Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. (Reuters photo.)

With the August 19-22 Democratic National Convention starting tomorrow, there’s a memorable duo atop the party’s 2024 ticket: presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her vice presidential running mate Tim Walz. Harris is of course the current veep who’d be the first female commander-in-chief in U.S. history (as well as the second person of color ever to lead the country) and Walz is a populist with “everyman” charisma and a record of getting people-friendly policies passed as governor of Minnesota.

There have also been many memorable duos in literature — whether they’re friends, work partners, or in other human configurations. (I’m mostly omitting lovers, spouses, siblings, and the like from this post because I’ve focused on those kinds of characters before.) It can be fascinating to see how each member of a fictional duo interacts with the other, whether the two people are somewhat alike or “odd couple” different, whether the whole of the pairing is greater than the sum of its parts, etc.

Duos that immediately came to my mind include teen Huck Finn and runaway slave Jim in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying-to-save-their-world hobbits Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, spacey Don Quixote and his more practical sidekick Sancho Panza in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, 19th-century friends Eliza Sommers (a traveler to the U.S. from Chile) and Tao Chi’en (a cook and physician) in Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, farm woman Dellarobia Turnbow and professor/scientist Ovid Byron in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, pals-from-childhood Tully Hart (a TV journalist) and Kate Mularkey (a stay-at-home mom) in Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane, and the two Superman-creator-like cartoonists in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to name a few.

Of course, there are also plenty of dynamic duos in mystery/detective/thriller fiction. Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott of J.K. Rowling’s crime novels (written under the alias Robert Galbraith), Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey of various Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries, Joe King Oliver and Melquarth Frost of two Walter Mosley mysteries, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (first book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and Frances Neagley, among others.

In addition, I’ve enjoyed human/animal duos such as Ayla and the horse Whinney in Jean M. Auel’s prehistoric book series that begins with The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Link Ferris and the collie Chum in Albert Payson Terhune’s His Dog, to cite just two pairings.

There’s also Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But they’re actually one person, so that doesn’t quite count. 🙂

I’ll conclude by mentioning one quite nasty real-life duo: Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s Republican presidential and vice presidential opponents Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde. Oops…Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about yet another lawsuit in my town and more — is here.

An animal writing about books without a book in sight? “Sue me,” says Misty the cat. (Photo by teen human Maria.)

Hi! Misty the cat here returning for one of my periodic guest blog posts, after I filed a lawsuit against the English language for not spelling periodic “purriodic.” A legal action that promises to last even longer than the endless case in Bleak House by Charles Dickens, who also wrote The Cricket on the Hearth until I chased away that cricket. Second edition: The Cricket No Longer on the Hearth.

Anyway, my blog theme will be novels told from an unusual point of view, and I don’t mean narrating an audiobook from atop the Empire State Building. Today’s topic (along with some novelistic examples of it) was suggested by Robert Berardi, a teacher/artist/songwriter who reads this blog each week — whether the posts are written by Dave, Misty the cat (me), or a bunch of elephants slapping their trunks against a computer keyboard.

One example of a book that unspools from an unusual angle is Dave’s part-fictional Misty the Cat…Unleashed, the 2024-published work told from a feline point of view (mine). Most books aren’t in the “voice” of animals, for the simple reason that animals have trouble obtaining ISBN numbers.

Then there are novels told from a doggy perspective. (Wait…not “purrspective”? Another lawsuit coming.) Prominent examples include The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London, an author who got into the canine mindset by observing Snoopy in the 1950-launched “Peanuts” comic strip. Wait…you’re saying London died in 1916 and thus couldn’t be aware of Snoopy? Nyah-nyah, I have my paws over my ears and can’t hear you.

I’ll also mention Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself in a desperate plight: the “y” is missing from the end of his first name. (I, Misty, don’t have that problem.) Actually, Gregor-not-Gregory wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect and proceeds to express his understandably depressed thoughts about that situation. The huge spiders in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series have a different back story.

Other novels told through a critter lens include Richard Adams’ Watership Down, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, to name a few.

