June reading, part I

 How's your summer going?  We've had just the most wonderful weather, a good ten degrees cooler than usual because a string of thunderstorms keeps coming through.  I've been on some hikes, I've picked cherries and boysenberries, I finished an embroidery project!, and I've read some great books.

 Invasion: The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War And Ukraine's Fight for Survival, by Luke Harding: The first serious books about Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine started coming out last fall (another I've seen highly recommended is Overreach) and I finally got my hands on this one.  Harding has been reporting on Ukraine and Russia for years -- he's now banned from Russia, of course -- and includes material from the past ten years here so the reader can know some background.  Each chapter covers a particular place and time: first Kyiv in February 2022 as the invasion started, and then places such as Bucha, Chernobyl (Russian invaders were kept so ignorant that they dug trenches in the Red Forest by hand, breathing plenty of radioactive dust), Zaporizhzhia, the Donbas, and more -- including Moscow.   When he wrote the chapter on Bakhmut, the war was on its doorstep but had not yet arrived.  It's not a fun read but it is fascinating and important. 

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries, by Rick Emerson:  If you're a woman over 35 there's a good chance you're read Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous, the real! diary of a girl of fifteen who died just weeks after closing her journal.  "Alice" is a normal, wholesome teen girl with big dreams until she's secretly dosed with LSD, after which she takes about a week to try every drug in the book (bizarrely, she 'finally' tries pot after just about everything else), becomes a dealer, runs off to San Francisco, and somehow keeps the diary going even on random scraps of paper.  (This made me a bit suspicious when I read it at 12.)  Emerson delves into the story of where the 'anonymous' diary came from; it was the work of Beatrice Sparks of Utah, who said a lot of things about her credentials as a youth psychologist and drug counselor, none of which were true.  Several years later, she came out with Jay's Journal, about the inevitable consequences of involvement in the occult.  (I've never seen a copy, but it was recommended to me as a teen as a true account.)  "Jay" was a real kid from Pleasant Grove -- an intense guy who struggled with his moods and who was desperate to marry his girlfriend and get away from his hometown -- who did kill himself, but was never into occultism of any kind.  Sparks used some of his diary entries and filled in the rest herself, and everyone in Pleasant Grove knew who Jay was, which was certainly very pleasant for the rest of his family.  The book, along with quite a few other 'true' accounts, helped to fuel the Satanic Panic of the 80s.

It's all pretty fascinating and led to a conversation with some friends about the amazing prevalence of fake hit memoirs.  I think we like our stories to be a little punched up; the faked memoirs make hits because they are a good 25% more exciting and poetic than real life ever is, but we want to believe them. From The Long Walk to A Million Little Pieces -- let's not forget Carlos Castaneda! -- fake memoirs won't die.  Did you read Go Ask Alice or Jay's Journal?

 

Summerbook #1: The Pushcart War, by Jean Merrill (ill. by Ronni Solbert):  I wanted to read this one first, because although this is a children's classic that people talk about often, I've owned a copy for years and my own kid loved it, and my all-time favorite picture book* is by the same Merrill/Solbert team....I had not read The Pushcart War and it was probably about time to fix that.  So I did read it, and it is both delightful and important!

Published in 1964 and set in a future New York of 1976 (looked back upon from 1986, as this is a history book), this a complete chronicle of the Pushcart War that turned New York on its ear.  By 1976, enormous trucks are making city traffic so bad that it can take hours to go just blocks, and the trucks own the streets.  Since nobody else likes the trucks, the Big Three (owners of truck companies) decide to start a campaign that will leave the streets just to trucks, and they're going to start with the pushcarts.  All traffic woes can be blamed on the pushcarts, which are outdated and probably unhygienic anyway.  (After that, they can get rid of the cars and the taxis, but nobody should know that.)

Pushcart owners like Frank the Flower, General Anna, and Maxie Hammerman, the Pushcart King decide to fight back.  With nothing but ingenuity and moxie on their side, how are they going to make the streets of New York safe for pushcarts and for people?  It's not only a story of the little guy triumphing, it's also about finding unexpected solutions that benefit everyone -- even the truck drivers -- and a sort of children's introduction to politics.  Plus it has a wonderful flavor of old-time New York, it's funny, and it's charming.  Just excellent.

*The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars.

Summerbook #2: Tomorrow's Crimes, by Donald Westlake: I'm kind of fond of Westlake's comedic heist novels, and here we have science fiction comedic heist stories!  They're pretty fun.  And there is an entire novel as well, Anarchaos.  Rolf Malone heads to the planet Anarchaos to avenge the murder of his brother, but while Rolf is pretty tough, Anarchaos is a lot tougher.  It was a pretty great story, really; at least, I didn't put it down much.

Summerbook #3: Ellen Grae and Lady Ellen Grae, by Vera and Bill Cleaver: These two charming short novels are narrated by Ellen Grae Derryberry, intelligent, tough, and an inveterate storyteller -- she reminds me of Rose Rita in John Bellairs' books, except Ellen Grae is from the swamps of deepest Florida.  Her parents, Jeff and Grace, are divorced and seem to feel that others can raise her better, so in the first story she lives with the McGruders.  Her favorite thing is to go out fishing with her best friend George and the peanut-seller, Ira, who doesn't talk except to her.  Ira tells her something she doesn't know how to deal with, and when she finally tells her parents, they don't know whether to believe her....In the second story, Jeff and Grace are getting pretty embarrassed about Ellen Grae's tomboyish ways and want her to learn to be a lady by going to live in Seattle with a cousin.  Can she cope with being transplanted?

These are lovely, though definitely a product of their time (garter belts for 12yo girls?).  Ellen Grae is so funny, intelligent, and lovable, just a joy to read.  I was lucky to happen upon a copy that contains both stories.