Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning by Jonathan Mahler

There was a Science Fiction movie that came out around 1981 called “Escape From New York”.  That movie was set in the future, and the premise was that the entire city of New York had recently been converted to a maximum security prison.  The entire city.  Although they never state so in the movie, the implication is that New York was getting so bad over the years, that it probably made more sense to just “give up” then try to rebuild and revamp the dangerously chaotic city.

Fortunately, time has shown us that the legendary five boroughs did, in fact, improve and are in much better shape than they were half a century ago. If you lived in New York City in 1977, however, odds are you weren’t optimistic that such an outcome could have been possible.  What this books sets out to do is tell some of the stories/current events that occupied the front pages of the New York newspapers, and show us just how awfully messy things really were.

Ironically, the fact that the author is tackling so many different narratives of the particular time and place into one book actually ends up doing more harm than good.  This book jumps around from narrative to narrative too jarringly. Our main areas of focus here consists of the New York Yankees World Series baseball team of 1977, the race for Mayor during the same year, the infamous catastrophic 24-hour blackout that occurred during the triple digit heat during August, and the scary “Son of Sam” murders that were occurring right in the middle of all of these events.

The author himself states that he set out to only cover the Yankees tumultuous year for this book, but he ended up branching out and telling these other stories as well.  He really should have stuck with his original intention.  This is where the book is the best. For those who are familiar with the Yankees during this time period know that they were loved by some, hated by most, and the headlines were dominated by Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner, and multi-million dollar athlete (there weren’t many of these back then) Reggie Jackson.  This is where the book shines the brightest, and the team of this particular year does warrant its own separate narrative with all of its colorful bickering personalities.

Well, maybe the author didn’t have enough material, so he switches back and forth with the above mentioned events.  Yes, the race for mayor was quite interesting; especially since the city seemed to be such a malodorous mismanaged cesspool, but it simply isn’t as captivating reading about such figures as Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo as it is reading about Thurman Munson and Catfish Hunter.

The other two topics, the blackout and the Son of Sam murders, really feel forcibly interjected here. Especially the latter.  The blackout adds a good touch to the depressing narrative since the true ugly colors of the despondent city is made sadly apparent when the masses hit their breaking point. They managed to use the temporary tragedy to wreck havoc on their home city, and literally tried to burn up the Bronx.  Still, though, this section of the book is kind of “thrown in” to the overall narrative and, at times, we feel like we’re simply watching a very long commercial that’s interrupting our main narrative.  Again, this incident could have warranted its own book, although it would have been a very depressing one.

So I really wish the author could do a “do over” and rewrite this book that only focuses on the 1977 New York Yankees. He could have done so, and still interjected these other three narratives within the book in smaller chunks and given us a much more entertaining story.

The author is a very gifted writer and he really does capture the reader’s attention as he relives the time very well with his prose. I just wished he would have written only one book within this one book instead of four.

A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

 

A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstrong

This was a challenging book to read. It wasn’t necessarily difficult, but definitely challenging.  4,000 years is a lot of history to pack into one book, and at times I felt that this “book” should have been a college course instead of one book. There’s an awful lot to digest here and, after finishing, I almost wished I would have read this thing a lot slower and took copious notes.

If you happen to identify as a Jew, Christian, or Moslem, chances are you know an awful lot about God from your Holy Book, yet to get a bigger picture, it’s important to study sources from the outside looking in as well.  For some reason (at least for Christians, which I am and am most familiar with), this doesn’t bode well for many.  Often you hear Christians (angrily) shout “I read my Bible!  And that’s all I need to read!” This sentiment has always bothered me, and almost seems an excuse to cover up one’s ignorance.

So Karen Armstrong takes the reader through how these 3 faiths have always understood, or tried to understand, God.  This book is heavy on philosophy, and at times it was simply too much for me.  I don’t really get a lot out of hearing people argue about the nature of God when these arguments tend to go on and on and seem awfully repetitive.  It’s a little bit like listening to a 15-minute Blues song where the guitar player does nothing but noodle with his guitar for 12 out of the 15 minutes.  Sooner or later you want to shout: “Enough! Move on!”