Of course literature’s animals are often at least partly anthropomorphized, which is defined as…a word too challenging for me, Misty the cat, to have any idea what it means. Actually, anthropomorphized means the critters have some human traits and emotions, according to Dave, who didn’t tell me that until I untied him. Why did I tie him up in the first place? How do you think I got to do today’s blog post?

Just kidding. Dave is happy that I sub for him once in a while. He suggested I do so every few months; I suggested I do so every few weeks. We compromised on every few weeks. Quite fair, no?

Novels told from an unusual point of view can obviously also star humans. Take Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones…on second thought, don’t take it…borrow it from a library instead…or buy it at a bookstore…or order it online…or find camp counselors who read it out loud alongside a roaring fire…while toasting s’mores…and flicking ashes off their clothes…and wondering why they mistook toothpaste for sunscreen…and also wondering why the small, placid lake at the camp contains a ravenous 500-foot-long shark. Anyway, The Lovely Bones has an unusual, emotionally wrenching point of view because we experience things through the eyes of a teen girl AFTER she is murdered.

Heck, some novels even contain storytelling by inanimate objects! Are those objects catnip-filled? Rarely. That’s a problem.

Your thoughts on today’s topic? Examples of today’s topic? Do you have any cat treats for me, even if those tasty morsels are off-topic?

The very talented authors/bloggers/etc. Robbie Cheadle and D.L. Finn recently posted wonderful reviews of Misty the Cat…Unleashed. The latter post also includes reviews of books by four other authors, all excellent. Links below. Thanks so much, Robbie and Denise!

https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/2024/08/07/robbies-inspiration-book-review-misty-the-cat-unleashed-the-spirited-adventures-and-amusing-antics-of-an-asthmatic-feline-on-the-loose-by-dave-astor-humour-bookreview/

https://dlfinnauthor.com/2024/08/06/93871/

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — containing my odd take on delayed tax bills — is here.

Whale sighting! (Photo by me.)

While vacationing in Massachusetts last week, my family and I visited Provincetown on August 1 to go whale-watching. We saw…whales…and I also saw the possibility of writing a blog post about an author who had a strong association with those mighty aquatic mammals.

That author of course is Herman Melville, who sailed the sea quite a bit as a young man before starting to write novels — some semi-autobiographical. He began as basically an adventure writer before getting much deeper with his fiction, even as his prose was rich yet readable from the start.

Oddly, Melville’s 1846 debut novel Typee — a partly fictional chronicle of his time in Polynesia — would be his best-selling work during his lifetime. It was followed by the pretty similar Omoo (1847) before Melville started to write in a more challenging way with Mardi. That 1849 novel had its moments, philosophical and otherwise, but overall was on the boring side.

Then came Redburn (also 1849) and White-Jacket (1850), two very good but not great sea sagas.

A ship in Provincetown. (Photo by me.)

The 1819-born Melville’s creative breakthrough was Moby-Dick (1851), about another epic sea voyage — this time loaded with symbolic/allegorical elements. That, along with the book’s scintillating writing and ultra-memorable characters, made for what is now considered one of the great American novels. But Moby-Dick sold poorly when published and was also unpopular with many critics — only becoming truly famous and appreciated decades after Melville’s 1891 death.

That was around the time of the posthumous 1924 publication of Melville’s final novel, the excellent Billy Budd.

At least Melville’s friend Nathaniel Hawthorne liked Moby-Dick, published a year after Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter — which received a much better contemporary response from readers and critics.

Melville’s bitterness over Moby-Dick‘s unenthusiastic reception was quite obvious in his 1852 novel Pierre, a land-set book (no ocean voyage) whose cast of characters includes…a bitter writer. That and the strong hints of incest in the story resulted in another sales and critical disaster for Melville, whose writing career mostly tanked at that point. Interestingly, many modern-day readers (including myself) find Pierre really compelling and way ahead of its time.

I haven’t read Melville’s novels Israel Potter (1855) or The Confidence Man (1857).

With proceeds from his writing scarce, a very unhappy Melville worked as a customs inspector in New York City from 1866 to 1885, while doing some (not exactly stellar) poetry on the side. In that inspector job, the author was known as a rare honest man in a corrupt institution.

