Today's post covers the second half of the top 10 bestsellers from 1954.
No Time for Sergeants, Mac Hyman, Random House, 1954, 214 pp
This hilarious story was #6 on the list for 1954. It is the best spoof on the military that I have read so far, mostly because it is succinct and contains no bitterness. Will Stockdale is a backwoods Southern boy who gets drafted and tells his tale from his laconic and fairly clueless viewpoint.
He is forever trying to be helpful and to act like a good soldier, though he doesn't take shit from anyone and has a poor concept of rank. Of course, this throws an entire monkey wrench into any military operation in which he takes part. His superiors simply don't know what to make of him. He always speaks his mind and has no awe of officers or superiors, all of which should get him into a world of trouble, but this is the military, so he ends up a hero.
An excellent light-hearted read.
Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck, The Viking Press, 1954, 273 pp
Ah, Steinbeck. How I love this author. Sweet Thursday, at #7, is a sequel to Cannery Row and takes place in the same town with many of the same characters. It is post WWII now and Doc is in a bad frame of mind. In fact, he has three minds going at once: upper, middle and lower, and while he feels he should be making something of his life, his lower mind knows that he is lonely and it is getting him down.
So his friends over at the Palace Flophouse go to work hoping to help him out. There is a new girl in town trying to work at The Bear House, but she is not really cut out to be a whore. In this hilarious tale of matchmaking, Steinbeck puts all he has into play: his deep understanding of people, friendship, love and loyalty.
I did not want the book to end. As much as I love East of Eden, I love the Cannery Row books even more. I don't know of too many authors who can embed their philosophy of life so unobtrusively into a novel.
The View from Pompey's Head, Hamilton Basso, Doubleday & Company, 1954, 409 pp
The intriguing title of this 1954 bestseller (#8) was a big letdown when I found out its meaning, as was the book when I finally read it. I'd had this book on my shelves for many years. I picked it up in some since forgotten used bookstore, buying it only because I was attracted by the title. Then it turned up on the 1954 bestseller list, which explains what it was doing on the shelves of used books.
Pompey's Head turned out to be a small town on the Georgia coast. The story is about a man who grew up there, fled in his early 20s to become a lawyer in New York and finds himself back in Pompey's Head in his mid 30s on an assignment from his firm. So there is a present time story going on which sounds promising because it is about a reclusive author, but which takes forever to be told because the back story and memories of the lawyer turn out to be the real story.
Both stories have disappointing non-endings and I figured out the mystery surrounding the reclusive author character about halfway through the book. Hamilton Basso was one of those New York City editors of mags like "The New Yorker." He aspires to write like that crowd but doesn't measure up. If I want a story about the insane social practices of Southern towns, I would much rather read William Styron or Eudora Welty.
Oh well. I still like the title but it is another way not to judge a book.
Never Victorious, Never Defeated, Taylor Caldwell, McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc, 1954, 549 pp
I've read several books by Taylor Caldwell over the years and there is just something a little skewed about her. This one was the #9 bestseller of 1954. It is a saga about a fictional family near Philadelphia whose patriarch started a railroad in the days of the Robber Barons.
The main characters are Cornelia de Witt, the ruthless, practically immortal granddaughter of the patriarch and Allan Marshall, son of a poor Irish railroad worker who invents an automatic coupler, becomes wealthy and marries Cornelia. These two are surrounded by a vast cast of family members, businessmen, financiers and politicians. Allan Marshall, a lapsed Catholic, has a brother who becomes a priest, thus bringing in the religious angle which so often features in Caldwell's books.
Cornelia is another strong heroine, which seems to be a theme in 1954, but is practically soulless. Allan suffers great anguish of soul. Most of the other characters just want money. There is an extremely odd political view being put forth in this novel which centers around evil men who are in a conspiracy to destroy freedom in the world for their own greedy and power-hungry reasons. Though a common view in many books today, especially science fiction and thrillers, this is the first time I've come across it in bestselling fiction, unless I take into account the Lanny Budd series by Upton Sinclair. But while Sinclair was an avowed socialist, Caldwell has some kind of Libertarian, Jeffersonian, Constitutionalist thing going and lumps communism, socialism and fascism together as the enemy. She seems to have no problem with monopolies that create wealth out of the sweat of workers, as long as free enterprise is kept sacrosanct.
I must say that Caldwell's writing is better than usual here. She still goes overboard on descriptions of nature and the hysterical element in certain characters, but though long, the book was a good read.
Benton's Row, Frank Yerby, The Dial Press, 1954, 280 pp
Then I came to the end of Frank Yerby Top 10 bestsellers. Eight of his formulaic stories have now passed under my eyes, and he actually got better in the last two. Benton's Row is set in the south, covering four generations of two families beginning in 1842 and ending after WWI.
In this novel, Yerby has taken on a more literary voice. In fact, he sounds positively Faulknerian at times. His characters are deeper and more complex and the drama is less predictable. Historically there is not much I have not read in other novels of this period.
Though he went on publishing novels up to 1985, none of them are on the top 10 lists, so I am done with Frank Yerby at last.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
BOOKS READ FROM 1954, PART ONE
In this post are my reviews of the top 5 bestsellers of 1954
Not As A Stranger, Morton Thompson, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954, 696 pp
The #1 bestseller of 1954 is a huge, dense but rich story of the making of a doctor. Lucas Marsh was born in the early 1900s to a father who dealt in leather goods for horses and carriages and a mother who studied phrenology and other esoteric spiritual texts. The marriage was highly strained financially and sexually, causing Lucas much anguish and confusion, but from the age of seven he had found his calling: medicine. Between his hours at school and home, he secretly followed the small town's three doctors on their rounds, trying to learn what he could.
Despite his parents' protests and a dire lack of funds, Lucas made it through college and medical school. In a moment of desperation, as he is about to be expelled from med school for lack of money, he marries a nurse. He doesn't love her, she is an awkward, unpopular young woman of Swedish descent, but she is also the very competent head nurse of the hospital to which the medical school is attached. She is devoted to Lucas and pays for all the rest of his schooling.
Lucas is something of a genius and his single-minded intensity and sense of mission makes him a highly unsociable and inflexible character. As he move into his first practice as assistant to an aging doctor in a small town, he runs into "real life" for the first time and must come to terms with dishonesty, malpractice, politics, society and women.
I found this a fascinating book. There is no sense of any Roaring Twenties though those are the years of the story. The financial crash of 1929 plays a part but what was most interesting was the detailed account of the state of medicine in that decade. Quite an unexpected read for 1954.
Mary Anne, Daphne Du Maurier, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1954, 351 pp
Another bestseller by Du Maurier hit #2 in 1954. It is historical fiction based on the life of the author's great great grandmother, who lived in England from 1776 to 1852. Mary Anne was born poor, made a disastrous marriage, but used her beauty and intelligence to become the mistress of the Duke of York, the man responsible for England's army in the days of Napoleon. After she falls out of favor with the Duke, she achieves fame and notoriety by publishing books about the nefarious activities (in which she and the Duke participated) involved in getting military placements for certain men in exchange for money.
In plain terms, Mary Anne was a high-class prostitute. I've read about such a character in many novels and did not find much new to the genre here. As long as women are considered by men (and sometimes themselves) to be the second sex, there will be women who use their bodies and their intelligence to gain protection and wealth from men. Alas and sigh.
Du Maurier is a master craftswoman when it comes to fiction, so Mary Anne was a good read. Mary Anne herself underwent a share of suffering but her prime philosophy in life was that girls just want to have fun and mostly she did. To her credit, she fought like a mother lion for the rights and safety of her children.
Love is Eternal, Irving Stone
I have discovered that I missed this book, thinking I had already read it because I confused it with Immortal Wife, Stone's 1944 historical novel about John Fremont. So I will have to read it and report later. Love is Eternal is the story of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln and was the #3 bestseller in 1954.
The Royal Box, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Julian Messner Inc, 1954, 303 pp
Another book by this author who has become the Danielle Steele of the 40s and 50s in my mind. This one was the #4 bestseller in 1954. Fortunately, I only have one more of her books to get through in this reading project.
The Royal Box is written as a mystery, in the format of an Agatha Christie. It is even set in London for the murder with the back story and finale in New York and Texas. The characters include an actress, an American businessman, an impoverished upper class English woman and her daughter, as well as an American journalist. The royal box is an actual theatre box in London, originally built for the Kings and Queens of England, should they choose to attend the theatre.
The whole thing is fairly predictable. The murderer is found, the women in the story all have happy endings and while I remember who was murdered, I already forget whodunit.
The Egyptian, Mika Waltari, G P Putnam's Sons, 1949, 503 pp
The Egyptian was the #1 bestseller in 1949, the first year it was translated from Finnish and released in the US. In another of the examples of the synergy between publishing and movie making which began in the 1940s, this book made the bestseller list again, coming in at #5 in 1954, due to the release of the movie in this year and its nomination for an Oscar. According to Wikipedia, The Egyptian was the most sold foreign novel from 1949 until the mid 1980s when The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco gained that distinction.
The Egyptian is excellent historical fiction set in the time of Egypt's history when the Pharaoh Akhnaton attempted to change the country's central god from Ammon to Aton, whom he believed to be the one true god. This almost brought about the downfall of Egypt. The time is 1300 BC.
The protagonist is Sinuhe, an adopted orphan and a doctor. He is telling his life story which was bound up in the Pharaoh's and led to his exile from Egypt. He is a healer, a pacifist and feels unable to cope with the violence and dishonesty of his world. Waltari wrote the novel to express his disillusionment with the world after WW II, which I saw in the novel as I was reading it. The book is long, it took a while to read but was good and entertaining throughout.
Not As A Stranger, Morton Thompson, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954, 696 pp
The #1 bestseller of 1954 is a huge, dense but rich story of the making of a doctor. Lucas Marsh was born in the early 1900s to a father who dealt in leather goods for horses and carriages and a mother who studied phrenology and other esoteric spiritual texts. The marriage was highly strained financially and sexually, causing Lucas much anguish and confusion, but from the age of seven he had found his calling: medicine. Between his hours at school and home, he secretly followed the small town's three doctors on their rounds, trying to learn what he could.
Despite his parents' protests and a dire lack of funds, Lucas made it through college and medical school. In a moment of desperation, as he is about to be expelled from med school for lack of money, he marries a nurse. He doesn't love her, she is an awkward, unpopular young woman of Swedish descent, but she is also the very competent head nurse of the hospital to which the medical school is attached. She is devoted to Lucas and pays for all the rest of his schooling.
Lucas is something of a genius and his single-minded intensity and sense of mission makes him a highly unsociable and inflexible character. As he move into his first practice as assistant to an aging doctor in a small town, he runs into "real life" for the first time and must come to terms with dishonesty, malpractice, politics, society and women.
I found this a fascinating book. There is no sense of any Roaring Twenties though those are the years of the story. The financial crash of 1929 plays a part but what was most interesting was the detailed account of the state of medicine in that decade. Quite an unexpected read for 1954.
