Nightstand

 

 

WALKING WITH SAM: A Father, A Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain By Andrew McCarthy

 

Grand Central, $28

 

 

When I hear the name Andrew McCarthy, I immediately picture him in Weekend at Bernie’s. For others, it might be Pretty in Pink or Mannequin. But can you picture him walking 500 miles across Spain? And not for a movie role?

 

At the height of his career, Andrew trekked the famed Camino de Santiago solo. Now, the actor-turned-bestselling author takes his son, Sam, 19, who’s also an actor (Dead to Me) on the five-week pilgrimage in northern Spain. All Andrew wanted to do was connect with his eldest son, who seemed to care more about connecting to the internet. Along the way, they encounter a slew of characters, who they run into in town after town, which I envision to look like the town of Santo Poco in The Three Amigos. And they all offer the same three things: a café, a place to stay and a church. I guess when you’re on a spiritual voyage, all you really need is food, sleep and the Lord.

 

The terrain along the Camino de Santiago may be relatively flat, but along the trek, the father-son duo reveal the rocky side of their relationship. They bicker a lot; they talk about school, divorce, careers, relationships – you know, life. They needed to travel all the way to Spain and walk across the country to get to know each other. For anyone who’s challenged by their relationship with their parents or children, Walking With Sam is worth the trip.     

 

– Jason Stahl

 

 

 

THE RYE BREAD MARRIAGE How I Found Happiness with a Partner I’ll Never Understand By Michaele Weissman

 

Algonquin Books, $27 (2023)

 

 

Can you imagine what life would be like being married to someone who calls themselves a pagan, fled their homeland during World War II, is bipolar, and is obsessed with rye bread? That’s Michaele Weissman’s husband, John Melngailis.

 

The Rye Bread Marriage is 288 pages of journal entries – this format for a memoir is a breath of fresh air. Each entry, whether a couple of sentences, a few grafs, or several pages, tells the story of a complex and passionate genius who went from escaping Latvia when Stalin was invading, to becoming a college professor of electrical engineering, to starting the food company, Black Rooster Food, which makes only rye bread. Not any kind of rye bread. I’m talking about Latvian rye bread, perhaps the best in the world – it’s an entire subculture in this part of Europe. It’s John’s mission to get the world to understand why this peasant food is so important. I understand how delicious it is to eat this bread with salmon tartare or smoked trout salad or simply buttered.

 

Each entry that Weissman pens is a love letter to her significant other, and love she has for Melngailis, no matter how difficult he may be. I often see my own marriage in these pages and how my wife and I are very similar to Michaele and John, respectfully. The most important life lesson I took away is understanding what the vow “for better or worse” truly means. 

 

– Jason Stahl

 

 

 

Out of Print Books We Love…

 

Out of print books are recyclable and inexpensive. If you don’t mind reading on a screen, they can be downloaded for free. No virtual strings attached.

 

The Last Attachment: The Story of Byron and Teresa Guiccioli By Iris Origo

 

 Books & Co, 2000

 

 

So very much has been written about Lord Byron, the Byronic hero himself, who died unheroically at the age of thirty-six in Greece from ongoing malaria complications and his physicians’ aggressive bleeding. He was the rock star of his time—adored and reviled, and his comings and goings and latest scandals were newspaper fodder for their day.

 

Georgian-era women (1714-1837) were not the timid flowers we might imagine (in this respect, the “Bridgerton” series is spot-on), dressed in low bodiced pastels and embroidering from dawn to dusk. Once married and having produced a legitimate male heir, they could do as they mostly pleased. Women like Mary Shelley’s sister trailed Byron from one country to another, and the married Lady Caroline Lamb, perhaps the most notorious of them all (rejected after their affair), stalked him aggressively and sent him a lock of her pubic hair—a mode of that era’s seemingly somewhat extreme but not uncommon flirtation said to be copied from the Venetians.

 

In this intimate book of letters interspersed with explanatory but always fascinating text, we read about Byron’s last love Teresa Guiccioli, a nineteen year old married countess from Ravenna. Byron presciently wrote to her that she would be his “last Passion.” And he confided to his friend Lady Blessington that he was “furiously in love.” Indeed, she wrote a bestselling book about Byron, and Countess Guiccioli and Lady Blessington were frenemies after his death, rivals in their claim to be the only one to have known the “true” Byron.*

 

The cache of letters between Byron and the countess were stored away in the family’s Florentine palazzo until, years after her death,Teresa’s great-nephew allowed the author access. Filled with adoring sentiments and lovers’ codes, they are deeply and youthfully impassioned. Byron’s standard sign-off in his letters is the abbreviation “A.A. in E.” which Ortiga footnotes as Amico Amante in Eterno: Friend and Lover for Ever. In their letters and now in our hearts, the lovers are, indeed, linked forever.

 

*Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron published in 1834 and soon to be reviewed in Out of Print Books We Love…

 

– Helen Mitsios