Life In The Lions Mouth

By James R Dubbs

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Robert the central character in a cast of many is a young man who must come to terms with events concerning his father, his own inability to stand up for himself and his strange habits. To remedy this he joins a traveling circus. 

Life in the Lion's Mouth, is a young adult coming of age story that is set in the early nineteen-sixties rural Pennsylvania. He faces challenges of conscious, deals with loss of honor and hope for redemption and homesickness. He does this while traveling with his new friends and co-workers. To Whitey, the circus manager, Robert is someone to take in and mold for bigger things. To Randy, Robert is a friend. From Archie, Robert must try to defend himself, and his love for Archie's sister, Anna.
Anna, who captures Roberts heart, is a guitar swingin show stopping country singing girl who befriends Robert and gives him a more relaxed nickname.

Through their travels together, Robert wants something, he needs to resolve a issue from his childhood, and his journey to get that resolution takes him through farm towns, small towns, the folk scene in Greenwich Village NYC, and finally back to where everything started.
The writing is descriptive, clear and Mr. Dubbs creates many visuals throughout the book.

Enjoy!

AJJ

Next Post: Classic Book Review

The Death of Artemio Cruz, By Carlos Fuentes. English Version

04/12/2017 

Remember all my links for books go to the lowest price  of each book available on this blog. Including all the pictures, which are links too.  The price for this book through my links is $ 4.99.  Createspace links have this book at $10.99 so always use my links when buying books to get the best price.

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This Love Is Not For Cowards, By Robert Andrew Powell

#nonfiction

This Love Is Not For Cowards

Salvation And Soccer In Ciudad Juarez

First Published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Press. This non-fiction work captures a time many people would hope to put behind them in the City of Juarez Mexico. The timeline of this book goes into the recent past, and unfortunately is still relevant today.A city ravaged by gang wars, extortion, kidnapping, and mixed with the hope of its citizens to rise above the current state of mind and madness, to become something greater, to believe in not only a higher power, but an on going higher purpose for those who live each and every day to its fullest.


This Love Is Not For Cowards: Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juárez
The author, Robert Andrew Powell, a sports journalist, has taken on a menacing and frightening subject. Soccer in the midst of a narco-terror state.

Mr. Powell, mainly follows the life of Marco Vidal, a young jugador (player)with the Indios futbol team in Juarez Mexico. Marco, an excellent athlete, talented, un appreciated, who faces a constant struggle to prove himself to the many couches he needs to work with. The team, Indios, owned by the Ibarra family is also followed along with the changes in coaching staff, El Kartel, a fan club, and numerous other people who have interest or involvement with the team. The main struggle of the team is to stay in Primera, which is the top league in Mexican Soccer. You will follow the team every step of the way in their struggle to remain viable and relevant in their city, and to stay alive.
  I'd like to especially note the chapter near the end about the dead women of Juarez. Mr Powell also did a separte investigative peice on the subject and his research brings clarity to urban myth's surrounding this on going tragedy.  I'd also like to note the last few chapters in the book, as his time is coming to an end. The author takes us through his personal changes of acceptance of violence and what that means to all of us as human beings.  Thought provoking.

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Note to reader: I only post reviews of books that are deserving of excellent reviews and I find the links that will take you to a vendor with the lowest price for that book.  Put this book on your list or start reading it today,

This Love Is Not For Cowards: Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juárez

Next Post will be on 03/29/2017  Life in the Lion's Mouth, by James R Dubbs

Be Well and #GetChecked 

Bullfighting, By Roddy Doyle

Bullfighting

Short Story Collection

By Roddy Doyle

In my continuing effort to find excellent relevant books on the cheap. I bring you Bullfighting. 

Bullfighting is a collection of short stories, one of the stories is titled Bullfighting, and throughout this collection of shorts is a recurring theme. All the stories deal with men who are going through various stages of loss of something, something that made them who they are. It could be grief, loss of virility, or loss of a loved one.

I enjoyed Bullfighting: Stories the best, because it deviates slightly from the rest of the book. Donal, the main character has a good life, no complaints, has rounds of pints with his chums.  He has a government job, with little risk. And that is what is missing from his life, so at a moment, he takes a risk, a big risk and the consequences could be fatal.