Mary Anne, Daphne Du Maurier, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1954, 351 pp
Another bestseller by Du Maurier hit #2 in 1954. It is historical fiction based on the life of the author's great great grandmother, who lived in England from 1776 to 1852. Mary Anne was born poor, made a disastrous marriage, but used her beauty and intelligence to become the mistress of the Duke of York, the man responsible for England's army in the days of Napoleon. After she falls out of favor with the Duke, she achieves fame and notoriety by publishing books about the nefarious activities (in which she and the Duke participated) involved in getting military placements for certain men in exchange for money.
In plain terms, Mary Anne was a high-class prostitute. I've read about such a character in many novels and did not find much new to the genre here. As long as women are considered by men (and sometimes themselves) to be the second sex, there will be women who use their bodies and their intelligence to gain protection and wealth from men. Alas and sigh.
Du Maurier is a master craftswoman when it comes to fiction, so Mary Anne was a good read. Mary Anne herself underwent a share of suffering but her prime philosophy in life was that girls just want to have fun and mostly she did. To her credit, she fought like a mother lion for the rights and safety of her children.
Love is Eternal, Irving Stone
I have discovered that I missed this book, thinking I had already read it because I confused it with Immortal Wife, Stone's 1944 historical novel about John Fremont. So I will have to read it and report later. Love is Eternal is the story of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln and was the #3 bestseller in 1954.
The Royal Box, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Julian Messner Inc, 1954, 303 pp
Another book by this author who has become the Danielle Steele of the 40s and 50s in my mind. This one was the #4 bestseller in 1954. Fortunately, I only have one more of her books to get through in this reading project.
The Royal Box is written as a mystery, in the format of an Agatha Christie. It is even set in London for the murder with the back story and finale in New York and Texas. The characters include an actress, an American businessman, an impoverished upper class English woman and her daughter, as well as an American journalist. The royal box is an actual theatre box in London, originally built for the Kings and Queens of England, should they choose to attend the theatre.
The whole thing is fairly predictable. The murderer is found, the women in the story all have happy endings and while I remember who was murdered, I already forget whodunit.
The Egyptian, Mika Waltari, G P Putnam's Sons, 1949, 503 pp
The Egyptian was the #1 bestseller in 1949, the first year it was translated from Finnish and released in the US. In another of the examples of the synergy between publishing and movie making which began in the 1940s, this book made the bestseller list again, coming in at #5 in 1954, due to the release of the movie in this year and its nomination for an Oscar. According to Wikipedia, The Egyptian was the most sold foreign novel from 1949 until the mid 1980s when The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco gained that distinction.
The Egyptian is excellent historical fiction set in the time of Egypt's history when the Pharaoh Akhnaton attempted to change the country's central god from Ammon to Aton, whom he believed to be the one true god. This almost brought about the downfall of Egypt. The time is 1300 BC.
The protagonist is Sinuhe, an adopted orphan and a doctor. He is telling his life story which was bound up in the Pharaoh's and led to his exile from Egypt. He is a healer, a pacifist and feels unable to cope with the violence and dishonesty of his world. Waltari wrote the novel to express his disillusionment with the world after WW II, which I saw in the novel as I was reading it. The book is long, it took a while to read but was good and entertaining throughout.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
MY BIG FAT READING PROJECT (AGAIN)
Below is an edited reprint of a post from July 2005. Its purpose is to explain the posts that will follow in the next several days and to describe my research method for the memoir I am writing.
My Big Fat Reading Project
I am a maker of lists. I like to organize the things I do into plans and
programs. So when I found myself reading more than ever a few years back, I
felt I needed a way to approach the vast body of fiction that I was
attempting to devour.
At first, I used what I call the Alphabet System. I stole this from Francie,
the main character in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. (One of my
all time favorite books, because it is the story of a girl in Brooklyn who
rises out of poverty through reading.) Her habit was to go to the public
library every day, take out a book and read it. She just started at the
letter A and went on. This was a pretty good method for me because I
discovered many authors I liked (such as Richard Adams, Edward Abbey and
Joan Aiken) as well as a few I didn't like (Kobo Abe and Alice Adams, to
name two.) I didn't know it at the time, but I was developing taste.
Then I started researching the whole American Literature scene and also
learning about current literary writers who had deeper things to say and
were thus not appearing on the bestseller lists. OK, I will admit, Oprah had
an effect on me. I also read a few biographies of writers and learned that
many of the best learned how to write by reading, not by going to college.
Finally, a few years ago, my sister sent me a book called Legacy, A
Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History by Linda Spence, 1997, Ohio
University Press. She thought I should write my story and the story of our
family, at least to hand down to our children and grandchildren. I had
another book I was using to get up to speed on modern fiction writers, The
Reading List, Contemporary Fiction by David Rubel, 1998, Henry Holt and
Company, and was working my way through the complete books of Toni Morrison,
Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood and others.
One day I was surfing the web on all things about books and came across a
curriculum posted by a professor at some Southern college. It involved
reading the top ten bestsellers from each year, decade by decade and writing
papers on how books and literature were both a sort of report on culture and
an influence on its direction.
Suddenly it all came together. MY BIG FAT READING PROJECT. I would read the
top bestsellers of each year of my life and relate these books to what went
on in those years and how I was influenced by it all as I moved thru my
life. So I printed out the bestseller lists which this professor had so
kindly put together and off I went. I was born in 1947, but I decided to
start my reading in 1940 to get a feel for the world I was born into. I also
added about 10 other literary books to each year.
I began this project in July 2002. I am now just about finished with the books for 1955. That means it has taken me over six years to read sixteen years worth of books. It is a looooong project which could last me the rest of my life.
That is fine because I have discovered something about being a
middle-aged woman. My kids are grown, my music career flopped, my marriage
is 38 years old (it is good and he is my grand passion but I am really used
to him) and I need a project that gets me excited everyday and will go on
for years; that has new and unknown factors to look forward to each day;
that is creative.
I have learned so much from this reading: more than I ever knew I didn't
know about World War II; how earnest and wholesome people were in the 1940s;
that family was the true glue that held society together; that Christianity
made for bestsellers back then; that the war and the Industrial Revolution
and Communism/Socialism were all beginning to erode all those values and to
create chaos. It is a fascinating study made through fiction.
I read other things as well, which I also write about in this blog. Sometimes
I just can't stand to read another book from over 50 years ago and go off my
plan to read the hot books of today. But I wanted to explain why I will be
writing about all these old books I am reading.
My Big Fat Reading Project
I am a maker of lists. I like to organize the things I do into plans and
programs. So when I found myself reading more than ever a few years back, I
felt I needed a way to approach the vast body of fiction that I was
attempting to devour.
At first, I used what I call the Alphabet System. I stole this from Francie,
the main character in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. (One of my
all time favorite books, because it is the story of a girl in Brooklyn who
rises out of poverty through reading.) Her habit was to go to the public
library every day, take out a book and read it. She just started at the
letter A and went on. This was a pretty good method for me because I
discovered many authors I liked (such as Richard Adams, Edward Abbey and
Joan Aiken) as well as a few I didn't like (Kobo Abe and Alice Adams, to
name two.) I didn't know it at the time, but I was developing taste.
Then I started researching the whole American Literature scene and also
learning about current literary writers who had deeper things to say and
were thus not appearing on the bestseller lists. OK, I will admit, Oprah had
an effect on me. I also read a few biographies of writers and learned that
many of the best learned how to write by reading, not by going to college.
Finally, a few years ago, my sister sent me a book called Legacy, A
Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History by Linda Spence, 1997, Ohio
University Press. She thought I should write my story and the story of our
family, at least to hand down to our children and grandchildren. I had
another book I was using to get up to speed on modern fiction writers, The
Reading List, Contemporary Fiction by David Rubel, 1998, Henry Holt and
Company, and was working my way through the complete books of Toni Morrison,
Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood and others.
One day I was surfing the web on all things about books and came across a
curriculum posted by a professor at some Southern college. It involved
reading the top ten bestsellers from each year, decade by decade and writing
papers on how books and literature were both a sort of report on culture and
an influence on its direction.
Suddenly it all came together. MY BIG FAT READING PROJECT. I would read the
top bestsellers of each year of my life and relate these books to what went
on in those years and how I was influenced by it all as I moved thru my
life. So I printed out the bestseller lists which this professor had so
kindly put together and off I went. I was born in 1947, but I decided to
start my reading in 1940 to get a feel for the world I was born into. I also
added about 10 other literary books to each year.
I began this project in July 2002. I am now just about finished with the books for 1955. That means it has taken me over six years to read sixteen years worth of books. It is a looooong project which could last me the rest of my life.
That is fine because I have discovered something about being a
middle-aged woman. My kids are grown, my music career flopped, my marriage
is 38 years old (it is good and he is my grand passion but I am really used
to him) and I need a project that gets me excited everyday and will go on
for years; that has new and unknown factors to look forward to each day;
that is creative.
I have learned so much from this reading: more than I ever knew I didn't
know about World War II; how earnest and wholesome people were in the 1940s;
that family was the true glue that held society together; that Christianity
made for bestsellers back then; that the war and the Industrial Revolution
and Communism/Socialism were all beginning to erode all those values and to
create chaos. It is a fascinating study made through fiction.
I read other things as well, which I also write about in this blog. Sometimes
I just can't stand to read another book from over 50 years ago and go off my
plan to read the hot books of today. But I wanted to explain why I will be
writing about all these old books I am reading.
Monday, November 10, 2008
THE SHADOW CATCHER
The Shadow Catcher, Marianne Wiggins, Simon & Schuster Inc, 2007, 318 pp
This is one of the best books I have read this year. Though this woman is my age, she writes with the energy of a woman in her 30s, but with the skill and beauty of long experience. Oddest fact of all: she was married to Salman Rushdie from 1988-1993.
The shadow catcher in the story is Edward S Curtis, a controversial photographer born in 1868, who became well known for his photos of Native Americans. In the novel, Marianne Wiggins is a woman who lives in Los Angeles and wrote a book about Edward Curtis. The novel moves back and forth in time, with sections about Curtis, his wife Clara and his career. The other sections are about Marianne and the mysterious way that the legacy of Curtis enters into her life in the present day.
The whole thing was just astonishing to me. Wiggins is tough, humorous, wise and brilliant as a writer. I knew from the first few pages that I was in the best of hands as a reader. Like any good storyteller, she includes a mystery within the history, the love stories and the scenery. If you live in LA and have traveled in the Western United States, as I have, it makes it all the more realistic.
I am not going to say more because one of the best things about this book is the discoveries you make as you read.
This is one of the best books I have read this year. Though this woman is my age, she writes with the energy of a woman in her 30s, but with the skill and beauty of long experience. Oddest fact of all: she was married to Salman Rushdie from 1988-1993.
The shadow catcher in the story is Edward S Curtis, a controversial photographer born in 1868, who became well known for his photos of Native Americans. In the novel, Marianne Wiggins is a woman who lives in Los Angeles and wrote a book about Edward Curtis. The novel moves back and forth in time, with sections about Curtis, his wife Clara and his career. The other sections are about Marianne and the mysterious way that the legacy of Curtis enters into her life in the present day.
