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Andre Dubus III

“The Garden of Last Days” by Andre Dubus III (Norton, 535 pages, $14.95)

The weather was splendid on that fateful New York City morning, Sept. 11, 2001. It was a Tuesday. Things turned ugly in a matter of seconds. Our innocence evaporated, lost forever.

Andre Dubus III sets his novel “The Garden of Last Days” during those waning moments of innocence on that final weekend prior to 9/11. It is told from the numerous viewpoints of characters living in south Florida at that instant in time.

There’s April, an exotic dancer at a strip club. And Lonnie, a bouncer at the club. April and her 3-year-old daughter Franny share a house with Jean, who simply adores Franny.

AJ is a blue collar worker who frequents the club. Finally there’s Bassam, a young Saudi who is staying at a hotel.

Bassam hates America and everything it stands for.

Seething with rage, Bassam despises immorality yet he cannot resist partaking in it. Dubus doesn’t want his readers to focus on the disaster that looms ahead. He said: “It’s not anything I want you to think about at all. I want you to just go through the journey with all the people in there.” It is their story.

I asked him how he got the idea for this book? He responded: “I just get an image. I start to go with it. I saw an image of a wad of cash on a bedroom bureau.”

He thought about the money and where it came from — that it belonged to a stripper. So he wrote about “48 or 72 hours in the life of one of these women.”

He described his process: “I love trying to be other people and trying to imagine other peoples’ existence.”

His task was to “try not to say anything with this novel. Instead, just try to find something.” He elaborated on that impulse: “The human imagination I find to be a gorgeous thing. Terrifying. Frustrating …

“The kind of fiction I like to read and the kind I try to write tends to be inherently empathetic.

“I think character-driven fiction is a sustained act of empathy. You are really just asking, ‘What is it like to be you?’

“For me that’s the joy of reading these novels by these great writers … you get to live all these other lives than the one you’ve got. It’s kind of miraculous.”

Dubus is the son of an acclaimed short story writer, the late Andre Dubus. He had no intention of becoming a writer though. Then something altered his view.

“I wrote a short story. It wasn’t very good but I was hooked.

“Honestly, the day I finished it I felt more like myself than I ever had in my life … it’s one of those rare epiphanies that can happen in a life. I feel very lucky that I got to have that … I still didn’t want to be a writer but I knew that I was going to keep writing no matter what because I just felt more like myself than I ever had before.”

scoopin' the cream...

Reading books is one happy endeavor. Reviewing books widens my avenues of literary pleasure. I enjoy hearing from readers who discovered books by reading this column. I interview writers. I’m intrigued when doors fall open during these conversations. One glimpses a writer’s process.

Some favorites from 2008 are now out in paperback.

• “The Lazarus Project” by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead, 304 pages, $16). My favorite novel from 2008. Hemon was a Bosnian journalist in the USA as civil war broke out in Sarajevo. He could not return home. He settled in Chicago and mastered the English language. “The Lazarus Project” is a fictional account of an actual incident that happened a century ago in Chicago. The chief of police killed a man, an immigrant from central Europe. Hemon imagined the chain of events that led this innocent victim, Lazarus, across the ocean to a terrible fate. Hemon writes with savage joy.

• “A Voyage Long and Strange — On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America” by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 464 pages, $18). The author is a former war correspondent who has transitioned his adventurous mode of journalism into another realm. He traces some obscure journeys. Horwitz finds himself in rather odd situations. His account of a visit to a Canadian sweat lodge is one of the funniest things I read last year.

• “Beautiful Children” by Charles Bock (Random House, 432 pages, $14). This novel about street kids in Las Vegas was one of the most anticipated books last year. Bock grew up in Las Vegas. His depiction of otherworldly pleasure seeking and desolation makes a dark read. The paperback has a quote from my original review; “Beautiful Children” uncoils like a gorgeous, deadly serpent. It sprawls with all the mind-numbing brilliance of Las Vegas’ hypnotic neon excess.