But, this is the book that Karen Armstrong set out to write, and even if you don’t agree with many of her assessments and conclusions, you have to give her credit for her due diligence and research.  I learned a lot while reading, but there’s so much here, I felt like I only retained a few relevant bits by the time I finished.  Think of that game show where someone is in a booth with dollar bills being blown all around the person as they’re trying to catch and hold on to as many money as they can.  Once the time is up, the person is lucky to have come away catching only one or two bills even though there were hundreds flying around.

She does a good job dividing this book equally among the 3 religions as she goes all the way to the present day. Again, a separate book devoted to each religion would have been better. The author has a Christian background, yet doesn’t identify as a Christian. She’s not an atheist either.  I would say that a book such as this is advantageous in that aspect. It’s much easier when the author isn’t horribly biased in a particular way.

Her observations of the last couple hundred years is quite bleak, but when one objectively looks around at the state of the world (which I like to think I do, but I confess I don’t think many Christians do), I can’t argue with many of her conclusions.  I wish I could comment more, but again, so much of what I read I couldn’t retain in my brain because of the depth and volume.

I would recommend this book, but unless you’re a religious scholar, I advise you to go slow. There’s an awful lot here..  Although this is a good book knowledge-wise, you CAN really have “too much” of a good thing.

Me

 

Me – by Elton John

What a wonderfully surprisingly great read this was.

Although I’ve been a humongous fan of Elton John since 1975 (I was 8 then, I’m 54 now), I’m the type of person who is never very interested in the “Hollywood Backstory/Cover of People Magazine” tidbits of any celebrity.  I prefer to read about and watch the celebrity at work and to learn about their craft. I really don’t care about who they slept with or what happened at Madonna’s after-hours party.  So I wasn’t really in any rush to read this thing. Especially since it came out right around the time as the biopic movie “Rocket Man” (which I loathed) came out.  This was probably because I was afraid that this book would be more of the same.

Maybe it’s because this book is an autobiography, and not something written by some third-rate yellow journalist with an agenda, is what made this read so enjoyable.  Odds are that Elton had help writing this thing, but regardless, it’s a highly interesting and engaging read.  This thing is incredibly professional, well-written, and does extremely well packing a lot of the man’s wild life into a sizable, somewhat concise retrospective.

Elton was roughly 70 years old when this book was released, and he actually divides his entire life in equal portions when he wrote this.  So this isn’t a book where 90% of the pages are devoted to the “glory years” (in Elton’s case, that would be from 1971-1975).  That was one of the many reasons I disliked the ‘Rocket Man’ movie. But I digress.  What justifies such equal page space in his autobiography is that Elton’s life has never ever been boring.  It’s been sad. It’s been wild.  It’s been happy.  It’s been crazy.  But never boring. And we get to read about so much of it.

He walks us through his entire life. We read about how subpar parents can really damage a child and have those effects linger well into adulthood.  One could make the case that this is exactly what happened to Elton, and had he not been so talented at the piano and had a lot of luck, you can’t help but wonder if his life would have been rather sad in addition to being very ordinary. Elton’s worst character trait is his moodiness and volatility.  Most who follow his career know this (author Phillip Norman called such instances “Reg’s Little Moments”). Elton acknowledges such traits and never tries to make excuses.  It’s how he is.  We read, for example, how he decides at the last minute that he won’t attend his induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for some bizarre reason. However, at the VERY last minute, he decides to go after calming himself down.   Except he changes his mind AGAIN.  This back-and-forth happened FOUR TIMES at this event.  At least the man could get a lot of exercising with all of that walking in and out.

Because his life is so full, there are stories that a fan may remember that aren’t even mentioned here at all. For example, we only read about his role as the Pinball Wizard in the movie “Tommy” in passing, and it’s a measly one sentence.  I would think such an experience would warrant an entire chapter, but there’s simply too much here.  Therefore, such omissions don’t leave the reader feeling cheated.