The whole thing was just astonishing to me. Wiggins is tough, humorous, wise and brilliant as a writer. I knew from the first few pages that I was in the best of hands as a reader. Like any good storyteller, she includes a mystery within the history, the love stories and the scenery. If you live in LA and have traveled in the Western United States, as I have, it makes it all the more realistic.
I am not going to say more because one of the best things about this book is the discoveries you make as you read.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
READING FOR MY LIFE: 1953
LOOKING EAST
In 1953, my family moved to Princeton, NJ, the town where I would live until I went away to college. It was a good move for the whole family. My parents were able to put a fair amount of distance between them and my father’s parents and found intellectual stimulation in both the town and at their church. My sisters and I got to grow up in a college town, go to excellent public schools and live in a fairly hip town. Of course, none of us, except possibly my dad, knew about all this when we made the move.
This year was the beginning of the Eisenhower era, as our 34th President was inaugurated, after a landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson. The campaign at the end of 1952 was the first to utilize television as well as public relations and advertising firms, techniques with which we are now nauseatingly familiar. Though fighting in Korea had reached a lull, it took six months of negotiations to finally arrive at a truce with North Korea on July 27. The death of Stalin, the threats of Eisenhower to use atomic weapons against China and the weariness of war in both the US and China finally brought the war to an end. Aside from demonstrating a commitment by the US to fight the expansion of communism in the Asia, after years of fighting nothing much changed politically in Korea.
Meanwhile the Marshall Plan to revitalize and rearm Europe was making headway. England got a new queen crowned, Elizabeth II, but carried on with Churchill as Prime Minister. Both western and eastern European countries were still trying to recover from WWII and undergoing various political shifts, but it seems that in America people felt that war was behind them, prosperity ahead of them and life could now be orderly and secure. It may well be that the Eisenhower campaign did much to advance this viewpoint because in reality the Cold War was escalating with the USSR and the USA being the main opponents. As far as I can tell by studying a bit of the history of the time, it was extremely tense. In 1953 the USSR exploded their first hydrogen bomb, following ours of the year before and despite the rhetoric in the United Nations and elsewhere, any efforts to regulate the proliferation and use of atomic weapons came to nothing.
What I am trying to get at here is a certain mood of false happiness and security with an underlying theme of danger and fear that characterized the lives of children growing up in the 50s. Of course, at the age of five going on six, I couldn't say that I had any knowledge of all this. I do remember seeing pictures on the front page of the New York Times of soldiers coming home wounded from the Korean War and asking my father about it. Those pictures gave me a feeling of doom.
Pop culture as usual for the 50s kept it light. “The Greatest Show on Earth” won the Academy Award for Best Picture, featuring romance in the circus. Best Director went to John Ford for “The Quiet Man”, in which John Wayne plays a retired boxer gone back to his native Ireland to woo Maureen O’Hara. Gary Cooper won Best Actor for “High Noon”, a classic western. For a taste of the dark side, Shirley Booth took Best Actress in “Come Back Little Sheba”, a drama about a woman married to a recovering alcoholic.
“Doggie in the Window” was a big pop song and I knew all the words. The very romantic “Ebb Tide” was a hit for Vic Damone. In 1953 you could still have a hit song from a musical, so “Stranger in Paradise” from “Kismet” was recorded by Tony Bennet.
Literature in 1953 was a mixture of just about everything. Out of the top ten bestsellers, the top two were about Christianity, though The Robe, by Lloyd C Douglas was revived from 1942 by the release of a movie based on the book. The majority of bestsellers were historical fiction ranging from the 18th century to post Civil War. The High and the Mighty by Ernest K Gann was one of three with a contemporary setting: a commercial airplane flight from Hawaii to San Francisco which almost went down in the Pacific Ocean because there was no radar on commercial flights in those days. This was surely a first in fiction!
Among the other books were two about the Korean War: The Bridges at Toko-Ri, by James Michener and very patriotic contrasted by The Long March by William Styron, though in both a main issue was soldiers from World War II brought back into the military just as they were getting well settled in civilian life. Most of these books dealt with postwar life in America and had themes about the generation gap, small town versus city life, anti-communism and racism. I read several books on women, feminism and female roles in modern life, though two were by South African writers (Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer) and one (The Second Sex) by that feisty French woman, Simone de Beauvoir.
The overall theme of these books is gaps; between war and postwar, communism and democracy, men and women, patriotism and dissent, black and white, young and old, city and countryside. Once again, the issues that would become huge in the 60s were showing up as hairline cracks in the smooth façade of the Eisenhower years.
My family was creating our own gaps. By the beginning of 1953, my dad was working at the New York headquarters of US Steel, but the rest of us were still living in the suburban Pittsburgh house. Daddy would commute to New York for the week and come home on weekends. He was also finding us a place to live. It turned out that he had an old friend from high school who lived in Princeton, NJ. Visiting the home of Princeton University with its lovely residential neighborhoods, colonial history and big leafy trees, he felt it was the town for us. Many men commuted daily on the train to the city for work, a trip that took about an hour including the subway from Pennsylvania Station down to the financial district. He found the Lutheran Church and called the pastor who hooked him up with a realtor.
The house in Pittsburgh had not sold, but my mother was eight months pregnant and had to get settled. So in March, the house in Princeton was rented, the movers (paid for by US Steel) took our stuff away and we got on an airplane headed for Philadelphia. I have no memory of my first airplane ride, but my mom remembers that Philadelphia was fogged in, so we had to circle and she got worried. When we finally got to our new house, rain had leaked in the windows and it was way below my mom’s standards of cleanliness. Luckily she was at the nesting instinct portion of her pregnancy and had us unpacked and organized in time for the new baby’s arrival. Grandma Engle, my mom’s mother, said the baby would be born with big hands because of all the cleaning Mom did.
Patricia Lo Succop was born, with normal size hands, on April 28, 1953. Grandma Engle came for a week followed by Grandma Succop for another week. I loved this new little sister from the first moment I saw her and I always have from that day on. I loved our split level house which seemed cool and cozy to me. Linda and I slept on the third floor, probably a converted attic with a slanted ceiling and small windows right above our beds. The house was close to the quiet street with the neighboring houses right there on either side. A side door off the kitchen led to a small yard and around to a fine backyard.
What I remember is playing all summer with kids from the other houses on our street, riding my tricycle, racing in to the kitchen for snacks, sleeping and sweating in our hot attic room and feeling even more free from my family than ever before. The boy next door, whom my mother could not stand, lived with his grandmother and was often in trouble. He could catch flies and pull their wings off, he ran fast, talked tough and I was at once scared of him and entranced. Since we moved in March, I never went back to kindergarten and after my ears popped in the airplane, I had no more earaches. The doctor in Princeton said I could keep my tonsils, which I still have.
In August, I turned six so when fall came and it was time for me to go back to school, I was a much tougher girl than I had been the year before. I started first grade at Valley Road School and I had to take a school bus. The first day, I remember standing in a long hallway-like room with what seemed like a thousand other kids. I felt alone and afraid but I was determined to be brave. Somehow we all got sorted out and into the right classrooms. Mine was in the basement with metal grilled windows looking our right onto a concrete surface. I had my own desk; the kind with an attached chair, an inkwell hole and a lid that lifted.
School was exciting to me but also had its hardships. Miss Large, our teacher, was small and nervous with her first class since graduating from college. I was a bit afraid of her but I think she was terrified of us. It seemed to me that she was very strict and serious and yelled too much. Recess was on a big blacktop playground with swings, merry-go-round, jungle gym, rubber balls and mean pushy girls. Either they knew each other from kindergarten or were friends from the same neighborhood, but there was a group of girls led by Margery who somehow sensed that I was new and would chase me around, grab me and not let go and laugh in my face. If I tried to get on a swing they would push me off. Even then I didn’t like to tattle plus I heard the teachers tell other kids to work out their conflicts on their own. The teachers seemed to like to huddle by the doorway and talk to each other.
Finally, I was rescued by Toni Marshall (one of the few black kids in the class) who gave those mean girls a mouthful and became my protector. I also got my first boyfriend that fall. I do not remember his name but he gave me a ring that turned my finger green. My mom refused to let me wear it when she saw that, but I would take it to school in a pocket and put it on there. One day when I was in the lavatory, it slipped off my finger and went down the toilet. I was heart broken and too embarrassed to tell the boy what happened, except that I had lost it.
Meanwhile, my parents had found a house for sale just up the street and bought it when the old Pittsburgh house finally sold. I am told that we moved in November though I remember that not at all. My first airplane journey, two new houses, and a new school must have been just a bit too much change. Overall it was a time of happiness for me. My parents seemed more relaxed, our family was complete and we had the house we would live in until all of us sisters grew up. Daddy went off to work everyday, Mommy was basically in charge, on weekends they took care of the yard and on Sundays we went to church. Except that we had no pets, it was just like that Golden Book that I loved the best: The Happy Family.
In 1953, my family moved to Princeton, NJ, the town where I would live until I went away to college. It was a good move for the whole family. My parents were able to put a fair amount of distance between them and my father’s parents and found intellectual stimulation in both the town and at their church. My sisters and I got to grow up in a college town, go to excellent public schools and live in a fairly hip town. Of course, none of us, except possibly my dad, knew about all this when we made the move.
This year was the beginning of the Eisenhower era, as our 34th President was inaugurated, after a landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson. The campaign at the end of 1952 was the first to utilize television as well as public relations and advertising firms, techniques with which we are now nauseatingly familiar. Though fighting in Korea had reached a lull, it took six months of negotiations to finally arrive at a truce with North Korea on July 27. The death of Stalin, the threats of Eisenhower to use atomic weapons against China and the weariness of war in both the US and China finally brought the war to an end. Aside from demonstrating a commitment by the US to fight the expansion of communism in the Asia, after years of fighting nothing much changed politically in Korea.
Meanwhile the Marshall Plan to revitalize and rearm Europe was making headway. England got a new queen crowned, Elizabeth II, but carried on with Churchill as Prime Minister. Both western and eastern European countries were still trying to recover from WWII and undergoing various political shifts, but it seems that in America people felt that war was behind them, prosperity ahead of them and life could now be orderly and secure. It may well be that the Eisenhower campaign did much to advance this viewpoint because in reality the Cold War was escalating with the USSR and the USA being the main opponents. As far as I can tell by studying a bit of the history of the time, it was extremely tense. In 1953 the USSR exploded their first hydrogen bomb, following ours of the year before and despite the rhetoric in the United Nations and elsewhere, any efforts to regulate the proliferation and use of atomic weapons came to nothing.
What I am trying to get at here is a certain mood of false happiness and security with an underlying theme of danger and fear that characterized the lives of children growing up in the 50s. Of course, at the age of five going on six, I couldn't say that I had any knowledge of all this. I do remember seeing pictures on the front page of the New York Times of soldiers coming home wounded from the Korean War and asking my father about it. Those pictures gave me a feeling of doom.
Pop culture as usual for the 50s kept it light. “The Greatest Show on Earth” won the Academy Award for Best Picture, featuring romance in the circus. Best Director went to John Ford for “The Quiet Man”, in which John Wayne plays a retired boxer gone back to his native Ireland to woo Maureen O’Hara. Gary Cooper won Best Actor for “High Noon”, a classic western. For a taste of the dark side, Shirley Booth took Best Actress in “Come Back Little Sheba”, a drama about a woman married to a recovering alcoholic.