• “Reading the OED —One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages” by Ammon Shea (Perigee, 256 pages, $13.95). The author loves words. He collects dictionaries. He read the entire Oxford English Dictionary over the course of one year. This is his story, the gallons of coffee he drank, amazing words he discovered. Words like “petrichor (n.) The pleasant loamy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell.” We have all smelled that wonderful scent, haven’t we? There’s actually a word for it. I always wanted to know it. The book is filled with words like that.

• “Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock (Anchor Books, 224 pages, $13.95). Growing up in the southeastern Ohio community of Knockemstiff Don Pollock witnessed some bizarre events. During the 30 years that Pollock labored in a paper mill he never relinquished his dream of becoming a writer. In an interview he told me that he learned how to write by sitting in his attic at his typewriter where he re-typed books by authors whom he admired, word for word. The paperback quotes my original review: “These stories detonate ... Pollock writes with incendiary verbal pyromania ... this is a fantastic debut.”

Contact book reviewer Vick Mickunas at vick@vickmickunas.com

hunting Nazi scum in Argentina...

Whenever I start reading a book, I begin it with the hope that it will be so much fun to read that I won't want to put it down. I don't want certain books to end.

Books like "A Quiet Flame," the latest installment in Philip Kerr's detective series featuring the hard-boiled homicide cop Bernie Gunther. These novels are written in the classic noir style but with an unusual twist: Bernie is a German and he was solving cases in Berlin when the Nazis rose to power.

This creates a certain moral ambiguity. Bernie had to join up with the dreaded SS to survive the war. He did the best he could to avoid becoming a war criminal. Nevertheless, he has a guilty conscience.

Kerr wrote his first Bernie Gunther book in 1989. He didn't consider writing another one until his publisher encouraged him to do so. Eventually he wrote three books which became his Berlin Noir trilogy. He thought that was the end of it.

Writers rarely have the luxury of reviving a character. Even so, after an interlude of 15 years, Kerr renewed this one. "A Quiet Flame" is now the fifth installment in this series with more to come.

The story begins in 1950. Bernie is escaping from Germany under an assumed name. His companions are Nazi war criminals. They are headed to Argentina.

Bernie is impersonating a doctor. Upon his arrival in Buenos Aires he is quickly introduced to high-ranking government officials. Bernie chooses to reveal his true identity to them. When they find out he is actually a homicide detective, he is quickly drawn into a murder investigation.

This leads him into an underworld populated by hundreds of fugitive Nazi war criminals. The circumstances of this murder seem familiar. Bernie had an unsolved Berlin case in 1932 that was quite similar.

Kerr employs substantial flashbacks to the original investigation. It took place right as Adolph Hitler was taking power in Germany. It has always struck me as a stroke of genius that Kerr placed this series within the chilling landscape of Nazi swastikas.

I called the author at his home in London and asked him why he chose to do so. He replied: "It's easy to forget. We get fed this diet of 'Did it really happen?' all the time .... Were there gas chambers, or not?"

"You have to remind yourself. These kinds of things are kind of conveniently forgotten. It's always good to stick the stick into the bottom of the bucket and stir it all up again."

In "A Quiet Flame," Detective Bernie Gunther repeatedly pokes his stick into Nazi-infested snakepits. It's exhilarating and terrifying. Bernie wisecracks his way through numerous sticky spots in this thriller. And he'll be back rather soon.

Kerr revealed that "the one I just finished is partly set in Cuba ... he goes from Argentina on to Cuba." This was during the period when Cuba was a playground for American hoodlums like Meyer Lansky. I can hardly wait for the next installment.

Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com

a stunning debut novel...

Novelists spend entire careers trying to write even one classic book. Philipp Meyer has accomplished that feat on his first attempt.

Meyer's debut novel, "American Rust," might one day be recognized as one of our great American novels. Time will tell that tale.

"American Rust" takes place in the heart of the Rust Belt, a western Pennsylvania river town formerly shaded by massive steel mills. All gone now.

Those high paying jobs have vanished. Meyer's characters are those who were left behind: the disabled, the unemployed, the down and out.

As the story begins two unlikely friends wander into an abandoned factory. Isaac is small in stature but has a brilliant mind. He has just stolen some money from his father and he is on his way out of town.