Sleep was my second favorite story.  It's a husbands appreciate of his wife after many years of marriage and raising a family. Doyles style is Irish all the way, his verbal imagery would take any Bostonian back to hearing the voices of long lost grandparents from another time.
This book is not a #YA read, but it would make a great gift for any father out there who's raised a family.

My links always go to the lowest cost books on the Amazon site.

Please recommend this blog to your friends. I hope you'll also read and enjoy the short fiction pieces, and consider supporting this blog by making your Amazon purchases through my links that are provided. 

Next Post  03/15/2017
This Love Is Not For Cowards
#Non-Fiction
By Robert Andrew Powell

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Classic Book Review: Slaughter House Five

Kurt Vonnegut, author of many books, including his most successful, Slaughter House Five, had a career as an author that spanned over fifty years. For more information Wiki-pedia link to short bio.
I recommend reading the Wiki article. I've read bio's on the internet, about Kurt Vonnegut, that used the character from the book as source for his bio.

Slaughter House Five 

I can only imagine that if an author wrote a query letter to a publisher today and it stated that, "I'm going to tell a story, but I'll be captured by aliens, and I'll fictionalize my name but not all of my life. I'll throw in bits of interest, but mainly I'm still dealing with PTSD and I need to get it out of me. Will you publish it?" What do think the answer would be?

Billy Pilgrim is the central character of Slaughter House Five. Billy gets captured early on by the Germans in this recounting of not only Billy's experience in the war, but also his personal, and extra-terrestrial life as well. His recollection ties three fates, the war, his marriage, his time as a guest on Tralfalmadore.


Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim Gets captured by German Scouts. He meets up with two american scouts, and another enlisted soldier, Roland Weary,who insists on mocking and bullying Billy. The Scouts abandon Billy and the bully. The scouts get caught and shot. Billy and the bully are left to fend for themselves. They eventually get captured. At this point through trains, unpleasant at best, that transfer them to prison camps, Billy and the bully, rest. The bully doesn't make it. And Billy goes on to a prison camp that houses a meat packing facility three floors below ground level. During the bombing, Billy and other prisoners are three floors down in Slaughter House number five, in a refrigerator. Captors, and captee's  survive together. When they emerge after the bombing stops, they all fend for themselves through a city in ruins. Vivid descriptions abound, taking you through scene after scene. SH5, doesn't end with closure for the characters, some die, some live in shock. It is up to you as the reader to develop your opinion of war, its costs, both mentally and physically, to the human spirit.

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For More on the Bombing of Dresden, I recommend this non-fiction book, published in 2014, a few years after many documents were de-classified. Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945

Kurt Vonnegut, in my youth, was our counter culture, war is hell, let's not romance it, go to guy.  Vonnegut felt he had to write about the misalignment of humanity. It's failings. It's traps. And he did it with odd human behavior, dead-pan humor, and an inner voice that pushed him onward, from his experience, with the pen. 

My Next Post Will Be On 03/01/2017

Book Review: Bullfighting, By Roddy Doyle. A Short Story Collection. 

The Dead, by James Joyce

Book fanatics all over the world have read many of James Joyce's novels, poetry, and articles. This short story only had fifty reviews on Amazon, and I thought maybe it needed a look.

The Dead

Set in Ireland, this story has been published in Dubliners, as part of a short story collection and separately. Mr. Joyce creates a large cast of characters, great dialog- he's really a master at this- and tension that slowly works it's way through one particular character, Gabriel Conroy. 

In, The Dead Mr. Joyce's characters notice everything about each other, simple smiles, quaint frowns, and you sense this as the voyeur, while the conversations go from serious to whimsical with ease. It's easy to place yourself in the dancing room or at the dinner table during the evening party with this cast of piano instructors, uncles who tip the bottle, proper cousins, jealous women, spinster aunts, and maids with harbored tension.
About half-way through, Mr. Conroy makes a speech, that considering the timeline of the story, from early 1900's, could easily be made today. Here's a quote from that speech. "A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is mis-directed, is, I believe, in the main sincere."
Later in the speech, Mr. Conroy takes a soft somber tone, but his words are relevant and timely once again. "Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go bravely with our work among the living."