I should also mention Melville’s 17 short stories. “I and My Chimney” is an example of how the writer was very funny when he wanted to be — as is also the case with his inn bedroom scene featuring Ishmael and harpooner Queequeg in the early land-based section of Moby-Dick.

There’s also “Benito Cereno,” a riveting sea tale (of almost novella length) about a slave revolt. Melville was rare among 19th-century authors in portraying characters of color (including the above-mentioned Queequeg) somewhat three-dimensionally.

(Speaking of Moby-Dick characters, first mate Starbuck inspired the name of a certain coffee chain.)

Perhaps Melville’s most memorable short story is the mesmerizing “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” There are few tales like it.

As I’ve mentioned before, nearly 20 years ago I visited the Pittsfield, Mass., house where Melville lived from 1850 to 1863. The window above the desk on which the author finished writing Moby-Dick has a view of a mountain that’s shaped sort of like a whale.

Any thoughts on this post, Herman Melville, and/or his writing?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about an affordable-housing discussion and more — is here.

Credit: Sphere/David Levenson/Getty

In 2017, I wrote a post titled “Perceiving the Personal in the Pages We Peruse.” That piece was about how some novels we read remind us strongly of events, places, and other things in our present or past lives. Now, after lengthy penance for using too much alliteration in that post’s title, I’m back with another reminder-themed piece — this time featuring novels I’ve read during the past seven years or, if I read them earlier, hadn’t mentioned in that earlier post.

One relevant novel, which I finished last week, is Val McDermid’s 1979 — a compelling crime thriller starring a young female newspaper reporter in Scotland. I was a young male newspaper reporter in the U.S. around that time, so my experiences were obviously different, but I certainly recognized the McDermid-depicted newsroom back then that was filled with typewriters instead of computers, copy-editing done on paper, journalists smoking cigarettes and drinking a lot, unfortunately rampant sexism, and more.

It was that same year of 1979 when I visited Rome, and one of the sights I saw was The Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. Memories of that came back when I recently read Irving Stone’s historical novel The Agony and the Ecstasy about the life of Michelangelo — who famously painted that iconic chapel’s ceiling.

I was living in New York City back then (from 1978 to 1993), and worked in NYC (from 1978 to 2008), so of course novels set in The Big Apple evoke personal memories of Manhattan and other boroughs — even if the books were set before my lifetime. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel Gone Tomorrow, Don DeLillo’s Underworld, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Pete Hamill’s Forever, Adam Langer’s Ellington Boulevard, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, etc.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay had the double familiarity for me of starring cartoonists, which reminded me of when I covered those creators for a magazine. I had even met some of the real-life cartoonists Michael Chabon mentioned in passing — among them the friendly and masterful “Terry and the Pirates”/”Steve Canyon” comic strip creator Milton Caniff (1907-1988).

Now I live in Montclair — a New Jersey suburb big enough and interesting enough to occasional pop up in novels, including Joel Dicker’s The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. The character from Montclair wasn’t super-appealing, and the Swiss author didn’t really capture the feel of my burg, but…

Modern-day Paris? One of the novels that got my recollections rolling was Jane Smiley’s Perestroika in Paris, published two years after my last visit (in 2018) to The City of Light.

Whenever I read a novel (such as Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things) in which police behave badly, I think of my much-more-minor experiences of being profiled by law enforcement. (My hair used to be longer than it is now.) One time, while working as a reporter, I drove into the parking lot of my newspaper’s office. A police car pulled in behind me, lights flashing, after which the officer approached my car window and asked rather menacingly what I was doing there. I took out my press card, and enjoyed seeing the policeman’s embarrassment. One of my “beats” was covering that officer’s department. 🙂

Novels that have sparked personal memories for you?

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work “Misty the Cat…Unleashed” — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about an upcoming township manager search and more — is here.

Photos courtesy of Sony; Nina Subin

I’ve written before about the unexpected in literature, but I’m going to take a partly different angle this time. It involves readers’ expectations of certain authors and novels, and how those readers can be surprised.