“Doggie in the Window” was a big pop song and I knew all the words. The very romantic “Ebb Tide” was a hit for Vic Damone. In 1953 you could still have a hit song from a musical, so “Stranger in Paradise” from “Kismet” was recorded by Tony Bennet.
Literature in 1953 was a mixture of just about everything. Out of the top ten bestsellers, the top two were about Christianity, though The Robe, by Lloyd C Douglas was revived from 1942 by the release of a movie based on the book. The majority of bestsellers were historical fiction ranging from the 18th century to post Civil War. The High and the Mighty by Ernest K Gann was one of three with a contemporary setting: a commercial airplane flight from Hawaii to San Francisco which almost went down in the Pacific Ocean because there was no radar on commercial flights in those days. This was surely a first in fiction!
Among the other books were two about the Korean War: The Bridges at Toko-Ri, by James Michener and very patriotic contrasted by The Long March by William Styron, though in both a main issue was soldiers from World War II brought back into the military just as they were getting well settled in civilian life. Most of these books dealt with postwar life in America and had themes about the generation gap, small town versus city life, anti-communism and racism. I read several books on women, feminism and female roles in modern life, though two were by South African writers (Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer) and one (The Second Sex) by that feisty French woman, Simone de Beauvoir.
The overall theme of these books is gaps; between war and postwar, communism and democracy, men and women, patriotism and dissent, black and white, young and old, city and countryside. Once again, the issues that would become huge in the 60s were showing up as hairline cracks in the smooth façade of the Eisenhower years.
My family was creating our own gaps. By the beginning of 1953, my dad was working at the New York headquarters of US Steel, but the rest of us were still living in the suburban Pittsburgh house. Daddy would commute to New York for the week and come home on weekends. He was also finding us a place to live. It turned out that he had an old friend from high school who lived in Princeton, NJ. Visiting the home of Princeton University with its lovely residential neighborhoods, colonial history and big leafy trees, he felt it was the town for us. Many men commuted daily on the train to the city for work, a trip that took about an hour including the subway from Pennsylvania Station down to the financial district. He found the Lutheran Church and called the pastor who hooked him up with a realtor.
The house in Pittsburgh had not sold, but my mother was eight months pregnant and had to get settled. So in March, the house in Princeton was rented, the movers (paid for by US Steel) took our stuff away and we got on an airplane headed for Philadelphia. I have no memory of my first airplane ride, but my mom remembers that Philadelphia was fogged in, so we had to circle and she got worried. When we finally got to our new house, rain had leaked in the windows and it was way below my mom’s standards of cleanliness. Luckily she was at the nesting instinct portion of her pregnancy and had us unpacked and organized in time for the new baby’s arrival. Grandma Engle, my mom’s mother, said the baby would be born with big hands because of all the cleaning Mom did.
Patricia Lo Succop was born, with normal size hands, on April 28, 1953. Grandma Engle came for a week followed by Grandma Succop for another week. I loved this new little sister from the first moment I saw her and I always have from that day on. I loved our split level house which seemed cool and cozy to me. Linda and I slept on the third floor, probably a converted attic with a slanted ceiling and small windows right above our beds. The house was close to the quiet street with the neighboring houses right there on either side. A side door off the kitchen led to a small yard and around to a fine backyard.
What I remember is playing all summer with kids from the other houses on our street, riding my tricycle, racing in to the kitchen for snacks, sleeping and sweating in our hot attic room and feeling even more free from my family than ever before. The boy next door, whom my mother could not stand, lived with his grandmother and was often in trouble. He could catch flies and pull their wings off, he ran fast, talked tough and I was at once scared of him and entranced. Since we moved in March, I never went back to kindergarten and after my ears popped in the airplane, I had no more earaches. The doctor in Princeton said I could keep my tonsils, which I still have.
In August, I turned six so when fall came and it was time for me to go back to school, I was a much tougher girl than I had been the year before. I started first grade at Valley Road School and I had to take a school bus. The first day, I remember standing in a long hallway-like room with what seemed like a thousand other kids. I felt alone and afraid but I was determined to be brave. Somehow we all got sorted out and into the right classrooms. Mine was in the basement with metal grilled windows looking our right onto a concrete surface. I had my own desk; the kind with an attached chair, an inkwell hole and a lid that lifted.
School was exciting to me but also had its hardships. Miss Large, our teacher, was small and nervous with her first class since graduating from college. I was a bit afraid of her but I think she was terrified of us. It seemed to me that she was very strict and serious and yelled too much. Recess was on a big blacktop playground with swings, merry-go-round, jungle gym, rubber balls and mean pushy girls. Either they knew each other from kindergarten or were friends from the same neighborhood, but there was a group of girls led by Margery who somehow sensed that I was new and would chase me around, grab me and not let go and laugh in my face. If I tried to get on a swing they would push me off. Even then I didn’t like to tattle plus I heard the teachers tell other kids to work out their conflicts on their own. The teachers seemed to like to huddle by the doorway and talk to each other.
Finally, I was rescued by Toni Marshall (one of the few black kids in the class) who gave those mean girls a mouthful and became my protector. I also got my first boyfriend that fall. I do not remember his name but he gave me a ring that turned my finger green. My mom refused to let me wear it when she saw that, but I would take it to school in a pocket and put it on there. One day when I was in the lavatory, it slipped off my finger and went down the toilet. I was heart broken and too embarrassed to tell the boy what happened, except that I had lost it.
Meanwhile, my parents had found a house for sale just up the street and bought it when the old Pittsburgh house finally sold. I am told that we moved in November though I remember that not at all. My first airplane journey, two new houses, and a new school must have been just a bit too much change. Overall it was a time of happiness for me. My parents seemed more relaxed, our family was complete and we had the house we would live in until all of us sisters grew up. Daddy went off to work everyday, Mommy was basically in charge, on weekends they took care of the yard and on Sundays we went to church. Except that we had no pets, it was just like that Golden Book that I loved the best: The Happy Family.
HOW TO READ MY MEMOIR
Directly following this post is the latest chapter of my memoir, Reading For My Life. If you are new to my blog and would like to read the earlier chapters, go to the end of the current chapter and click on the "reading for my life" label at the bottom. This will take you to all of the chapters in reverse chronological order. Scroll down to the end of all that and you will find the first chapter, then read forward.
To find the reviews of the books I read for the current chapter, which covers 1953, use the archives on the left to find posts from May 24, 2008 through June 10, 2008.
The overall method for the memoir so far is that I read the Top Ten Bestsellers and a selection of other books from the year I am writing about. Then I relate the literature, history, movies, music and other cultural topics to what was happening to me and my family in that year. This is a work in progress and because of all the reading I am doing, I predict that it will take me at least a decade to complete. At that point or perhaps sooner, I may change the way I am putting this altogether. In fact, that is surely what I will do. These chapters are a way for me to keep track of my research and memories as I move through the project. For now I am posting the chapters on the blog since I have family and friends who are interested readers.
Comments are always welcome.!
To find the reviews of the books I read for the current chapter, which covers 1953, use the archives on the left to find posts from May 24, 2008 through June 10, 2008.
The overall method for the memoir so far is that I read the Top Ten Bestsellers and a selection of other books from the year I am writing about. Then I relate the literature, history, movies, music and other cultural topics to what was happening to me and my family in that year. This is a work in progress and because of all the reading I am doing, I predict that it will take me at least a decade to complete. At that point or perhaps sooner, I may change the way I am putting this altogether. In fact, that is surely what I will do. These chapters are a way for me to keep track of my research and memories as I move through the project. For now I am posting the chapters on the blog since I have family and friends who are interested readers.
Comments are always welcome.!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
THE HISTORIAN
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova, Little Brown and Company, 2005, 642 pp
I bought this book when it first came out but did not get around to reading it. Knowing that my husband liked Dracula stories, I gave it to him but he couldn't get into it, even though he read and liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke. Finally it got picked by one of my reading groups and I read it. I loved it!
Admittedly I found it hard to get going. In fact, I started over three times, because there are three over lapping stories and frankly, at first that is confusing. I also looked up all the words I didn't know and seriously used the map in the front of the book as well as an atlas. By then I was hooked on knowledge and began looking up important buildings and monuments on Wikipedia, which has fabulous photos for many of them.
I have always liked history and yearned to know it all, but most nonfiction history texts are to me, boring and dry in the extreme. I like learning history from historical novels (and really, if you read enough of them, you don't have to worry about inaccuracies too much.) Kostova made me work so hard that I felt virtuous learning history from her novel but truly she made me be a historian. That she interwove three deeply moving love stories as well as travelogue blended with mystery and danger, made reading all those pages pure pleasure for me.
I found it amusing that most of today's vampire novels, including the Twilight series, are vampire-light compared to the horror and evil of Kostova's Vlad Dracula. This guy is no Disney character and she leaves you wondering if his minions are possibly still with us in the world.
I bought this book when it first came out but did not get around to reading it. Knowing that my husband liked Dracula stories, I gave it to him but he couldn't get into it, even though he read and liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke. Finally it got picked by one of my reading groups and I read it. I loved it!
Admittedly I found it hard to get going. In fact, I started over three times, because there are three over lapping stories and frankly, at first that is confusing. I also looked up all the words I didn't know and seriously used the map in the front of the book as well as an atlas. By then I was hooked on knowledge and began looking up important buildings and monuments on Wikipedia, which has fabulous photos for many of them.
I have always liked history and yearned to know it all, but most nonfiction history texts are to me, boring and dry in the extreme. I like learning history from historical novels (and really, if you read enough of them, you don't have to worry about inaccuracies too much.) Kostova made me work so hard that I felt virtuous learning history from her novel but truly she made me be a historian. That she interwove three deeply moving love stories as well as travelogue blended with mystery and danger, made reading all those pages pure pleasure for me.
I found it amusing that most of today's vampire novels, including the Twilight series, are vampire-light compared to the horror and evil of Kostova's Vlad Dracula. This guy is no Disney character and she leaves you wondering if his minions are possibly still with us in the world.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
THREE CUPS OF TEA
Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin, Viking Penguin, 2006, 331 pp
I had to read this book for a reading group. I was not looking forward to it despite all the raves I had heard from customers and perhaps because of its bestseller status. Turns out it was great!
Greg Mortenson was a mountain climber who became a promoter of peace by deciding to build a school for a poor village in Pakistan. That decision, made after the villagers saved his life, turned into a lifelong commitment involving an unbelievable amount of work, energy, danger and frustration.
Because Mortenson is a man of action, the book is a combination of extreme adventure and social/historical commentary. Extreme adventure makes up the much bigger percentage and is the impetus for Mortenson and the reader.
I am glad I read it when I did because this summer of political conventions was not making me feel hopeful about my country or my world. Three Cups of Tea reminded me that politics and government have rarely brought about good for the world. It is the actions of people of goodwill that have created better conditions for their fellowman.
I had to read this book for a reading group. I was not looking forward to it despite all the raves I had heard from customers and perhaps because of its bestseller status. Turns out it was great!