His friend Billy Poe is the dumb jock who is constantly getting into trouble. He could have had a football scholarship but he chose to stay home with his mother in their trailer. The only thing keeping Billy out of jail is his mother's romantic link with the town's police chief.

Billy doesn't want to enter that empty factory. For once his instincts are good. But he goes in anyway as this tragedy begins. Billy and Isaac get involved in an altercation with some vagrants and a man dies. This sets off the tragic chain of events which forms "American Rust."

Meyer's theme is profoundly disturbing because it could be ripped right out of our daily news. The society he depicts is one that is starting to unravel. The few jobs remaining are in home health care and fast food. As the local economy collapsed some residents turned to drugs and crime.

Billy Poe passed up that scholarship. He also squandered the opportunity to be hired for one of the few high paying jobs left, tearing down the remains of shuttered factories.

Meyer's descriptions ring painfully: "The work was all in the Midwest now, taking down the auto plants in Michigan and Indiana. And one day even that work would end, and there would be no record, nothing left standing, to show that anything had ever been built in America."

After the killing, Isaac flees the area. Billy refuses to talk to the authorities and ends up in prison. Meyer crosscuts his story by zooming in on the fugitive Isaac, the incarcerated Billy, the embattled police chief, and various relatives.

It does veer a bit close to home. A truck driver hands his passenger five dollars, "a few hours later he dropped Isaac off at an on-ramp in Dayton. As he got out the driver said, 'You wouldn't spend it on drugs or anything would you buddy?'"

"American Rust" burns with the molten fire of a steel furnace. Meyer's characters circle the flames, drawing ever closer to incineration. They could be your neighbors, your friends, our jobs. The glittering literary shards strewn about by Meyer are like shattered mirrors reflecting a society that is being crushed.

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.

just out in paperback...

Readers of this column sometimes ask me to explain the difference between "mass market" paperbacks and "trade" paperbacks.

"Mass market" paperbacks are the smaller, pocket sized books that usually sell for $7 to $8 each. "Trade" paperbacks are larger. They typically retail for $14 to $16.

Paperbacks are wonderfully convenient and inexpensive. I can't imagine going anywhere without a few. Here are some recent paperbacks that you might enjoy:

"Matala," by Craig Holden (Simon and Schuster, 180 pages, $14). This suspenseful novel opens as a seemingly innocent young American college student wanders off from her European tour group. She meets a couple of drifters, a young man and an older woman — con artists working scams on tourists. They all get involved in a smuggling ring. A surprising ending.

• "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," by Joanne Greenberg (Holt, 304 pages, $15). Originally published in 1964, this semi-autobiographical novel has sold millions of copies. Greenberg's experiences as an adolescent in a mental institution inspired the story of Deborah, a 16-year-old mental patient who has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Greenberg has written a new "afterword" for this reissue.

"Osteoarthritis — Preventing and Healing Without Drugs," by Peter Bales M.D., MHSA (Prometheus Books, 284 pages, $18.98). Osteoarthritis is now epidemic with more than 20 million Americans affected. Peter Bales thinks many cases of osteoarthritis result from nutritional deficiencies. He suggests that dietary changes could provide more benefits than drugs.

"Our Daily Meds," by Melody Peterson (Picador, 432 pages, $16). Two out of every three Americans takes a prescription drug regularly. We spend billions of dollars on medications while our average life spans are shorter than the life spans in 40 other countries where they use far fewer drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have greatly expanded our drug exposure during the past 30 years.

"The Breaks of the Game," by David Halberstam (Hyperion, 400 pages, $15.99). David Halberstam was a triple threat: an extraordinary journalist, a gifted historian and a splendid sportswriter. "The Breaks of the Game" is Halberstam's account of spending the 1979-80 basketball season following the Portland Trailblazers. His portrayal of the massive talents and giant egos in the battle for NBA supremacy of 30 years ago foreshadow what the sport has become today. Halberstam died in a car accident two years ago. He was enroute to an interview with a 1950s football star for a book that he was working on.

"The Age of American Unreason," by Susan Jacoby (Vintage, 357 pages, $15.95). In an interview, Susan Jacoby described an experience that took place right after 9/11. She told me that she went into a tavern in New York City and overheard some businessmen chatting. She was astonished by their apparent ignorance of basic American history. She decided to write a book about what she describes as " a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism" in America today.

