The Monday Book – Baumgartner by Paul Auster

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader and always learning; sometimes substitute teaching, sometimes grandbabysitting, sometimes selling books

Baumgartner by Paul Auster

Baumgartner by Paul Auster

I no longer know or recall exactly what my introduction to Paul Auster was, as it was many years ago and many Paul Auster books ago. I just counted six of them in my personal library. And I believe that it was in 2009 when I first visited New York City and found myself on a Soundwalk–an audio-driven self-led walking tour–that was narrated by Paul Auster, and from then his voice represented for me all that was…is…New York City.

Baumgartner is Auster’s newest, and it is a wonderful book. Baumgartner is a professor emeritus, long-time tenured university professor, who is ten years beyond the death of his beloved wife, Anna, and still mourning the loss, grieving the hole she left. But he isn’t wallowing in a pitiful place; rather, he brings Anna back to life through his memories and reminiscence as well as all that she has left behind.

This is a beautiful, fully philosophical pondering on aging and grief, life and living it fully. It’s about what keeps–or can–those who are aging from growing old.

There’s a little Baumgartner in each of us, I think. And I found this sweet 200-page book to be smart, wise, and full of inspiration for making good things happen with what we have in front of us.

Seeing each day as an opportunity, from the moment that we awaken, to address what we have, rather than what we have not, and to do our best with “that” each and every day is just one message I took from this book. Love is beautiful. And a life spent loving as well as to love living it is a precious gift…but moreso a choice.

Paul Auster is a wise guy…of the very best kind. Every reader benefits from meeting Baumgartner and taking even a little direction from him.

Come back next Monday for another book review!

A Little Ditty…about Jack and Wendy

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Writer Wendy’s weekly blog

My husband doesn’t like my gingerbread house. I’m not sure why.


He got really nervous a couple of years ago, too, when I wrote a novel about a couple that ran a bookstore, and the husband died. Of natural causes, I hasten to add.

Bad Boy in the Bookstore had a plot based on real life. Jack did federal prison visits for decades, and one of the guys was an absolute charmer of a sociopath, in for murder committed during an armed robbery.

Over the months he and Jack bonded, and the guy was a tunnel master who had escaped at least three times from federal hospitality—to the point that he was taken out to classes on training officers in escape prevention.

So when Jack was trying to put a staircase into a coal chute to give us internal access to a newly-discovered basement, he started talking to the guy about it. And came home with a napkin scribbled over with diagrams and angles and a list of supplies.

I was livid. There just weren’t that many bookstores in private houses within visiting distance of the federal penitentiary. The next time this guy escaped, why wouldn’t he come straight toward us?

Jack laughed. The guy usually headed for Mexico or Alaska, where his charm would get him taken up with the wealthy set. One of his arrests was on a yacht raided because the party got too raucous.

Well, the plot about wrote itself, how this charming gentleman shows up after the male half of the bookstore owning couple dies (OF NATURAL CAUSES, so calm down, Jack!)….

It was a fun book to write, but it was, in fact, fiction. But ever since I came home with this gingerbread house, Jack keeps looking at me funny. Sorta like the time we got trapped by storms, coming back from Dublin, Ireland for Christmas. We spent two days in Chicago, and one of the films Jack watched during that time was The Shining.

If you know your horror films, you know this was about a Jack and a Wendy trapped by a snowstorm. I went for a swim while Jack watched it, but when I got back he just kept staring at me. Staring, and smiling…..

If the gingerbread house starts to show signs of possession—the heads on the little gingerbread guys start spinning, say, or we find one of the cats suffocated by gumdrops—we will take appropriate action and dissolve the house in milk.

Until then, calm down, Jack. And here, have this gumdrop…or some Wendy-made Christmas tea…