Greg Mortenson was a mountain climber who became a promoter of peace by deciding to build a school for a poor village in Pakistan. That decision, made after the villagers saved his life, turned into a lifelong commitment involving an unbelievable amount of work, energy, danger and frustration.
Because Mortenson is a man of action, the book is a combination of extreme adventure and social/historical commentary. Extreme adventure makes up the much bigger percentage and is the impetus for Mortenson and the reader.
I am glad I read it when I did because this summer of political conventions was not making me feel hopeful about my country or my world. Three Cups of Tea reminded me that politics and government have rarely brought about good for the world. It is the actions of people of goodwill that have created better conditions for their fellowman.
Monday, October 20, 2008
AN OPEN BOOK
An Open Book, Michael Dirda, W W Norton & Company Inc, 2003, 322 pp
I read an inordinate amount of book reviews, partly because books are my passion and partly because I have come to be known as the "fiction expert" at the bookstore where I work and try to keep up on what's new and good. I have my likes and dislikes when it comes to reviews so I was pleased to discover a reviewer whom I could respect and even emulate.
Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic who writes for The Washington Post, one of the few remaining American newspapers that has a dedicated book review section. The Washington Post also employs another of my favorite authors and reviewers, Carolyn See. In an effort to improve my own reviewing skills and develop my own voice as a reviewer, I decided to study the experts.
An Open Book is Dirda's memoir of the reading life and the story of how he became a critic. I came away from this book with an image of a complete book nerd. I love book nerds. I am one. Dirda grew up in Lorain, Ohio (also the home of Toni Morrison), son of second generation immigrants: a Russian father and Slovakian mother. They were poor but literate and Michael was read to by his mother from a small collection of Golden Books, as was I.
He became the reader of the family, read indiscriminately from an early age, loved the little local library located in an old house and suffered from being accused of having his nose in a book all through his childhood. This is like a male version of me (he was born just a year after I was), except that his family was blue collar and mine was white collar middle class. I went to college all expenses paid by my parents and dropped out by junior year. Michael went on scholarship, worked hard and actually got an education.
Though there were some dull parts which dragged for me, though Mr Dirda has a careful, controlled style of writing, I was quite taken by his story. It has a bit of Elmer Gantry, a touch of Charles Dickens and a lot of the passion of someone who followed what he loved and figured out how to make it his life's work. He has also published two collections of his criticism, another volume about reading and of course, you can read his weekly reviews at washingtonpost.com.
I read an inordinate amount of book reviews, partly because books are my passion and partly because I have come to be known as the "fiction expert" at the bookstore where I work and try to keep up on what's new and good. I have my likes and dislikes when it comes to reviews so I was pleased to discover a reviewer whom I could respect and even emulate.
Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic who writes for The Washington Post, one of the few remaining American newspapers that has a dedicated book review section. The Washington Post also employs another of my favorite authors and reviewers, Carolyn See. In an effort to improve my own reviewing skills and develop my own voice as a reviewer, I decided to study the experts.
An Open Book is Dirda's memoir of the reading life and the story of how he became a critic. I came away from this book with an image of a complete book nerd. I love book nerds. I am one. Dirda grew up in Lorain, Ohio (also the home of Toni Morrison), son of second generation immigrants: a Russian father and Slovakian mother. They were poor but literate and Michael was read to by his mother from a small collection of Golden Books, as was I.
He became the reader of the family, read indiscriminately from an early age, loved the little local library located in an old house and suffered from being accused of having his nose in a book all through his childhood. This is like a male version of me (he was born just a year after I was), except that his family was blue collar and mine was white collar middle class. I went to college all expenses paid by my parents and dropped out by junior year. Michael went on scholarship, worked hard and actually got an education.
Though there were some dull parts which dragged for me, though Mr Dirda has a careful, controlled style of writing, I was quite taken by his story. It has a bit of Elmer Gantry, a touch of Charles Dickens and a lot of the passion of someone who followed what he loved and figured out how to make it his life's work. He has also published two collections of his criticism, another volume about reading and of course, you can read his weekly reviews at washingtonpost.com.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
SAVAGE GARDEN
Savage Garden, Mark Mills, G P Putnam's Sons, 2007, 335 pp
I will just say right up front that I did not enjoy this book. It got stellar reviews in all the right places and sounded great: "a darkly provocative mystery set in the Tuscany hills: the story of two murders four hundred years apart-and the ties that bind them together." (from the back cover of the paperback.) Unfortunately, though Mr Mills can put a sentence together, he is not a good writer.
The hero, Adam, is a young Cambridge scholar though really he is a slacker. He is assigned by his advisor to travel to Tuscany and write a scholarly article about a famous garden at Villa Docci. There he finds statues, grottoes, meandering streams, mythology, a fascinating older woman descended from an ancient Italian family and an even more fascinating young woman for whom he lusts. Sound good, no?
No. Boring actually. How could someone make such a thrilling collection of ingredients boring? It's a wonder.
I will just say right up front that I did not enjoy this book. It got stellar reviews in all the right places and sounded great: "a darkly provocative mystery set in the Tuscany hills: the story of two murders four hundred years apart-and the ties that bind them together." (from the back cover of the paperback.) Unfortunately, though Mr Mills can put a sentence together, he is not a good writer.
The hero, Adam, is a young Cambridge scholar though really he is a slacker. He is assigned by his advisor to travel to Tuscany and write a scholarly article about a famous garden at Villa Docci. There he finds statues, grottoes, meandering streams, mythology, a fascinating older woman descended from an ancient Italian family and an even more fascinating young woman for whom he lusts. Sound good, no?
No. Boring actually. How could someone make such a thrilling collection of ingredients boring? It's a wonder.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
WHAT I AM READING
My oh my. It has been two weeks since I have posted. Bad blogger.
But I have been reading, of course. And I have been writing! I mean real writing, not just my journal and my micro reviews. Because of the book on writing which I mentioned last time, I finally got going again on my novel, reworking the first chapter. I also helped a friend from one of my reading groups get her writing group going again by hosting it at my house. We had our first meeting last night and it was super great. Four out of five people read things and they were all good. I polished up the first half of a short story I had started long ago and now I am inspired (by their kind and helpful comments) to finish it and maybe even submit it somewhere.
Meanwhile I scaled the mountain of huge books and actually finished Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor. It was a bestseller in 1955 about a POW camp in Georgia during the Civil War. Gruesome, long but quite good. Then I read The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, which I had been wanting to read since it was published. After Andersonville at 760 pages, it was almost 100 pages shorter at 642, but dense, full of history and situated in eastern Europe, where my geography is sketchy at best. I learned lots but also loved the story. It is about the legend of Dracula and these are not your Stephenie Meyer vampires. Oh no.
I also read two other books from 1955 by Robert Heinlein and Norman Mailer and I am almost through one by Robert Penn Warren. Veering back and forth in a span of 50 years does make my head spin at times. Then there is the fact that I have been alive through all those years and more.
I still have not finished The Second Sex. Hopefully this week. Another goal this week is to finish the long overdue next chapter of my memoir. Why oh why do I have to go to work, cook, do laundry, etc, etc, etc?
As always, I would love to hear what you are reading. Has anyone read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle yet? Even more exciting to me is the new Toni Morrison which comes out in a few weeks I believe.
But I have been reading, of course. And I have been writing! I mean real writing, not just my journal and my micro reviews. Because of the book on writing which I mentioned last time, I finally got going again on my novel, reworking the first chapter. I also helped a friend from one of my reading groups get her writing group going again by hosting it at my house. We had our first meeting last night and it was super great. Four out of five people read things and they were all good. I polished up the first half of a short story I had started long ago and now I am inspired (by their kind and helpful comments) to finish it and maybe even submit it somewhere.
Meanwhile I scaled the mountain of huge books and actually finished Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor. It was a bestseller in 1955 about a POW camp in Georgia during the Civil War. Gruesome, long but quite good. Then I read The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, which I had been wanting to read since it was published. After Andersonville at 760 pages, it was almost 100 pages shorter at 642, but dense, full of history and situated in eastern Europe, where my geography is sketchy at best. I learned lots but also loved the story. It is about the legend of Dracula and these are not your Stephenie Meyer vampires. Oh no.
I also read two other books from 1955 by Robert Heinlein and Norman Mailer and I am almost through one by Robert Penn Warren. Veering back and forth in a span of 50 years does make my head spin at times. Then there is the fact that I have been alive through all those years and more.
I still have not finished The Second Sex. Hopefully this week. Another goal this week is to finish the long overdue next chapter of my memoir. Why oh why do I have to go to work, cook, do laundry, etc, etc, etc?
As always, I would love to hear what you are reading. Has anyone read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle yet? Even more exciting to me is the new Toni Morrison which comes out in a few weeks I believe.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
FALLING MAN
Falling Man, Don DeLillo, Scribner, 2007, 246 pp
For a long time, I could not bring myself to read any novel concerning 9/11. Even though I realize that it's what writers do (write about what goes on in the world) I felt a squeamish repugnance to the idea of turning that event into fiction. I broke through this objection when I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book I truly admired.
I've never read Don DeLillo before and to his credit, he waited a full six years before publishing his 9/11 novel. According to what I gather about his earlier novels, he is a writer who was destined to write such a book. But you know what? I thought I was basically over the whole disturbing gory thing and that I had "moved on" to bemoaning our government's inept response. Well, I wasn't over it.
Falling Man put me right back there, watching those images over and over on TV and feeling the shock and awe which the terrorists clearly wanted Americans to feel. A man walks out of the first tower, covered in ash, wounded and disoriented. He keeps walking until he reaches the apartment of his wife and son, from whom he had separated some time earlier.
For the rest of the story this man, who of course was not in good shape beforehand, tries to find his way in his life. So does his wife, his son, his mother-in-law and various friends of his. None of them really do. The reactions of these people rang true to me. I realized that because I was not there in New York and in fact knew no one personally who suffered or died, I was detached. Possibly a huge percentage of Americans were also detached. As horrific as the TV news and images were, we are so inured to violence, destruction and war as delivered to us by the media, that it all seemed a bit unreal.
DeLillo has made it very real through these individual characters and their extremely personal feeling and thoughts and actions. Ultimately for these characters, a huge disconnection with their fellow man resulted. Some try to connect again, some give up and simply become more weird than they already were.
When I finished I was glad to be out of the story. It doesn't actually have a climax; it just ends. But now the story was in me and I was so thankful that I had a reading group to go to, to discuss, to get it out of my system, to process some of my emotion, to connect.
For a long time, I could not bring myself to read any novel concerning 9/11. Even though I realize that it's what writers do (write about what goes on in the world) I felt a squeamish repugnance to the idea of turning that event into fiction. I broke through this objection when I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book I truly admired.
I've never read Don DeLillo before and to his credit, he waited a full six years before publishing his 9/11 novel. According to what I gather about his earlier novels, he is a writer who was destined to write such a book. But you know what? I thought I was basically over the whole disturbing gory thing and that I had "moved on" to bemoaning our government's inept response. Well, I wasn't over it.