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.

Vick's Picks for 2008's best fiction

2008 was a banner year for fiction. Although I was hard-pressed to narrow down my list of deserving books to just a few exquisite gems, here are my absolute favorites:

"The Lazarus Project" by Aleksandar Hemon, (Riverhead Books, $24.95). America was caught up in a hysterical swirl of paranoia and fear. In Chicago, a flood of immigrants speaking unfamiliar languages made some Chicagoans nervous. The year was 1908, threats of terrorism and anarchism made for electrifying headlines in the Chicago newspapers. A young Jewish immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch appeared at the door of George Shippy, Chicago's police chief. Shippy shot him dead.

Aleksandar Hemon was intrigued by this true story. He observed some parallels between then and now. His novel revisits the hysteria ripped from century-old headlines. Brik, a Bosnian-American writer somewhat like Hemon, retraces Averbuch's odyssey from anti-Semitic pogroms in central Europe to his death in that Chicago mansion. A finalist for the National Book Award, "The Lazarus Project" should have won it.

"Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollack (Doubleday, $22.95). For 30 years Donald Ray Pollack labored in the paper mill at Chillicothe. He never relinquished his dream of becoming a writer. Knockem-stiff was the name of a little hollow outside of Chillicothe where Pollack grew up. The young Pollack observed how the inhabitants of this hardscrabble sort of place struggled and brawled. This collection of short stories immortalizes a vanished community with a potency that will knock a reader right upside the head. Pollock's pithy tales swerve across the pages in angelic agony. These tortured souls extract a measure of bitter redemption out of brutality and desolation. An awesome debut.

"Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26). Ghosh takes readers on an epic journey of the mind. Set in India in the 1830s, "Sea of Poppies" revolves around the opium trade that English traders plied as they shipped Indian opium to China. Ghosh creates numerous vivid characters and scenes. There are love stories, shocking violence and soaring flights of linguistic fancy as the author re-creates the polyglot languages of the period. This novel, the first in a planned trilogy, comes to a startling climax as most of the main characters sail from India on a ship called "The Ibis." I can't wait for the next book.

"A Mercy" by Toni Morrison (Knopf, $23.95). In "A Mercy," Toni Morrison explores slavery before it became a form of institutionalized racism. In the 1680s slavery came in many forms. Morrison's novella examines the impact of enforced servitude upon a cast of characters of different races who are brought together on a Virginia farm. Haunting, brilliantly rendered, "A Mercy" illustrates once more why Morrison is one of our greatest novelists.

Honorable Mentions: "Home" by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25); "The Mayor's Tongue" by Nathaniel Rich (Riverhead, $24.95); "When Will There Be Good News" by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown, $25); "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb (Harper, $29.95).

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com

an interview with Wally Lamb

"The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb, (Harper, 740 pages, $29.95)

Wally Lamb wrote "She's Come Undone" and "I Know This Much Is True." His latest, "The Hour I First Believed," immerses the tragic Columbine shootings within an expansive fictional framework.

Q Did you have difficulty writing this?

A I did. I had to survive my good fortune — the bestseller stuff -— going from thousands to millions of readers. It was a joyride, but then the ride was over. I had to come up with something else. I was intimidated by that. I was a little too focused on reader reaction.

Q Why Columbine?

A One day I sat down and Googled "school shootings"... this tidal wave of stuff came back at me. I was very disturbed by the videos that the shooters, Klebold and Harris, had left behind — both as a high school teacher for many years and as the dad of a then teenaged son .... I was suddenly in the middle of it — emotionally involved in the sadness of that.

Q Klebold and Harris aren't characters, yet their presence is felt on every page,

A I felt that rather than try to psychoanalyze them I would use their actual voices partly as a reminder of just how lost and really depraved they were and how viciously they sought to wreak some kind of vengeance. I went back and forth with whether or not to do that. Then I just took the gag off them and let them speak for themselves.

Q You're in Denver now — how does that feel?