As you read, The Dead, a thought enters your mind concerning the title. The story is very lively, not morbid as the title suggests, But it gets deep into your thoughts and soul as you travel to a hotel with Greta and Gabriel after the party is over. The sexual tension. A passage from the story. "He longed to cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her." Gabriel's  ill-timed thoughts, and inaction terrorize his emotions that become fueled by jealousy.
In the end he makes conclusions that I feel would ultimately help him go on with his life. You can decide. For Greta, there's a release of deeply held emotions that get triggered early in the evening at the party by a song. And the song brings back a flood of memories that she remains quiet and subdued, until she recounts the story of her first love.
Enjoy!
AJJ

Stop Back On 2/15/2017 For My Next Post

Classic Book Review Of Slaughter House Five, By Kurt Vonnegut.

The Maid's Version By Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell a Pen West award winner for his novel,Tomato Red. and the author of Winter's Bone, which was made into a movie that starred Jennifer Lawrence, has done it again.

The Maid's Version

Mr. Woodrell, the man from the Ozarks has written a multi character, historically set, dosed with complex personalities, and a setting as visual as as serene drive down a lazy mountain road.

The Maid's Version: A Novel is told by the grandson of Alma DeGreer Dunahew. Alma, who is a maid for a prominent family in West Table Missouri is privy to much, but also consumed by the loss of her beloved sister, Ruby, and her own speculation. Is she right? You decide? 

 Mr. Woodrell's creation of a grandson to tell this story gives the reader the linkage needed to carry it through a time line that spans half a century. The story starts in 1929, and moves through several characters of various sorts. A preacher who decries the scandalous behavior in the local dance hall. Gypsies, disliked disdained, dishonored in the minds of good towns folk, a citizen with a criminal past, and a Prominent citizen. 

The big question is. Who is responsible? Responsible for a fire so ravenous, so intense, so destructive that it kills forty-two of the locals in a  blast that defies explanation. Of course there's an investigation, but no concrete answers come quickly and hearts and minds burn with anger over the lost loved ones. 

I read this book as hardbound and I've placed it on my bookshelf among my favorites, and books to share with friends. 

Rating for  The Maid's Version: A Novel by Daniel Woodrell is Five Full Sails!  Excellent story line, character development, with descriptive, impressive writing.

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Next Post: Book Review, The Dead, By James Joyce

Post Date, 01/25/2017

Book Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Book Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four

 Many readers who completed their high school and college years from the fifties through the seventies have already read this book.  Some students during that time period may not have read this book because it was considered subversive by many local school districts. First published in 1949 and written by George Orwell.  Nineteen Eighty-Four is futuristic utopian fantasy set in fictional Oceania, one of three super states that have divided up the world.

  Many terms that originally came from this book such as Big Brother—the constant observance of society by the powers in control—are still used with that basic meaning. In the last Bond movie Spectre 007 (Blu-ray), there is a line that M says, ‘Orwell is turning over in his grave’ referring to the rise of surveillance in society. So Orwell’s work is still being referenced to this day. But there are more terms such as, DoubleThink, CrimeThink, that in the time of Oceania would encompass the meaning of Political correctness today.

  This book is every bit as much about language, the use of it, how it is used, and how it is defined as it is a futuristic critique of extreme controls and planning by those that come to power.  Orwell, saw deceit, treachery, corruption, and dissolution of freedoms long before most of were born and he projected his insight towards a future that becomes defined by IngSoc, the Newspeak word for English Socialism.  The principle character Winston Smith, is what we define today as a low level bureaucrat. Winston has had a past life with a wife and memories, memories that are so troubling—because they take him back to past that officially never existed. And his job is to erase all versions of incidents that did not officially happen. He does this with Newspeak the newest form of English. Newspeak is not a growing language, in fact it is shrinking, and the newer combined words have less broadly defined meanings. The powers behind big brother by the control of language. They don’t allow words such as freedom, liberty and there are no words to replace those words. So those concepts of liberty and freedom simply disappear.

I think the most important, thought provoking part of this book is at the end. George Orwell wrote a fictional Appendix for Newspeak. In the appendix he explains how language would be used to control society. (Sound familiar?)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is five full sails. I read it in paperback for $6.00 US. This book is ranked 75 on Amazons sales list. You can order right now.  It is also available for Kindle all customers and those on Amazon Prime. 
Thanks for reading, please share on Google + & Twitter and recommend to your friends.
AJJ 

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