and sometimes music... A Review of Dan Fogelberg's Posthumously Released CD

When Kelly Kravitz contacted me about doing a review of the posthumously released CD of Dan Fogelberg songs, I jumped at the chance. It was afterward I realized how difficult this task would become.

Let me back up, in 2007 my husband came home after work, after listening to the NPR on his drive home and told me that Dan Fogelberg had died. As a woman born in 1958 and reaching my teens in the 70s, I grew up with Dan Fogelberg, with his songs anyway, so I mourned his passing from a distance – that safe zone.

The CD, “Dan Fogelberg: A Retrospective Interview (with Fred Migliore of FM Odyssey Radio)” arrived in the mail and I felt charged and excited about… well, everything. Mostly for selfish reasons – that I somehow landed this fabulous opportunity was forefront in my thinking – selfish reasons. I set the CD on the dining table and circled it. I circled it for three days.

Feelings that were once filled with excitement and opportunity were replaced with feelings of apprehension. I knew I wasn’t up to the task.Last night, at 8 o’clock I finally took a breath and unwrapped the plastic cover, opened the CD and placed it into the player. The first chord sent me reeling back to a hot summer. We had just moved into a house on East Granada Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona. The first song that played is off the second CD, titled “Tucson, Arizona.”My worry now heightened into something greater. I normally review books, not music. Would I know the proper music industry lingo to articulate the quality of the CD? What would I write at all? How could I tell a story about Dan Fogelberg? Words like orchestration and composition flashed into my head and I began to calm down. I knew those words. But, I was blocking what was really happening.

The music was quelling my fears, like an old friend who calls to say “everything will be all right.” Then the first CD began, the first song “To the Morning” – a song that sounds like light falling rain, the piano – the beautiful piano by the hand of Dan Fogelberg. His perfect tenor saying “there’s really no way to say no to the morning” in a song about letting go and living, freeing yourself and giving in. At least, that’s what the song means to me. Mr. Fogelberg’s music was taking over.

This isn’t just a CD set. It’s a memory. But more than a memory it’s that core feeling one gets from a sensory perception, like smell, music memory will place you back to an exact spot, a place in time, when you first heard a song. Dan Fogelberg was everywhere when I was a kid, well, his music was and so he walked with me from the house, to the school bus, through each class and back home again. He was everywhere.

So, what will his CD mean to someone who didn’t live in the years Dan Fogelberg reigned? Well, who can answer that but I do know they will thoroughly understand the music – an integral piece to falling in love with any music.Right now, “Same Old Lang Syne” is playing, a reminiscent song about two old lovers who meet after many years of separation. It breaks my heart it’s so yearning and it makes me wonder how he did it. How do you write something so precise, so to-the-heart, that it can make people cry.

Fred Migliore interviews Dan Fogelberg between each perfectly selected song. His style is unforced and fun. Dan is delightful as I’m sure those who knew him intimately, his friends and family, expect him to be. However, we, the listener, get to know Dan a little better. He’s real, he’s human which makes his loss even greater.

As I circled the table my subconscious must have been stalling me, keeping me from feeling a truer sense of loss. In 2007, my feeling of loss was far off and now, in 2009, not so. Mourning the loss of Dan Fogelberg is renewed and close this time. However, how fortunate that his music lives on. My memories - my youth and growing up - are found in this collection of Dan Fogelberg music. This CD set is an exquisite tribute and representation of Dan Fogelberg’s life and body of work. How fortunate to be selected to review Mr. Fogelberg’s CD set. I’m awestruck by the honor.

Dan Fogelberg died from prostate cancer in 2007 and three dollars from every sale of this CD will go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation (pfc.org).

April 23rd- Joyce Anthony at her two blogs.

April 28th- Ash Joie-Lee at her two blogs.