A I don't mean to speak for the people out here nor do I pretend to understand the level of pain and the terrible ripple effect that it has had in the Denver area. I do have a sense from what people have said that they feel these victims and this tragedy should not be forgotten. We're almost 10 years away from it at this point — I think in some ways we need to learn from all this — hopefully, to prevent other things.

Q Do you keep wall charts to track loose ends?

A Have you seen the Russell Crowe film "A Beautiful Mind?" There's one scene where his wife goes into his office and there's stuff all over the walls; pictures and scrawlings. I hate to say it, but that's kind of what my office looked like.

Q What's your structure?

A The novel is in two parts. Part one investigates chaos; the way that our lives can go reeling in a whole different direction than we had planned. The second part investigates the possibility that there is some sort of guiding principle, or some universal order to things ... my work always balances despair and hope ...

Ultimately this story became an investigation of people who carry pain inside and how debilitating grief and shame can be ... silence can just make people kind of sick. I think it needs to be talked about ... the way I'm different from Caelum (the narrator) is that he's a cynic and I'm not. I do hold out hope.

a scalding novel from Toni Morrison...

Twenty-one years ago Toni Morrison published "Beloved," a slavery tale set in 1855 Cincinnati. Morrison accomplished a rare feat for an American by winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Morrison's latest book, "A Mercy," is a prequel to "Beloved." The story takes place in Virginia around 1690.

In a recent interview with the The Scotsman newspaper, Morrison said she wrote "A Mercy" because "what I was wondering was what it must have felt like to be a slave before racism."

Growing up in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison listened to family storytellers. She repeated stories, with her own embellishments.

Morrison's storytelling genius is fully blooming in "A Mercy," told from the viewpoints of a number of characters, the most significant being Florens, a young black slave. As the story begins, she is being sold to a Dutch trader, Jacob Vaark.

Vaark tried to collect on a bad debt. He didn't like slavery. Still, he takes Florens as partial payment. Initially, Vaark demanded Florens' mother, but the mother begged Vaark to take 8-year-old Florens instead. Her mother's act of sending her daughter to what might be a better life was "a mercy."

Morrison explores this not yet racist slavery. On Vaark's farm, she meets Lina, the sole survivor of a smallpox epidemic that wiped out her entire tribe. Vaark's wife, Rebekka, came to America as a mail-order bride.

Sorrow is an indentured servant at Vaark's place. She was the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Willard and Scully also are indentured servants. White, black and American Indian, these characters have something in common — each is some type of orphan, and with the exception of Vaark, they are all in some sort of bondage.

It was a land of fear, hardship and death. Lina, the Native American, ponders the madness of these invaders she calls the "Europes": "cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable. It was their destiny to chew up the world and spit out a horribleness that would destroy all primary peoples."

Sorrow is so damaged that she has an invisible twin to keep her company. But the suffering that Florens endures is the central focus of "A Mercy." We feel her misery as she says "I never cry. Even when the woman steals my cloak and shoes on the boat, no tears come."

At age 16, Florens falls in love with a blacksmith, a free black who came to the farm to build a grand iron gate for Vaark's new mansion. Vaark has cut down 50 trees to build it, but he dies before his dream home is finished.

Morrison creates a magical voice for Florens that lifts readers up on a swirling arc of prose, which makes all this heartbreak and despair almost tolerable. Florens could be describing how Morrison captivates her readers when she says "I can never not have you have me."

in other words...

"The Secret Life of Words — How English Became English" by Henry Hitchings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 440 pages, $27)

Without words we wouldn't have much to say. We would have even less to write about.

The English language is a magnificent thing. Have you ever wondered how it came to be and how it has changed over centuries? Henry Hitchings addresses these notions in a sweeping new study, "The Secret Life of Words — How English Became English."

His previous book, "Defining the World," was the story of the first notable English lexicographer, Samuel Johnson. This ambitious new work digs down to the roots of our language, exposing the forces that shaped it and made it what it is today.

English is ever changing. New words come into usage. Some last. Some drop by the wayside. "The Secret Life of Words" contains fascinating information on "the world's most widespread language."

