Sandra Dallas

Want a good book? Try Sandra Dallas she writes a good story. I picked up Tallgrass when it came through on the new book cart. In Tallgrass, Dallas sets the novel during WWII in eastern Colorado at a Japanese internment camp which I had not known existed. A child from the camp is murdered and a farm girl from near the camp tells us the story of what happens. Part historical novel and part mystery, the story is engaging, the characters well developed, and the plot kept me turning the pages and wanting to read more by Dallas.



I looked to our fiction shelves to see what we had and I was pleasantly surprised to find a good selection of well-circulated books. I have no excuse for missing this interesting author except that I keep my interest in mysteries at the forefront of my reading priorities.


Jane Smiley called Dallas "A quintessential American voice."


In reverse order, her novels are:

• Tallgrass
• New Mercies
• The Chili Queen
• Alice's Tulips
• The Diary of Mattie Spencer
• The Persian Pickle Club
• Buster's Midnight Cafe

Dallas has character references between several of her books which makes for an interesting link between them. She doesn't use the same characters over and over, but the references are to earlier times and to the children of earlier characters - it is fun to watch for them as one moves through the books. Quilting is another element in her books and she makes it interesting. She has an excellent ear for dialog, and her historical detail rings true. My favorite is probably The Diary of Mattie Spencer and I have passed my recommendation on Dallas along to many readers.


My experience was that once I began one of these books I couldn't wait to get back to the story and I was sorry to have it end. You may enjoy them.

Six word novel, fifty word explanation

Attempting a six word novel is a seductive idea to which I yield:

• Turning sixty-five, adulthood dangerously near.
• Saigon. Smell of burning diesel fish.

One blogger, Bookie, bent the idea and came up with offering six word summaries or descriptions of novels she had read, with amusing and insightful entries.

• Year of Wonders - The plague sucks. Screw the minister.

• Life of Pi - I was lost at sea with a tiger. or was I?

GreasyGranma offered these.

• Big-Bang, Little Star
  Flash in the pan.
• Love Forever.
  Forgotten, Never.
  You're Clever.

Give it a shot and post to Comments.

I was so happy!

Someone sent me a photograph of the parade in downtown Lawrence celebrating the return of the 2008 NCAA Basketball Champion Team, the University of Kansas Jayhawks.

What a sight!

What a game!

What a series!

A mystery in black and white

Ok, here's the hook, the first-ever bank heist in North Korea with one of the robbers mowed down in the street outside the bank by an off-course bus, but wait, there is no body, and what about the beautiful Kazakh bank manager. Two weeks after the heist, the case lands on the desk of Inspector O, (but do THEY really want it solved, or not?) O ponders the corundum as he again considers plans for a never to be built book shelf for his office. Ok, the pace is slow and things are seldom as they seem but it is North Korea after all.

This is a solid proceedural written by James Church, who claims to have been an intelligence agent who now uses a pseudonym. At first glance I might have passed on this one but the pace and language of the first few pages sucked me in and I enjoyed it.

This is the second Inspector O mystery. The first was A Corpse in the Koryo, released in 2006. Glenn Kessler reviewed this one for The Washington Post and wrote:

"But the book has also caused a stir among Asia specialists because it offers an unusually nuanced and detailed portrait of one of the most closed societies on Earth -- North Korea. Much like Martin Cruz Smith's novel "Gorky Park," which depicted life in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s through the eyes of police inspector, "A Corpse on the Koryo" provides a vivid window into a mysterious country through the perspective of its primary character -- Inspector O."


I think the point he makes about the book is why I took to Hidden Moon, it was a peek into one of the most closed societies in modern times.

Remember Marshall McLuhan?

Back in the 1960's, The Medium is the Massage was hot and all the talk. If you could work a McLuhan quote into a college paper it was guaranteed an A. Here are a few I found on the Internet. His earlier The Gutenberg Galaxy was pioneering in the fields of oral culture, print culture, and media studies. (Wikipedia)

We owe Marshall McLuhan for the phrases, "global village," and "surfing," ("...to refer to rapid, irregular and multi directional movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge.") (Wikipedia)

He is very quotable ...

• The story of modern America begins with the discovery of the white man by The Indians.

• Money is the poor man’s credit card.

• We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

• Spaceship earth is still operated by railway conductors, just as NASA is managed by men with Newtonian goals.

• The road is our major architectural form.

• Today the business of business is becoming the constant invention of new business.

• All advertising advertises advertising.

• The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

• Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.

• Men on frontiers, whether of time or space, abandon their previous identities. Neighborhood gives identity. Frontiers snatch it away.

• “I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt.”

• I don't know who discovered water but it certainly wasn't a fish.
  

• " ... as we transfer our whole being to the data bank, privacy will become a ghost or echo of its former self and what remains of community will disappear."

I would love to have heard his take on the "information" we are supplied by the government and the major news organizations today.