April 29th & 30th- Marvin at: Free Spirit blog at http://inspiritandtruths.blogspot.com/

ANDHippie Days blog at http://tiedyedtirades.blogspot.com/will review the CD

Kelly Kravitz- Blog Tour CoordinatorFollow me on Twitter- http://twitter.com/groovybooksFollow Promo 101 Virtual Tours on Twitter - www.twitter.com/litekeprVisit www.virtualblogtour.blogspot.com for all tour information

A Review of "Voice Over"

VOICE OVER by Céline Curiol – A Review

“Voice Over” is the story of a woman who has fallen in love with a man who loves and lives with another woman. In the character’s mind she develops scenarios with him even as she has intimate interactions with other men. Curiol’s nameless main character works as a public announcer at the gare de Nord – a metro in the heart of Paris. Daily, at work, she watches a bustle of people make their way to wherever, she doesn’t know, but daily, she judges their actions and their refusal to look at her – to make contact with her – as she watches them. At the end of each day, her life is filled with longing and fantasy about this man who she loves and who seems to love her back because he agrees to meet with her regularly at cafés where they kiss, talk and hold hands.

As the story heightens in risk and emotional intensity, Ms. Curiol instills moments of embarrassed sympathy in the reader – you feel you should look away but find Curiol’s writing too compelling to stop reading.

This short novel at 255 pages is profoundly artistic with brushstrokes of human condition normally found written by the masters which leads me to wonder if Curiol has channeled the likes of Maupassant or Flaubert. But, Curiol’s writing is so vastly unique and pristine that it seems she’s begun a brand new form of art, one that will stand apart for centuries to come and will hang in a room at the Louvre.

While on a plane traveling to the desert, I wanted to reach to passengers in front of me, behind me and stop them as they passed by my row just to read snippets of “Voice Over” to them, so they too could appreciate Curiol’s art.

As a writer, I kept thinking to myself, how did she do that? As a writing instructor, I’ll be using “Voice Over” as example.

There are only two things that sadden me about Ms. Céline Curiol’s “Voice Over”: (1) that it ended and (2) that I won’t soon be reading anything this magnificent for a long while. Kudos, Ms. Curiol, “Voice Over” is sheer ecstasy. – Review by Susan Wingate, author of “Bobby’s Diner” and “Of the Law” (March 3, 2009)

"Possession" by Annie Ernaux

A review of novella, “POSSESSION” by Annie Ernaux (Translated by Anna Moschovakis)

From the first sentence of “Possession,” Annie Ernaux sets a sense of desperation in the reader that is carried throughout this tasty morsel of a novella called, “Possession.”

As the main character, a successful professor, walks through the streets of Paris, she believes every woman she sees to be the new lover of her ex. And, if they lock eyes, her belief is strengthened.

Ernaux’s crisp depiction of the main character creates a discomfort so palpable for the reader it becomes equal in tenor as if one were spying on a patient with her psychiatrist. She utilizes inference with precision. The realness of each moment and the height of conflict achieved by the character’s internal thinking are masterfully written. Ernaux has taken an old idea, one using the psyche of a scorned woman, and has written a fresh and sometimes frightening account.

What “Possession” lacks in dialogue, it more than makes up for in tension. However, in no way do I want a reader to believe my words to mean the story needs dialogue – it does not. Ernaux’s “Possession” is one of those perfect little pieces of writing that stays with you long after its been read. “Possession” is, by far, one of the finest pieces of literary art out.

As I read, I kept thinking, “So, this is how it’s done.” Parfait, Ms. Ernaux. – Susan Wingate, author of "Bobby's Diner" and "Of the Law" (January 23, 2009)

This review was given at no charge to the author or publisher

Book Review Services Now Available

After much contemplation, years actually, I'm offering review services to writers and publishers.

I'm hoping the cost of these services will be economical for everyone. To read a 350-page book, it takes no less than ten hours. To write a review, it takes another three to five hours. This equates to approximately two days out of my work week.

Therefore, I will only be accepting one book review a week.

My rates are as follows (in US dollars):

• $99.00 - - - a two- to five-line comment about a book,
• $199.00 - - - a one-page book review,
• $399.00 - - - a critique, up to eight pages discussing the author's use of: characterization, setting, point of view, voice, plot development, pacing, conflict, theme and overall story arc.

If you would like to submit your book for consideration, please query me at: susanwingate@centurytel.net. Please put "Book Review Services Query" in the subject line.

I only give reviews for the following:

• Memoir
• Mainstream
• Literary Fiction
• Women's Fiction

I do not review the following:

• Nonfiction
• Children's Stories
• Poetry
• Mystery
• Science Fiction
• Horror
• Erotica

Thank you for your interest. Sincerely, Susan.

November's Book Talk - "their eyes were watching god" by Zora Neale Hurston

Your mission - to read this amazing book and discuss it the entire month of November 2008.