Did you know that English has been greatly influenced by foreign invasions? In the year 789, the Vikings began a cycle of invasions that brought many new words to English shores. For example, "the Norse 'vind-auga' ('eye of the wind') became 'window'."

The later Norman invasion of Britain infiltrated numerous French words into English; as these languages melded, "the Norse word 'law' survived, but a new jargon engulfed every dimension of its practice and enforcement. Much of this endures: 'jury, justice, plea, plaintiff, lease, larceny' and 'crime' are all from the French."

Readers derive a comprehension of the forces that have shaped English over the centuries. As Great Britain became the dominant global power, our language absorbed new words from exotic lands.

The word "shampoo" is derived from "the Hindi "champna," a verb that conveys the idea of kneading and pressing the body to relieve fatigue and stimulate the circulation." India has been a rich source for English words.

"Pyjamas' is another import from India. In fact "pyjama" derived from the Persian words for "foot" and "garment," and in its Indian context it was used only of loose-fitting trousers, rather than of the entire ensemble of bedwear.

Some word origins are amazing. New words enter our vocabularies daily. Have you ever wondered where the inventors of the drug "Viagra" got that name? Is it a mere coincidence that the Sanskrit word for "tiger" is "vyaghra"?

"The Secret Life of Words" is a linguistic goldmine. Did you know that the inventor Thomas Edison "seems to have initiated the habit of answering the phone with the exclamation 'hello' — once a ferryman's call?"

Hitchings has a delightful section that delineates the differences between American English and English English. And he looks toward the future of our language, and the forces that shall continue to mold it. Most notably he writes that "today there are more Hispanics in the U.S. than in Spain, and their median age is well below 30. They promise to write important chapters in the histories of not just one language, but two."

Hello, anybody up for SCRABBLE?

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com

they were dying to be included...

"The Economist Book of Obituaries"

by Keith Colquhoun and Ann Wroe

(Bloomberg, 409 pages, $30)

When you pick up the newspaper, what do you like to read first? Comics? Sports? The editorial pages? Stock market quotes?

In the New York Times, I check two sections first: the book reviews and the obituaries. Of course I read the book reviews religiously. And then, in the obit section I learn about fascinating people who accomplished significant things during their lives. The writers frequently turn up marvelous anecdotes about the deceased. Some obits are downright humorous.

In my quest for additional purveyors of fine obituaries I've unearthed another source, The Economist. This publication is even older than the New York Times. It was founded in 1843 and curiously, never published obituaries prior to 1995.

They must be even more selective than the New York Times because they publish only one obituary per week. From 1995 to 2003 their obits were written by Keith Colquhoun. And for the past five years they have been written by Ann Wroe.

The best of these are now available in "The Economist Book of Obituaries." There are obits for notable people that you'd expect: Diana, Princess of Wales; Gerald Ford; George Harrison; John Paul II; Frank Sinatra; and Hunter S. Thompson.

Then there are the ones that we knew little to nothing about — individuals who somehow rose up from among the teeming masses and took some bold action that did humanity proud. Or, in some instances, shamed the human race. In marking their exploits, our own lives seem richer. Here are a few of my favorites:

Momofuko Ando invented instant noodles in 1957. After a string of business failures, he created his secret instant noodle recipe. Ando, who died last year at age 96, held this philosophy of life: "peace will come when people have food. Eating wisely will enhance beauty and health. The creation of food will serve society."

Rosemary Brown was a musical psychic. She claimed psychic contact with legendary composers like Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin, "who had employed her on earth to receive their latest compositions." She made regular TV appearances in which she related that, "in heaven ... there was no sex ... 'the earthy side of our being has been left behind.' There was though, oddly, an interest in fashion. ... Everyone was well. Beethoven was no longer deaf." Brown died in 2001 at age 85.

Albert Hofmann was the Swiss chemist who first synthesized the drug LSD in 1943. "For the next decades, Mr. Hofmann took an awful lot of LSD. He ingested it listening to Mozart and looking at red roses." Apparently, it didn't do him any harm. He died this past April. He was 102.

Alex the African Gray was a parrot who "had a vocabulary of 150 words ... he could count up to six, including zero (and was grappling with the concept of 'seven' when he died)."

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.