For instance, as I prepared to read Elin Hilderbrand for the first time last week, I expected her to be an (excellent) escapist writer. Heck, her fiction is often set on the idyllic (?) island vacation destination of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and a blurb on the back of the Summer of ’69 novel I chose said “Hilderbrand’s books are…perfect beach reads.”

Well, Summer of ’69 was certainly entertaining (and excellent), but hardly 100% escapist as it focused on a multi-generational family. There were various plot strands referencing racism, sexism, class divisions, adultery, suicide, the Vietnam War, etc. I’m glad all that was there — it made the novel more compelling — but those things weren’t on my Hilderbrand bingo card. Obviously, I hadn’t done enough pre-reading homework!

Another example of a novel that surprised me was from the summer of ’61 — 1861, that is, though I don’t know if Silas Marner was published in the summer. I opened the pages of George Eliot’s classic a decade or so ago with the expectation that it would be a dry work that many students famously disliked when it was assigned to them in high school. But it turned out to be a poignant, heartbreaking, heartwarming novel about a man who goes through some life-changing tragedies and triumphs. I loved it.

Going back another two centuries-plus, I thought Don Quixote would be entertaining but perhaps, because of its 1605-1615 publication period, not super-readable for modern eyes. But Miguel de Cervantes’ novel WAS super-readable in the 21st century.

Yes, some long-ago books are much more enjoyable than one might expect. Among those that come to mind are Voltaire’s Candide, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, and Fanny Burney’s Evelina — all written in the 18th century.

Getting more recent again, a John Steinbeck reader who starts with The Grapes of Wrath might not be ready for just how humorous that author can be when he puts his mind to it. I had no idea how much I would laugh when I polished off Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, and Sweet Thursday (even as those novels also contained plenty of social commentary). Then, Steinbeck’s epic East of Eden wiped the smile off my face.

Not much humor, either, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but that novel surprised me. I thought it would be an earnest anti-slavery work that was sort of an obligation to read. But the story line is quite skillful and compelling, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s title character is a more nuanced, more admirable person than what some critics have stereotyped him as.

Another 19th-century novel — by Stowe’s Hartford, Connecticut, neighbor Mark Twain — surprised me in being almost completely serious. That was Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, which also had the unusual distinction for the usually humorous or seriocomic author of featuring a female title character.

J.K. Rowling turned heads, too, when writing the deadly serious, non-wizard novel The Casual Vacancy after her blockbuster Harry Potter series that had plenty of humor amid the intense drama. Surprising, yes, but not a surprise for me and other readers who saw all kinds of reviews of, and articles about, The Casual Vacancy before reading that change-of-pace novel.

Yes, doing some homework about a novel or an author can prevent surprises, but then we might lose the fun of being startled. 🙂

Novels and authors you’ve read that were different than you expected?

My comedic new 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

The 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

Today is the exact 10th anniversary of this weekly literature blog! To mark that birthday, below is a rerun of my very first post here on July 14, 2014:

Some real-life servants are treated badly by their rich employers, but many fictional servants are treated nicely by their authors. A small, wish-fulfilling solace for readers in this time of soaring economic inequality.

Literature’s servants and other “hired help” are often smarter, funnier, and more compassionate than their “betters.” Perhaps that’s partly because they have to work hard for a living, while some of the wealthy get their money the old-fashioned way — inheriting it. Ah yes, the merit system…

Servants in literature also help us judge their masters. You can tell a lot about an affluent person’s decency (or lack of) by how they treat their so-called “inferiors.”

Some stand-out servants in fiction? Jeeves, of course, in the engaging and hilarious works of P.G. Wodehouse. That valet is incredibly bright and well-spoken, and helps his congenial but somewhat dim “master” Bertie Wooster out of many a scrape.

Another famous servant character is Nelly Dean, who’s the pragmatic voice of reason in a Wuthering Heights novel filled with hyper-passionate and/or weak-minded people. Nelly grounds Emily Bronte’s superb book, and helps make the hard-to-believe events in it seem believable. Of course, another servant in that novel is boorish religious fanatic Joseph, but we won’t talk about him… 🙂

Nineteenth-century English literature also offers us Nanny from the longish short story “The Sad Fortunes of Reverend Amos Barton” in the Scenes of Clerical Life collection George Eliot wrote before embarking on her astonishing career as a novelist. Nanny is the servant who memorably denounces a freeloading countess who overstays her welcome in the Bartons’ struggling household and even endangers the health of Amos’ kindhearted wife Milly.