Falling Man put me right back there, watching those images over and over on TV and feeling the shock and awe which the terrorists clearly wanted Americans to feel. A man walks out of the first tower, covered in ash, wounded and disoriented. He keeps walking until he reaches the apartment of his wife and son, from whom he had separated some time earlier.
For the rest of the story this man, who of course was not in good shape beforehand, tries to find his way in his life. So does his wife, his son, his mother-in-law and various friends of his. None of them really do. The reactions of these people rang true to me. I realized that because I was not there in New York and in fact knew no one personally who suffered or died, I was detached. Possibly a huge percentage of Americans were also detached. As horrific as the TV news and images were, we are so inured to violence, destruction and war as delivered to us by the media, that it all seemed a bit unreal.
DeLillo has made it very real through these individual characters and their extremely personal feeling and thoughts and actions. Ultimately for these characters, a huge disconnection with their fellow man resulted. Some try to connect again, some give up and simply become more weird than they already were.
When I finished I was glad to be out of the story. It doesn't actually have a climax; it just ends. But now the story was in me and I was so thankful that I had a reading group to go to, to discuss, to get it out of my system, to process some of my emotion, to connect.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
WORD OF THE DAY
Today's word is quiddity again read in the New York Times Book Review.
It has two definitions and the second definition fits the context in which I read it.
quiddity noun 1 the essential quality of a thing
2 a trifling distinction, quibble
from Middle Latin quidditas from Latin quid what, neuter of quis who
My sentence: Your quiddity about the sauce not being truly French cuisine didn't seem to hamper your enjoyment of it.
If you wish to contribute a sentence just click the comments button at the end of this post.
It has two definitions and the second definition fits the context in which I read it.
quiddity noun 1 the essential quality of a thing
2 a trifling distinction, quibble
from Middle Latin quidditas from Latin quid what, neuter of quis who
My sentence: Your quiddity about the sauce not being truly French cuisine didn't seem to hamper your enjoyment of it.
If you wish to contribute a sentence just click the comments button at the end of this post.
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson, Alfred A Knopf, 2008, 465 pp
This financial thriller, set in Sweden, has already been a bestseller in Europe. The author spent his life fighting racial and religious intolerance, exposing neofascism in Europe. He completed a trilogy of thrillers and then died in 2004. This is the first of the three novels and is written in a refreshing new style and voice while resting firmly in the Ludlum, Grisham, Baldacci thriller tradition.
The closest I've ever been to Sweden was a horrific 5 hour layover in Amsterdam airport on the way home from Paris last year, so I was initially challenged by unfamiliar names of streets, cities, persons, magazines, newspapers and other elements of modern Swedish life. But the story is exciting and smart and ultra modern, comprising a closed-room murder mystery, a dastardly financial villain, psychopathic descendants of Nazis and the girl in the title. She is in fact an extra mystery all in herself and as good as any heroine in a Neal Stephenson novel.
I could tell that it was a first novel, though that could be partly due to the translation, but except for a few clunky sections, Larsson dept me turning the pages. There is a decidedly European take on love and sex, again refreshing compared to the American psychosis of puritanism vs porn. I suspect a bit of hype in the title because I was let down by the ending as concerns the dragon tattooed girl, but presumably there will be more about her in the sequels.
This financial thriller, set in Sweden, has already been a bestseller in Europe. The author spent his life fighting racial and religious intolerance, exposing neofascism in Europe. He completed a trilogy of thrillers and then died in 2004. This is the first of the three novels and is written in a refreshing new style and voice while resting firmly in the Ludlum, Grisham, Baldacci thriller tradition.
The closest I've ever been to Sweden was a horrific 5 hour layover in Amsterdam airport on the way home from Paris last year, so I was initially challenged by unfamiliar names of streets, cities, persons, magazines, newspapers and other elements of modern Swedish life. But the story is exciting and smart and ultra modern, comprising a closed-room murder mystery, a dastardly financial villain, psychopathic descendants of Nazis and the girl in the title. She is in fact an extra mystery all in herself and as good as any heroine in a Neal Stephenson novel.
I could tell that it was a first novel, though that could be partly due to the translation, but except for a few clunky sections, Larsson dept me turning the pages. There is a decidedly European take on love and sex, again refreshing compared to the American psychosis of puritanism vs porn. I suspect a bit of hype in the title because I was let down by the ending as concerns the dragon tattooed girl, but presumably there will be more about her in the sequels.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
THE GOD OF ANIMALS
The God of Animals, Aryn Kyle, Scribner, 2007, 305 pp
This book was recommended to me by a co-worker at the bookstore, who is herself a budding writer. I loved it and will be putting it on my top favorites list for the year. It is a first novel and only strengthened my opinion that we are in a Golden Age of new novelists.
Alice Winston is 12 years old and lives a young life of quiet desperation on a run-down horse ranch in a small Colorado desert town. Her older sister, Alice's idol and and an excellent prize winning horse woman, has run off with a rodeo cowboy. The mother of the family has been bedridden with a case of postpartum depression, having rarely left her room since the day Alice was born.
As she tries to be the good daughter and right hand man to her overworked, demanding yet reticent father, Alice is looking, listening, actually lurking in life, trying to understand what the hell is going on. The author masterfully creates the environment of horse ranch and desert small town life juxtaposed with the new rich on the other irrigated side of town, who board their horses at the ranch and send their daughters for riding lessons.
I grew to love Alice and to feel her search for love and understanding like it was my own. Her tragedies, her moments of triumph and breakthroughs in figuring our what happened in her family are all revealed in a haunting prose, as spare as the desert, that is some of the most effortless reading I have done.
This book was recommended to me by a co-worker at the bookstore, who is herself a budding writer. I loved it and will be putting it on my top favorites list for the year. It is a first novel and only strengthened my opinion that we are in a Golden Age of new novelists.
Alice Winston is 12 years old and lives a young life of quiet desperation on a run-down horse ranch in a small Colorado desert town. Her older sister, Alice's idol and and an excellent prize winning horse woman, has run off with a rodeo cowboy. The mother of the family has been bedridden with a case of postpartum depression, having rarely left her room since the day Alice was born.
As she tries to be the good daughter and right hand man to her overworked, demanding yet reticent father, Alice is looking, listening, actually lurking in life, trying to understand what the hell is going on. The author masterfully creates the environment of horse ranch and desert small town life juxtaposed with the new rich on the other irrigated side of town, who board their horses at the ranch and send their daughters for riding lessons.
I grew to love Alice and to feel her search for love and understanding like it was my own. Her tragedies, her moments of triumph and breakthroughs in figuring our what happened in her family are all revealed in a haunting prose, as spare as the desert, that is some of the most effortless reading I have done.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
WORD OF THE DAY
Today's word is eremite, read in the New York Times Book Review. It means a religious recluse; a hermit. It comes from Middle English from Old French ermite, hermite.
My sentence: After years of prayer and meditation in a remote monastery, the eremite returned to a world changed beyond recognition.
Sentence anyone?
My sentence: After years of prayer and meditation in a remote monastery, the eremite returned to a world changed beyond recognition.
Sentence anyone?
BECOMING ABIGAIL
Becoming Abigail, Chris Abani, Akashic Books, 2006, 121 pp
In this novella, Abani's follow-up to Graceland, a young African woman is brought to London by her uncle and put into the sex trade. It is a harrowing story of loss and abuse set amid the ancient sites of modern day London. Through the eyes of Abigail, you see both the clash of culture as well as the universal theme of men using women.
It is beautifully written but highly disturbing. Even when Abigail finds love, it cannot save her. I am not sure I really liked it. One of the darkest stories I have ever read.
In this novella, Abani's follow-up to Graceland, a young African woman is brought to London by her uncle and put into the sex trade. It is a harrowing story of loss and abuse set amid the ancient sites of modern day London. Through the eyes of Abigail, you see both the clash of culture as well as the universal theme of men using women.
It is beautifully written but highly disturbing. Even when Abigail finds love, it cannot save her. I am not sure I really liked it. One of the darkest stories I have ever read.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
HOPE'S BOY
Hope's Boy, Andrew Bridge, Hyperion, 2008, 303 pp
Andrew Bridge was taken from his mother by Social Services in Los Angeles when he was seven years old and raised in foster care until he was 18. This is his memoir. He went on to become a lawyer all on his own efforts without help from anyone and is now an advocate for children in foster care.
As usual I tore through this book in 12 hours with only a break for making and eating dinner. I still don't understand my fascination for the orphan/abandoned child story. I've had it since I was five years old.
The writing is not great but it does the job. Bridge indulges in virtually no self pity. He emphasizes how he never stopped loving or missing his mother, who ended up in a mental health facility. He seems to be in favor of families staying together unless it is utterly impossible to help the family. I am starting to agree with this position and perhaps that is the direction my novel should take.
Andrew Bridge was taken from his mother by Social Services in Los Angeles when he was seven years old and raised in foster care until he was 18. This is his memoir. He went on to become a lawyer all on his own efforts without help from anyone and is now an advocate for children in foster care.
As usual I tore through this book in 12 hours with only a break for making and eating dinner. I still don't understand my fascination for the orphan/abandoned child story. I've had it since I was five years old.
The writing is not great but it does the job. Bridge indulges in virtually no self pity. He emphasizes how he never stopped loving or missing his mother, who ended up in a mental health facility. He seems to be in favor of families staying together unless it is utterly impossible to help the family. I am starting to agree with this position and perhaps that is the direction my novel should take.
Monday, September 08, 2008
WHAT I AM READING
I had a rough week in reading. I was doing OK on my 50 pages a day of The Second Sex but by Tuesday I just could not bring myself to read it. It is highly interesting though the writing style is a bit scholarly, but also highly disturbing. I found myself getting upset, angry, sad and just generally feeling sort of crazy, as I read about the history of woman in society, the patriarchal views and the myths of man toward woman. The worst part was noticing the ways I have fallen under the influence of it all. But then, that is part of my quest in writing the memoir; to discover my own journey to full self hood as a female.
Last Monday, I had an attack of book lust and went to a bookstore (not the one where I work). I bought a book about writing, a book on how to write biography and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman, who is married to Michael Chabon. I read a good deal of the book on writing and got inspired to work on my novel again, except then I did not write a word.
I also read a memoir about growing up and reading called An Open Book by Michael Dirda, one of my favorite book reviewers. Through the second half of the week I felt somewhat ill, due to either the heat or allergies or that ****ing sex book, who knows. Finally on Saturday, I cracked open The Second Sex and got going on it again. It is still disturbing but I can tell that I will get through it and be better for it.
I also read Three Cups of Tea in full this weekend and though I was prepared to be somewhat bored, I was fascinated. It is a great story, full of hope, and I learned much about Pakistan, Afghanistan, terrorists, Muslims, just the whole scene that we have been living in for seven years. How appropriate with September 11, 2008 coming up this week.
What have you been reading? I really want to know!
Last Monday, I had an attack of book lust and went to a bookstore (not the one where I work). I bought a book about writing, a book on how to write biography and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman, who is married to Michael Chabon. I read a good deal of the book on writing and got inspired to work on my novel again, except then I did not write a word.
