christianreader | Jobey's January Books

I love how January started off with a two-week vacation for me! Tee-riffic. :)

1. The House with a Clock in its Walls (John Bellairs)
2. The Figure in the Shadow (John Bellairs)
3. Fatima: The Full Story (John De Marchi, I.M.C.)
4. The Promise and the Blessing: A Historical Survey of the Old and New Testaments (Michael A. Harbin)
5. The Beatles: All These Years, Vol. I: Tune In (Mark Lewisohn)
6. Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney (Geoffrey Giuliano)

1. and 2. The House with a Clock in its Walls and The Figure in the Shadow (John Bellairs)

My husband and I have a ritual of him reading a chapter aloud each night as I drift off. (Sorry, should have put a high-concentrated sugar alert there, no?) This month we opted for light fare as he revisited two "classic" kid's books that he enjoyed in his youth.

Boy, are they terrible! The House with a Clock in its Walls starts promisingly, starting right off with a recently orphaned boy getting off the train in the quirky Midwestern small town of New Zebedee to begin living with his Uncle Jonathan. This book is illustrated by Edward Gorey, too. The dark and vivid whimsy held up strong for the first chapter or two. But then it was all downhill from there. I don't understand the plots. And the protagonist, Louis, is awful. The author was going for "everyboy," trying to make him relatable by his vulnerability and ineptitude. That's fine, but give us something, something to like him for!

The sequel was even more nonsensical, abrupt, and frustrating. No Gorey in sight, either!

I confess that the only reason my husband and I are still reading this series is that we have come up for nicknames that we substitute for the four main characters, the only printable one of which is "Z-Dog" for the competent, no-nonsense next-door witch, Mrs. Zimmerman. Now the books are hilarious, thank you.

3. Fatima: The Full Story (John de Marchi, I.M.C.)

I picked this up at a charitable flea market. A very intimate account of the apparitions at Fatima and the inner lives of the three child seers.

It has the sugary old-school Catholic narrative style, but that didn't diminish the power of the tale. Fr. de Marchi had great firsthand sources and tells the parts of the tale I think most people most want to know. A good chronological account that cleared up a lot of the haphazard anecdotes I'd heard prior. Very inspiring. I made a lot of changes in my life since finishing this right around the 1st.

4. The Promise and the Blessing: A Historical Survey of the Old and New Testaments (Michael A. Harbin)

The world's best coffeetable book! It gave a ton of detail -- and clarity -- to my understanding of the Bible. And it did it while also providing beautiful color photos and maps on every gorgeous page. Harbin is an outstandingly lucid and compelling writer, even when summarizing academic matters, and especially when relating the history or summarizing Biblical books. A must-have.

5. The Beatles: All These Years, Vol. I: Tune In (Mark Lewisohn)

For those who don't know, Mark Lewisohn doesn't think the world knows enough yet about the Beatles. This massive tome is only the first installment of what he projects to be a trilogy. (The second installment is due 2020.) This first volume covers the birth of each individual Beatle up to the end of 1962, right before the eruption of mass-hysteria Beatlemania and the "invasion" of America.

Lewisohn is a meticulous researcher (prior to this project, he was famous for several excellent Beatle reference books that detail minutiae but are not in narrative format), and it shows. He also proves to be a superb narrator, able to be vivid and enlightening despite not wanting to step beyond the known facts. The third ingredient in this book's success is that he is a fan writing for fans. He is imparting his massive love as much as his clear-eyed, sober, fastidiously documented clarity.

If you are also a fan and haven't heard, he has several exciting scoops. He debunks the account of young John Lennon having to choose which parent to live with (it was much less dramatic) and also reveals why EMI Parlophone reversed its original rejection of the Beatles.

Beyond merely the Beatles information, I learned quite a lot about postwar England, since Lewisohn married his account to some serious historical research that gives this account a gravitas not found in other Beatle books.

6. Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney (Geoffrey Giuliano)

I was adding over a dozen Beatle books (anything recommended on the several Beatles blogs I visited in December) to my Amazon wishlist when I discovered that this one was available for free on the author's website! SOLD!

Well, it sucked. No wonder he gave it away for free.

It's a dishy deliver-the-dirt book that relied mostly on the tabloids and Paul's enemies as sources (in fairness, the man has a lot of them, and few close friends). But it seemed to aspire to be more than a hit job, so it would have these occasional lunges at "even-handedness" where it would make some sort of positive claim about its subject--claims without any firm basis whatsoever. So it's hard to know what to make of it.

There were some interesting details (though you can find most of this elsewhere). And Giuliano does have a knack for telling a minimalist/understated anecdote. Here's a sample of the type of paragraph that was generally enjoyable and that I wished there could have been more of:

Musically, too, there were problems. The sometimes painful particulars of multi-track recording aside, trying to get decent sounds aboard a bobbing boat was almost impossible. At one point, pothead Paul wondered what it would be like to try to play with the boat actually underway. He found out. Ten minutes later, the roadies were still trying to extricate Joe English from his drum kit. Even when things went well there were still plenty of hassles. One evening, as the band was wailing away, nailing down some new material, they were visited by rangers from the St. John's National Park Commission for breaking the park's rule banning any amplified music after 10:00 p.m. What a bummer.

Overall, though, this history was shallow, contradictory, contained several factual errors (er, solo-Paul and solo-Ringo collaborated well before Flowers in the Dirt) and was supremely uninsightful.

It did make me very interested in Denny Laine (McCartney's Wings sidekick). I can't tell if his nice, positive foreward was supposed to be sincere or sarcastic. (According to this book, if it was meant to be sincere, then we have the question of why? Paul comes across as hell on wheels!) Also in Mike McCartney. In both Giuliano and Lewisohn, Mike comes across as much more likeable than his famous older brother.