How about Lee in John Steinbeck’s gripping East of Eden? That servant is an intellectual guy who cleverly deals with anti-Asian prejudice in the American West of the late 1800s/early 1900s and serves as a surrogate father to the Trask sons when biological father Adam is traumatized by a disastrous marriage.

Then there are the underlings/sidekicks such as Sancho Panza in Miguel Cervantes’ iconic Don Quixote and Samwise Gamgee in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In the former book, squire Sancho is a humorous/competent companion to the less-than-practical Quixote. In the latter work, gardener Samwise becomes an invaluable friend to Frodo Baggins — who, while admirable and brave, would have been in dire straits without Sam’s help during the Tolkien trilogy’s epic quest.

Speaking of funny characters, and characters named Sam, it’s hard to beat Sam Weller of Charles Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club when it comes to literature’s all-time underlings.

There’s also Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, in which loyal butler Stevens comes to regret a major missed opportunity in his life.

Last but by no means least, we can’t forget the many fictional African-American characters forced into servant work or outright slavery — whether it be in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Alex Haley’s Roots, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and many other novels. “Uncle Tom” became a derogatory term, but Tom in the book is quite courageous in his turn-the-other-cheek way — and is clearly the moral center of Stowe’s story.

James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and Rita Mae Brown’s Murder at Monticello are among the numerous other novels that have interesting references to the horrific institution of slavery — the ultimate servanthood.

What are your favorite literary works featuring servants, butlers, maids, valets, and others of that station in life?

My comedic new 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a local U.S. congresswoman rightly calling for President Biden not to seek reelection, retaliation against employees who filed lawsuits, and various other topics — is here.

When there’s much to do, I’m reminded of the Busytown game inspired by Richard Scarry’s books.

Reading lots of fiction is a wonderful thing, but one major problem with reading lots of fiction is when…you don’t have time to read lots of fiction. 😦 Not ideal when one writes a weekly literature blog. 🙂

For me, reading novels has temporarily taken a partial back seat as I do such things as promote my new book, help with my younger daughter’s expanding college-search efforts, and spend time (texts, phone calls, visits) related to a serious medical situation faced by someone in my extended family.

Consequently, despite having started Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders three weeks ago, I still haven’t finished it. Nothing to do with being bored; it’s a clever, skillfully written page-turner that’s intriguingly a mystery novel within a mystery novel — with characters who include a terminally ill detective, a best-selling mystery writer, that author’s small-press editor who becomes an amateur investigator, and several people who die under puzzling circumstances. Usually, I read at least one novel a week.

Meanwhile, five other books I too-ambitiously borrowed during my last library visit stare at me accusingly. (Yes, not getting enough sleep causes hallucinations. 🙂 ) Those novels include John Grisham’s The Associate, Elin Hilderbrand’s Summer of ’69, Val McDermid’s 1979, Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered Always Outgunned, and Iris Murdoch’s Jackson’s Dilemma. I’ll get to them eventually, perhaps in the year 2079. 🙂

Any thoughts about, and/or recollections of, not reading as much fiction as you’d like for a short stretch of time?

In a comedic promotional video for my comedic new Misty the Cat…Unleashed book, Misty speaks for 90 seconds — perhaps hoping he’ll get seconds after his next 90 meals? 🙂 The video can be seen here.

Also, many thanks to Colleen M. Chesebro for including a wryly wonderful review of my new book in a post that also looks at very interesting books by the very talented writers Teagan Geneviene and D.L. Finn, who each have WordPress blogs, too. Greatly appreciated! The post can be seen here.

The part-factual/part-fictional Misty the Cat…Unleashed — not a children’s book — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 Several are shown here. )

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about my community’s new (and hopefully improved) Township Council — is here.

From ‘The Joy Luck Club’ movie.