I also read a memoir about growing up and reading called An Open Book by Michael Dirda, one of my favorite book reviewers. Through the second half of the week I felt somewhat ill, due to either the heat or allergies or that ****ing sex book, who knows. Finally on Saturday, I cracked open The Second Sex and got going on it again. It is still disturbing but I can tell that I will get through it and be better for it.
I also read Three Cups of Tea in full this weekend and though I was prepared to be somewhat bored, I was fascinated. It is a great story, full of hope, and I learned much about Pakistan, Afghanistan, terrorists, Muslims, just the whole scene that we have been living in for seven years. How appropriate with September 11, 2008 coming up this week.
What have you been reading? I really want to know!
MRS DALLOWAY
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, Harcourt Inc, 1925, 190 pp
Mrs Dalloway is not a person I would care to know or hang out with, so despite my readiness to be impressed by Virginia Woolf's fiction, I found this book a long and sleepy go. The story covers one day in the life of Mrs Dalloway. She is giving a party in the evening in her home in London, a society affair, so we follow her through the day as she gets ready and through the party itself. A few other characters are also living through that day in London, though not all interact with Clarissa Dalloway.
One of these characters is Peter Walsh, a former flame whom Clarissa almost married 30 years earlier. You get back stories on all these characters which makes the one day a device for telling several stories at once and for taking up topics such as love, marriage, careers, society, politics and the Great War.
I was reminded most of Jane Austen in the style of writing and the subject matter, though the story is in the 20th century. According to the introduction to the edition I read (Harcourt Annotated, 2005), Woolf was part of a whole group of writers including T S Eliot, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce, who were each attempting to modernize poetry and the novel. Due to Sigmund Freud also publishing at that time, psychology was a big subject, though Woolf, who had mental issues herself, did not care for or respect her male doctors' application of psychology to her. This aversion comes through in Mrs Dalloway.
In any case, I have now read the book; I will read the rest of her fiction one day. I consider it part of my literary education. Since My Big Fat Reading Project begins in 1940, I have missed almost half of the 20th century, so I will have to fill that in eventually. Next in this particular study is to read The Hours by Michael Cunningham and then see the movie.
Here is a quote from Woolf's essay "How Should One Read a Book?: "The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions."
Mrs Dalloway is not a person I would care to know or hang out with, so despite my readiness to be impressed by Virginia Woolf's fiction, I found this book a long and sleepy go. The story covers one day in the life of Mrs Dalloway. She is giving a party in the evening in her home in London, a society affair, so we follow her through the day as she gets ready and through the party itself. A few other characters are also living through that day in London, though not all interact with Clarissa Dalloway.
One of these characters is Peter Walsh, a former flame whom Clarissa almost married 30 years earlier. You get back stories on all these characters which makes the one day a device for telling several stories at once and for taking up topics such as love, marriage, careers, society, politics and the Great War.
I was reminded most of Jane Austen in the style of writing and the subject matter, though the story is in the 20th century. According to the introduction to the edition I read (Harcourt Annotated, 2005), Woolf was part of a whole group of writers including T S Eliot, D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and James Joyce, who were each attempting to modernize poetry and the novel. Due to Sigmund Freud also publishing at that time, psychology was a big subject, though Woolf, who had mental issues herself, did not care for or respect her male doctors' application of psychology to her. This aversion comes through in Mrs Dalloway.
In any case, I have now read the book; I will read the rest of her fiction one day. I consider it part of my literary education. Since My Big Fat Reading Project begins in 1940, I have missed almost half of the 20th century, so I will have to fill that in eventually. Next in this particular study is to read The Hours by Michael Cunningham and then see the movie.
Here is a quote from Woolf's essay "How Should One Read a Book?: "The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions."
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
ALL ABOUT LULU
All About Lulu, Jonathan Evison, Soft Skull Press, 2008, 338 pp
I learned about this book in the Poets and Writers Magazine feature called "Page One," where they print the first sentence of several books. All About Lulu is a first novel by a young author and is excellent.
Will Miller, Jr, is the son of a body builder who used to be a hippie. (I love all these stories about kids raised by hippies and former hippies because of me and my kids.) Will is the wuss of the family while his younger twin brothers are sturdy and follow their dad into body building. But the mom dies when Will is 8, followed by a new wife who brings into the family her daughter Lulu. Will and Lulu are the same age and become best friends who fall in love as they reach puberty.
However there is a problem and a deep dark secret concerning Will and Lulu. The reader figures this out before Will does, but in the end that does not matter. This is Will's coming-of-age tale told by him and though Lulu, her mother and Big Bill have their own stories, these are all seen through Will's eyes.
All About Lulu is a tragedy, but is filled with humor, satire and an authentic hipness. I don't know how old Jonathan Evison is but he has not forgotten the teen experience, not one whit. He has also got the college years right. When the whole truth about Lulu comes out and Will gets his closure, at first I thought that section might have been better written. It was all so well, well. Then I realized that is the way it is at that age in the 21st century.
This is a very fine first novel. I eagerly await more from Evison and feel once again optimistic about the fiction of the future. (I sent Evison an email, which he answered, and he has another novel coming out in 2009!)
I learned about this book in the Poets and Writers Magazine feature called "Page One," where they print the first sentence of several books. All About Lulu is a first novel by a young author and is excellent.
Will Miller, Jr, is the son of a body builder who used to be a hippie. (I love all these stories about kids raised by hippies and former hippies because of me and my kids.) Will is the wuss of the family while his younger twin brothers are sturdy and follow their dad into body building. But the mom dies when Will is 8, followed by a new wife who brings into the family her daughter Lulu. Will and Lulu are the same age and become best friends who fall in love as they reach puberty.
However there is a problem and a deep dark secret concerning Will and Lulu. The reader figures this out before Will does, but in the end that does not matter. This is Will's coming-of-age tale told by him and though Lulu, her mother and Big Bill have their own stories, these are all seen through Will's eyes.
All About Lulu is a tragedy, but is filled with humor, satire and an authentic hipness. I don't know how old Jonathan Evison is but he has not forgotten the teen experience, not one whit. He has also got the college years right. When the whole truth about Lulu comes out and Will gets his closure, at first I thought that section might have been better written. It was all so well, well. Then I realized that is the way it is at that age in the 21st century.
This is a very fine first novel. I eagerly await more from Evison and feel once again optimistic about the fiction of the future. (I sent Evison an email, which he answered, and he has another novel coming out in 2009!)
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
THE ANGEL OF GALILEA
The Angel of Galilea, Laura Restrepo, Random House Inc, 1997, 193 pp
I have found a new author to love. She is Colombian, she is literary and political in life, but she has an element of the magical/spiritual in her writing.
In this novel, Mona is a frustrated journalist in Bogota, Columbia, making her living writing junk for a tabloid. When she is sent to cover sightings of an angel in the slums, she falls headlong into a whole other world, as well as headlong in love with the angel. The angel means many different things to many different people, as angels often do. Is he truly from God, a sexual deviant, a psychotic or the work of the devil?
In the process of trying to love and save this being, Mona is brought face to face with the evils and glories of life in her city and revives a certain deadness in her heart. I liked the several juxtapositions that Restrepo sets up as well as her humorous and pointed remarks about modern life in Columbia.
This is possibly her first novel (it is always hard to tell with foreign fiction) and she has at least five more which I look forward to reading.
I have found a new author to love. She is Colombian, she is literary and political in life, but she has an element of the magical/spiritual in her writing.
In this novel, Mona is a frustrated journalist in Bogota, Columbia, making her living writing junk for a tabloid. When she is sent to cover sightings of an angel in the slums, she falls headlong into a whole other world, as well as headlong in love with the angel. The angel means many different things to many different people, as angels often do. Is he truly from God, a sexual deviant, a psychotic or the work of the devil?
In the process of trying to love and save this being, Mona is brought face to face with the evils and glories of life in her city and revives a certain deadness in her heart. I liked the several juxtapositions that Restrepo sets up as well as her humorous and pointed remarks about modern life in Columbia.
This is possibly her first novel (it is always hard to tell with foreign fiction) and she has at least five more which I look forward to reading.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
WHAT I AM READING
I have been reading the books for 1955 (for My Big Fat Reading Project) since April of this year. My goal was to finish the list by the end of June. Ha. I still have 12 books to go. But I have made some progress since I returned from Michigan.
I read the Marcia Brown version of Cinderella which won the Caldecott Medal in 1955.
Arthur C Clarke died this year and reading about him and his work made me decide to add him to my list of sci fi authors. So I read my first book ever by him, Earthlight, published in 1955, which takes place on the moon. It was great.
The God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle, is a first novel and one of the best books I have read lately.
I power read through an advance readers copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stief Larsson, so I could post my opinion on BookBrowse.com (a very cool site about new books that come out.) It was entertaining and has a fantastic heroine. It publishes in September.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo was for one of my reading groups. It is about people in the aftermath of 9/11 and VERY disturbing. But finally I have read a book by this author.
For another reading group I read The Savage Garden by Mark Mills. It is supposed to be a literary mystery but it was BORING.
Last weekend I started work on the chapter about 1953 for my memoir, Reading For My Life, and realized that I had neglected to read The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. She published the book in France in 1949, but it was released in English in America in 1953. At 720 pages, it is a tome, so I started the other day with a target to read 50 pages a day, which I have now done for three days in a row. Definitely not a page turner, but so amazing. She is one of the most intelligent writers I have read. Every woman needs to read this book.
Meanwhile I read The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith. Wow. I loved the movie but the book is so much better. And I had not realized that she wrote it in 1955.
Tonight I will start Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor, which was #3 on the bestseller list for 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. This one is 760 pages! Plus it is about a prisoner of war camp in the South during the Civil War. I'll have to read some chick lit after all this.
(Just so you don't think wrongly about me, the above reading was done over a three week period.)
So...what are you reading? Have you read any of the above books? Any recommendations? Can you tell I am hungry for comments?
I read the Marcia Brown version of Cinderella which won the Caldecott Medal in 1955.
Arthur C Clarke died this year and reading about him and his work made me decide to add him to my list of sci fi authors. So I read my first book ever by him, Earthlight, published in 1955, which takes place on the moon. It was great.
The God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle, is a first novel and one of the best books I have read lately.
I power read through an advance readers copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stief Larsson, so I could post my opinion on BookBrowse.com (a very cool site about new books that come out.) It was entertaining and has a fantastic heroine. It publishes in September.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo was for one of my reading groups. It is about people in the aftermath of 9/11 and VERY disturbing. But finally I have read a book by this author.
For another reading group I read The Savage Garden by Mark Mills. It is supposed to be a literary mystery but it was BORING.
Last weekend I started work on the chapter about 1953 for my memoir, Reading For My Life, and realized that I had neglected to read The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. She published the book in France in 1949, but it was released in English in America in 1953. At 720 pages, it is a tome, so I started the other day with a target to read 50 pages a day, which I have now done for three days in a row. Definitely not a page turner, but so amazing. She is one of the most intelligent writers I have read. Every woman needs to read this book.
Meanwhile I read The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith. Wow. I loved the movie but the book is so much better. And I had not realized that she wrote it in 1955.