Then we read about the drugs. And the alcohol. And the drugs. And the bulimia. And the drugs. And the illicit sex (with tons of people; mostly male).  And even more drugs.  Fortunately, he was successful in his time in rehab around 1990, and he seemed to kick all of those vices for good. 

Well, what’s even more fortunate is that Elton’s life remains extremely colorful and interesting. He’s still able to be a highly profiled celebrity, yet by keeping his nose (literally) clean, you get the impression that his focus is much stronger and he mostly seems to have found happiness and contentment in his life.  Of course, it’s never perfect.  His relationship with his parents never improved, so we read about the constant bickering with his moody mother, even when Elton is well into his 60s.  He also had a lot of close friends die tragically.  Who can forget Elton’s role in helping the world heal after the death of Princess Diana?  As much as Elton helped US, we tend to forget that Diana was a dear friend of Elton, and her death hit him hard.

As the book winds down, we read about various health ailments, yet Elton has a very tongue-in-cheek attitude about all of his illnesses. He’s convinced that since he survived decades of alcohol and drug abuse, he can survive anything. And he’s probably right.  He seems to have found the most joy with his husband and two adopted sons, which again, didn’t happen until Elton was in his 60s.  He leaves the reader with positive thoughts at the end of this book.  He basically states that he has absolutely no intention of slowing down and wants to accomplish a lot of seemingly insurmountable tasks now that he’s in his 70s.  This isn’t a man who would is content sitting in a rocking chair and watching old television shows.

And after you read about his tumultuous early years, you can’t help but smile and how the tables turned for him in such a very positive way.

The Guardians

 

The Guardians – by John Grisham

As I’ve stated in countless reviews of Grisham’s work, no matter how good an author is, when he churns out a new book every six months or so (probably due to publisher demands), he is likely to deliver subpar material at times.  Fortunately, this isn’t the case here.  This was one of the most engaging novels by John Grisham that I have read in some time.  It’s by no means a revolutionary story.  John Grisham tends to write about many of the same themes over his 35 books or so; so there is no ‘a-ha’ factor here.  If you are fan and you had you not known this was a John Grisham novel when you picked it up, you would immediately know it was a novel by John Grisham within the first few pages.

This is one of Grisham’s novels about the poor, the downtrodden, and the unfortunate. Since this is a ‘legal’ story, these individuals are always arrested and incarcerated even though they’re completely innocent.  They’re always poor and mostly minorities.  The ones that convict said individuals are, of course, all white, rich, and powerful.  And if you try to go against such powerful personalities, may God help you.

Fortunately for Cullen Post, God really is “on his side”. In addition to being a lawyer for the poor and unfortunate, he’s also an Episcopal minister.  He can get a lot done and get into a lot of doors by simply putting his priestly collar on over his neck.  He works with a group of attorneys called “The Guardians”.  Their mission is to review cases where individuals have been (the Guardians believe) unfairly convicted for serious offenses. Many are on death row.  Since it seems about 1 out of every 5 of John Grisham’s books consist of him loudly preaching against the death penalty, it’s not at all surprising to find such sentiments here.  And, of course, this group of Guardians (there are only four, I think) operate on a shoestring budget and depend on donations for most of their funding.  Yep, we’ve read about all of this many times before.

There are actually a few cases within these pages that Post takes on.  The most visible is a murder conviction of a black (of course) man named Quincy Miller that happened over 20 years ago.  I won’t go into the plot details, but Post’s journey is well thought out and told well by Grisham as he tries to right a major wrong. This story would make a good episode on one of those crime shows that everyone seems to like.  There are a lot of characters in and out of the pages, but Grisham sets up his narrative well enough to where we never feel lost nor confused.

So there is no originality here, but there is a very good story.  Most Grisham books (even many of the subpar ones) are told in such a style that it’s easy to digest 100 pages or so within one dedicated sitting.  I’m sure I will have forgotten the plot of this thing a year from now, as it blends in with so much of the author’s other works, but I enjoyed it and would recommend to others; regardless of whether or not you’re a fan.