Many humans like to be part of a group — whether it’s called a group, a club, an organization, an association, a society, a union, a gang, etc. Sometimes official, sometimes casual, often positive, occasionally negative, these groups offer camaraderie, a place for shared interests, strength in numbers, networking, etc. — with possible internal tensions in certain cases due to jealousy, different views, and so on.

I thought of groups last week when my application for membership in the Cat Writers’ Association was accepted after I submitted to the CWA a copy of my comedic new book Misty the Cat…Unleashed. It’s the second major organization I’m a member of, along with my longtime history as part of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, where I was a board member from 2009 to 2023 and still copy-edit the NSNC newsletter. There’s also the wonderful blogosphere here, where I’m very happy to associate with other bloggers and commenters — including the people reading this post now.

And — you knew this was coming — groups can be a big part of some novels. Including, of course, Mary McCarthy’s The Group, about the life of eight friends after college. Another book with a gathering of people literally in its title is the World War II novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

Also a group-focused novel with a WWII theme is Fannie Flagg’s The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, about a cadre of women pilots.

Moving backward in time to World War I, we have the spy ring of women in Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network.

We also have the secret society in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the group of immigrant Chinese-American women who form The Joy Luck Club that gives Amy Tan’s novel its title.

Unions? We see them — or more ad hoc labor groupings — in such novels as Emile Zola’s Germinal, Jack London’s Martin Eden, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, and Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds.

Of course, groupings can be sinister, as with the Mafia guys in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and the vicious 19th-century western gang of white guys in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

Any examples of, or comments about, this theme you’d like to offer?

My comedic new 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about yet another lawsuit against a township official, incompetence that led to the hacking of the municipal computer system, and other topics — is here.

“Dave, this is not the direction to the library,” says Misty the cat. (Photo by Laurel Cummins.)

Hi! Misty the cat here. My bloomin’ hogger…um…human blogger invited me to guest-post again. Seems like a good time to do so after this month’s publication of Misty the Cat…Unleashed, a book co-authored by me, Dave, and Jane Austen, minus Jane Austen. The same formula used to write the Jack Reacher novel No Plan B by Lee Child, Andrew Child, and Jane Austen, minus Jane Austen.

A brief interlude: The highly accomplished author/poet/blogger Colleen Chesebro posted a wonderful written interview with Dave about Misty the Cat…Unleashed on her blog last Thursday. Click on this link to see it. The blogosphere can be a great place, even though I, as a feline, didn’t see the blogosphere at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. I saw the Unisphere.

Anyway, in Misty the Cat…Unleashed I say a lot after I slip my harness in Montclair, New Jersey, and become lost (yes, I get a daily leashed walk that would’ve been sponsored by Coca-Cola — “Taste the Feeling!” — if “carbonation” weren’t too long a word for me to spell). One of the many things I discuss in the book is a list of my 10 favorite novels, which surprisingly is also a list of Dave’s 10 favorite novels but not a list of Jane Austen’s 10 favorite novels because all the books mentioned were written after her 1817 death. She had eight fewer lives than me.

To write the rest of this blog post, I’m referring to the 10-favorite-novels list in Chapter 52 of Misty the Cat…Unleashed, though my thoughts here will often be different from those in the book. After all, blog posts and books are different mediums, as Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle learned at the seances he spent way too much time attending.

Here’s the fave list, with a warning that the descriptions will contain lots of fiction about these 10 works of fiction.

10. History by Elsa Morante. They say Rome (where this World War II novel is set) “wasn’t built in a day.” That usually means it takes many more than 24 hours to create great things, but maybe Rome was actually built in, say, one minute. If Dave gifted me a Rolex watch, I’d know for sure.

9. Possession by A.S. Byatt. This novel should’ve been about a cat possessing a Rolex watch, but, as noted above, Dave didn’t gift me one. So, Byatt’s book became about two 20th-century academics investigating two 19th-century poets. Omitted from the story line was a 21st-century cat investigating whether the original cover of Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century novel The Tale of Genji was edible.

8. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. I’m a cat who lives in an apartment complex, so every year I stand on my building’s front porch to give a “State of the Apartment Complex Address.” If I lived in a blue castle, it would be a “State of the Blue Castle Address.” But the L.M. in L.M. Montgomery doesn’t stand for Lotsa Meows.

7. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. The oldest novel on this list, yet it still post-dates Jane Austen’s life. She was born in 1775, meaning she saw the Broadway show 1776 at the age of 1. Edmond Dantes paid for Austen’s booster seat at that matinee performance after becoming the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo.

6. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Bilbo and Frodo were not members of the Marx Brothers like Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo, but they could’ve been. Same for Aragorno, Gandalfo, and Gollumo. Which reminds me that cat treats are preciousssss.

5. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Should’ve been titled the Mrs. Norris series, after Argus Filch’s pet cat. And those half-blood paw prints scared the hell out of me. Um…you say the sixth Potter book was called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? Not as thirst-quenchingly satisfying as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Milk.

4. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. She authored better-known novels (Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, etc.), but DD is a gripping saga featuring two of these three themes: religion, unrequited love, and periodic claw trimmings.

3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Set in St. Petersburg (St. Pet for short), protagonist Raskolnikov develops two killer apps. Or maybe he kills two people. But whichever of those two things happened, Dostoevsky “kills it” in this riveting novel.

2. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Re the initials JC: Jim Casy is a Jesus Christ figure in Steinbeck’s masterpiece, while I’m a Jersey Cat figure in my new book.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. In which the title character becomes governess to a kitty. And there’s someone in the Thornfield Hall attic, but it’s not Atticus Finch.

Your favorite novels? If one of them is the just-referenced To Kill a Mockingbird, I, Misty the cat, didn’t murder the winged creature named in the book’s title.

PS: Dave tells me that, starting next week, he’ll mostly return to writing “normal” literature posts that don’t reference Misty the Cat…Unleashed to this degree. As long as Dave doesn’t switch his focus to Misty the Cat…Unleased, because I want to stay in our apartment.

Dave’s comedic new 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in a paperback or a Kindle edition. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about my town’s mayor announcing a run for New Jersey governor despite his VERY unpopular and problematic 2020-2024 term — is here.

Misty and me. (Photo by my wife, Laurel Cummins.)

My third book — Misty the Cat…Unleashed — has just been published! It’s partly factual and partly fictional, so I guess it’s partly a novel. Along with being partly a memoir, told in Misty’s comedic voice. (A voice you’ve occasionally experienced here when that commendable kitty has guest-blogged about literature.)

In the 242-page book, asthmatic feline Misty slips his harness during one of his daily leashed walks and gets lost in Montclair, New Jersey. To pass the time and try to control his fear, Misty cracks MANY jokes, reminisces about his life, imparts information about his species and human family (mine!), discusses his favorite novels and music, gets philosophical, fantasizes about things, and more.

This NOT-a-children’s book includes 11 cartoons of Misty amid the text, and has paperback and Kindle editions. (Links in the boldface paragraph near the end of this post.) If you end up buying and reading the book, an Amazon review would of course be very welcome. 🙂

I came up with the idea for a memoir “by” Misty several years ago, but couldn’t quite figure out a good plot to hang the story on. Then, in 2022, Misty slipped his harness one morning in real life and was lost for about 16 hours. We were frantic and devastated before finally finding him after much searching and much leaving of our contact information with neighborhood residents. A few months later, it belatedly occurred to me that I had a plot for my (Misty’s) book.

Then came the writing and rewriting, from March to September 2023. After that, I figured I’d make a long-shot attempt to find a literary agent — researching agency web sites and sending out 88 individually crafted queries whenever I had some free time in late 2023 and early 2024. I received some nice responses, but not an offer of representation.

So, I decided to again enter the wonderful world of independent publishing, as I had done with my 2017 Fascinating Facts literary-trivia book after going the small press route with my 2012 memoir Comic (and Column) Confessional. After all, Misty and cats in general are all about independence. 🙂 (But they are of course very loving creatures, too.)

“Misty the Cat…Unleashed” can be purchased on Amazon in a paperback or a Kindle edition.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a final Council meeting, a beloved independent stationery store closing, and more — is here.