inhumanity and barbaric senselessness of war is still all around us.

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American guy meets Gay Prince; hijinks ensue

Revisado: 11-02-22

About a year ago I suggested to my book club that we read "Red White and Royal Blue" for an upcoming meeting. It was rejected on the grounds that as fun as it sounded there probably wasn’t that much for discussion.  I agreed since I found it a nice, enjoyable, easy read but not much more.  Many months later someone else suggested "Playing the Palace" and it was agreed upon (I wasn’t at that meeting) so I bought the Audible and started listening.
While they have the same strained premise (young American man meets Prince of Wales and they fall in love) that’s where any similarities ends. It’s like John Grisham vs Danielle Steele; some reality vs pure fantasy.

From the start, nothing in this story made sense, from the first meeting of Carter, the over-the-top, highly neurotic, Jewish, New Jerseyite clown to a cartoonish, button-up Edgar;Prince of Wales and
their almost instant declarations of love to the Queen of England who behaved like a royal and more like a less funny Rosanne Barr circa 1992.

There were loads and loads of funny quips curtesy of Paul Rudnick from his Libby German-Waxner alter ego days. But those days were the 1980’s and they haven’t aged well at all. 

Worst of all, for myself as a Gay Jewish man, I felt Carter's family (of which there was way to much of) was an embarrassment of almost minstrel show stereotypes of Jewish people.  I cringed a lot at their dialogue, which I guess was supposed to funny. 

As for the narration of Michael Urie, I’ve seen him on stage a number of times where he was able to raine in his flamboyant mannerisms. Here though, given Rudnick's penchant for long interior monologues going off into pointless tangents for the sake of some bitchy observation, Urie let’s loose like he’s some drag queen who is finally center stage and all his American characters sound alike. It became wearisome very quickly. As for his British people they all sound as if Urie watched 1964’s "Mary Poppins" too many times and took his cues from the characters in that movie.

I know I’m being harsh but honestly I just wanted this pointless book to end. I rarely not finish a title once started, especially since it’s so short, but I was sorely tempted to just give up and get my used credit back. As my grandmother would say 'oy vey iz mir'. (Yiddish for dismay or woe)

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A joyless list of Andy Cohen's days and nights

Revisado: 12-30-21

I sorta knew who Andy Cohen was from just living in New York but didn’t much more so after reading this cheerless laundry list of the people he knows and the places he went to and it kinda depressed me.
After the first hour I got that all this book was about was Andy Cohen trying to make, what, seems to be a very solitary life, less miserable. He keeps going on about all his famous friends and great places he goes to but at the end of each day he goes on about how lonely he is. I have to admit I didn’t know who 'The Housewives of…' were so I was at a disadvantage but I did know many of the Bold Face Names, It Places and Amazing Events that he lists were from just being a gay man living in NY so I had some context. Still it surprised me as how pointless his dairy was. Even tales of going to the Met Gala, one of the most glamorous events of the year, come off like a trip to the haircutters.
Whatever his accomplishments in life are Andy Cohen comes off as someone desperate to impress with reflected glory. He is saying 'see I know famous people so I’m a talented like them'. No Andy you’re not.

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Seems written for someone's elderly maiden aunt.

Revisado: 10-20-20

Once I started listening to "Maisie Dobbs" I realized that the author was going to leave no cliche behind. Not one character or situation came even close to being original or interesting. How many great novels and mysteries have used 'The Great War' as inspiration for looking at the human cost of war and it’s aftermath. Thousands. Here we get cartoon characters living in some kind of Disneyland version of England during and after WW I
I felt as if I should be sitting in a high back chain drinking weak tea with an old cat at my feet not worried that anything I am reading will disturb me or give me pause to think.
Cliches are easy, writing is hard.

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Favorite Book of 2018

Revisado: 01-01-19

Wished it never ended. I wanted to live in John Boyne’s Ireland. I loved this warm, tragic extremely funny book.

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Title is more of a state of mind then a place

Revisado: 06-22-17

Having lived in New York through the HIV/ AIDS epidemic it was odd to read a book that had a number of characters based on people I knew and worked with. When the author focuses on the people in that part of the story, I found myself listening more intently. 'The Plague' and it's aftermath is still a riveting narrative of a people, place and time.

Unfortunately "Christodora" is mostly about several, not very interesting people, whose lives are only peripheraly affected by AIDS with the major exceptions of Hector, the Puerto Rican activist, Anna, his intial boss at the NY Health Department and Isabel, the Latina girl from Queens who becomes infected with HIV and then finds her voice in the movement to fight AIDS. Each, while important, are bascally secondary to the story.

The bulk of "Christodora" centers on Milly, the artist daughter of Anna and her adopted son Mateo, Isabel's secret son, who grows up to be an artist also. The conflict between mother and son forms much of the book and neither were interesting enough for me to care about. Both were so self-centered in their own way that I wanted to shake them and say 'grow up!'

The various narrators didn't help much either. Both the readers of Milly and Mateo seemed to emphasize the characters blandness and Anna's played to the worst of the upper-middle class Jewish stereotypes. Upper East Side New York by way the the European shtetl. Even more offensively, given that Tim Murphy is himself gay, ALL the the gay characters sounded like they were each competing for a knock off of "Ru Paul's Drag Race". I haven't heard this much bitchy dialogue since the last time I was at 'Lips' in the village. Only the woman speaking for Isabel gave her the fiery passion and heartbreaking loneliness this young, scard, proud girl deserved.

After finishing "Christodora" I had the image of Eighth Street in the village, once so vibrant and hip, then commercial and now just filled with boarded up shops with 'For Rent' signs all over.

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Afghanistan Then is Afghanistan Now.

Revisado: 05-28-17

Michener writes long fact filled novels that,while might have some thin characters, is nevertheless absorbing and fascinating. Knowing what I know about Afghanistan now and then entering that world circa 1948 was just eye opening. Great storytelling!

However, I don't plan to listen to any other audio books by Michener until they get a narrator that can actually act with his or her voice. There are literally hundreds of characters in his books and they all have the exact same mid-Atlantic sound. Male/female. Young/old. Foreign/American. Happy/sad etc. ect.

No thanks audio, Hard copy here I come.

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