Tonight I will start Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor, which was #3 on the bestseller list for 1955 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. This one is 760 pages! Plus it is about a prisoner of war camp in the South during the Civil War. I'll have to read some chick lit after all this.
(Just so you don't think wrongly about me, the above reading was done over a three week period.)
So...what are you reading? Have you read any of the above books? Any recommendations? Can you tell I am hungry for comments?
WORD OF THE DAY
These word of the day posts are a bit hard to do and I have been lazy. Actually I have been reading, but I have put this off for too long, thinking that it takes up too much of my time. But for readers and writers alike, building vocabulary is key. Do you agree?
Today's word is pilaster and comes from page 16 of Children of Men by PD James. (She, by the way, gave me 8 words to look up in the first 98 pages.) This is a word that I have read and not known (except that it is something on a building) for years, so I finally got honest and looked it up.
pilaster noun
a rectangular support or pier projecting partially from a wall and treated architecturally as a column, with a base, shaft and capital.
derived from the French, pilastre from the Italian pila, a pile, column
My sentence: She dreamed of a room with four pilasters on each wall, every one of which was painted a different color.
Please feel free to leave your sentence in the comments.
Today's word is pilaster and comes from page 16 of Children of Men by PD James. (She, by the way, gave me 8 words to look up in the first 98 pages.) This is a word that I have read and not known (except that it is something on a building) for years, so I finally got honest and looked it up.
pilaster noun
a rectangular support or pier projecting partially from a wall and treated architecturally as a column, with a base, shaft and capital.
derived from the French, pilastre from the Italian pila, a pile, column
My sentence: She dreamed of a room with four pilasters on each wall, every one of which was painted a different color.
Please feel free to leave your sentence in the comments.
A SLIPPING DOWN LIFE
A Slipping Down Life, Anne Tyler, Alfred A Knopf, 1970, 186 pp
This is Tyler's third novel and reads somewhat like an early novel, yet has her signature characters: people who live just outside the mainstream.
Evie Decker is a plump, motherless high school girl in a small town. She becomes, in her own detached way, infatuated with a local rock singer. As the story goes on she gets increasingly involved in Drumstrings Casey's life. Nothing really bad ever happens to her but there is a sort of underlying menace throughout the story. Evie is smart and fearless but also pretty clueless so you fear for her.
I was intrigued and pulled along all the way. There is just no one quite like Anne Tyler. And there is a movie!
This is Tyler's third novel and reads somewhat like an early novel, yet has her signature characters: people who live just outside the mainstream.
Evie Decker is a plump, motherless high school girl in a small town. She becomes, in her own detached way, infatuated with a local rock singer. As the story goes on she gets increasingly involved in Drumstrings Casey's life. Nothing really bad ever happens to her but there is a sort of underlying menace throughout the story. Evie is smart and fearless but also pretty clueless so you fear for her.
I was intrigued and pulled along all the way. There is just no one quite like Anne Tyler. And there is a movie!
Friday, August 29, 2008
THE BOOK OF AIR AND SHADOWS
The Book of Air and Shadows, Michael Gruber, William Morrow, 2007, 466 pp
I admit it. Sometimes I pick a book because of its title. This one was promoted as being a smart thriller. Well, yes, it had plenty of smart people in it, including a compulsively philandering intellectual properties lawyer, his perfect wife who made millions as a financial advisor, his brilliant but fairly autistic son, a Shakespeare scholar, etc.
It is a thriller combined with a sort of literary style and quite a scathing wit. The book is all about the plot, which I won't go into except to say that various people are after a supposedly never before seen Shakespeare play. (Worth millions of course.) It was the plot that kept me reading; its many twists kept me guessing right until the final page. The characters, the wit, and the info on Shakespeare dressed it up. Really nothing wrong, though it was a bit wordy for a pleasure read, which it was clearly meant to be. I think I was hoping for another Shadow of the Wind, but I didn't get that.
I admit it. Sometimes I pick a book because of its title. This one was promoted as being a smart thriller. Well, yes, it had plenty of smart people in it, including a compulsively philandering intellectual properties lawyer, his perfect wife who made millions as a financial advisor, his brilliant but fairly autistic son, a Shakespeare scholar, etc.
It is a thriller combined with a sort of literary style and quite a scathing wit. The book is all about the plot, which I won't go into except to say that various people are after a supposedly never before seen Shakespeare play. (Worth millions of course.) It was the plot that kept me reading; its many twists kept me guessing right until the final page. The characters, the wit, and the info on Shakespeare dressed it up. Really nothing wrong, though it was a bit wordy for a pleasure read, which it was clearly meant to be. I think I was hoping for another Shadow of the Wind, but I didn't get that.
Monday, August 25, 2008
COAL RUN
Coal Run, Tawni O'Dell, Viking Penguin, 2004, 351 pp
This is her second novel, preceded by Back Roads and followed by Sister Mine. I've now read all of them. Once again she writes about the depressed coal mining region of Pennsylvania but of the three novels, I would say this is her weakest.
The story opens explosively when a mine blows and many men are killed. Ivan Zoschenko is just three years old when he loses his father in the debacle. Then it is 30 years later and Ivan is telling his story: how he adopted his next door neighbor Val as a father figure, how he grew up to become a football hero but then missed out on a pro career due to an injury, how he went off to Florida and became a zero to his family.
Now he is back because his old nemesis is about to be released from prison. He is working as a law enforcement deputy, drinking heavily and harbors a dark secret.
O'Dell has created her usual cast of strong but flawed characters and evokes the small town just as well as in the other books. The story kept me hooked. What left me less than impressed was Ivan's voice, which was inconsistent and often sounded nothing like a man in his early 30s.
So, good story, great characters, excellent sense of place with weak narrator. Well, Ivan was a pretty weak guy and at the end he is still weak. He faced some demons but he didn't grow, which is perhaps appropriate for a miner's son.
This is her second novel, preceded by Back Roads and followed by Sister Mine. I've now read all of them. Once again she writes about the depressed coal mining region of Pennsylvania but of the three novels, I would say this is her weakest.
The story opens explosively when a mine blows and many men are killed. Ivan Zoschenko is just three years old when he loses his father in the debacle. Then it is 30 years later and Ivan is telling his story: how he adopted his next door neighbor Val as a father figure, how he grew up to become a football hero but then missed out on a pro career due to an injury, how he went off to Florida and became a zero to his family.
Now he is back because his old nemesis is about to be released from prison. He is working as a law enforcement deputy, drinking heavily and harbors a dark secret.
O'Dell has created her usual cast of strong but flawed characters and evokes the small town just as well as in the other books. The story kept me hooked. What left me less than impressed was Ivan's voice, which was inconsistent and often sounded nothing like a man in his early 30s.
So, good story, great characters, excellent sense of place with weak narrator. Well, Ivan was a pretty weak guy and at the end he is still weak. He faced some demons but he didn't grow, which is perhaps appropriate for a miner's son.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie, Little Brown and Company, 2007, 230 pp
Big book in terms of recognition and awards. It won the National Book Award in the Young Adult category. I liked it just fine but I would not call it great.
Junior is a smart but nerdy weakling who has grown up on a Spokane Indian reservation. He decides to go to high school in an all white neighboring town instead of attending the reservation school because he wants a good education and he suspects it might be a way out of a preordained life on the rez, where most people die alcohol related deaths. Throughout the book, he suffers; at home, where he is looked upon as a traitor and at school, where he is the only Indian besides the school mascot.
The story draws you in, the humor is truly funny, Junior's trials affect your heart and Alexie makes plenty of important points about Native American life in the 21st century. In the end though, the story arc is predictable. Instead of a white nerd overcoming social and personal barriers, it is a Native American nerd.
Having said that, I do think it is an important book for raising awareness about Native Americans, especially if they are still teaching the altered history I had in school.
Big book in terms of recognition and awards. It won the National Book Award in the Young Adult category. I liked it just fine but I would not call it great.
Junior is a smart but nerdy weakling who has grown up on a Spokane Indian reservation. He decides to go to high school in an all white neighboring town instead of attending the reservation school because he wants a good education and he suspects it might be a way out of a preordained life on the rez, where most people die alcohol related deaths. Throughout the book, he suffers; at home, where he is looked upon as a traitor and at school, where he is the only Indian besides the school mascot.
The story draws you in, the humor is truly funny, Junior's trials affect your heart and Alexie makes plenty of important points about Native American life in the 21st century. In the end though, the story arc is predictable. Instead of a white nerd overcoming social and personal barriers, it is a Native American nerd.
Having said that, I do think it is an important book for raising awareness about Native Americans, especially if they are still teaching the altered history I had in school.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
PEONY IN LOVE
Peony in Love, Lisa See, Random House Inc, 2007, 284 pp
I can unreservedly say that I loved this book. It is even better than Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and I don't know why it didn't sell as well. Perhaps because the main character is a ghost for most of the story. Ghost stories of any kind rarely seem to stay on any bestseller list for long.
Peony is a young Chinese girl from a wealthy family in the 17th century. A new dynasty has taken over and the country is in turmoil politically and socially. For women, this means a chance for some unusual freedoms. On her birthday, her doting father presents a showing of the famous opera, The Peony Pavilion, a story of romantic love. Though Peony is already betrothed by custom to a man she has never seen, she is just at the age of romantic love and sexual longing.
She breaks several taboos and meets a young poet. They fall deeply in love but it is all a secret and of course tragedy strikes. As does the heroine in the opera, Peony gets the "love sickness," is unable to eat and dies. Due to various circumstances, her burial is not properly done and she is left to wander as a "hungry ghost" watching over her lover and trying desperately to re-enact the story in the opera.
It is a dramatic and touching tale. Peony comes to an understanding with the mother who kept her trapped and obedient while Peony was growing up. In fact, she comes to understand women, men, art, literature and how to determine her own destiny. There are wonderful scenes where women writers gather to discuss literature, which are like the world's first reading groups. As usual, in a Lisa See novel, the reader learns much about the traditions and culture of China. Though it is a tragedy, Peony in Love has a happy and satisfying ending. This is Lisa See's best book so far.
I can unreservedly say that I loved this book. It is even better than Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and I don't know why it didn't sell as well. Perhaps because the main character is a ghost for most of the story. Ghost stories of any kind rarely seem to stay on any bestseller list for long.
Peony is a young Chinese girl from a wealthy family in the 17th century. A new dynasty has taken over and the country is in turmoil politically and socially. For women, this means a chance for some unusual freedoms. On her birthday, her doting father presents a showing of the famous opera, The Peony Pavilion, a story of romantic love. Though Peony is already betrothed by custom to a man she has never seen, she is just at the age of romantic love and sexual longing.
She breaks several taboos and meets a young poet. They fall deeply in love but it is all a secret and of course tragedy strikes. As does the heroine in the opera, Peony gets the "love sickness," is unable to eat and dies. Due to various circumstances, her burial is not properly done and she is left to wander as a "hungry ghost" watching over her lover and trying desperately to re-enact the story in the opera.
It is a dramatic and touching tale. Peony comes to an understanding with the mother who kept her trapped and obedient while Peony was growing up. In fact, she comes to understand women, men, art, literature and how to determine her own destiny. There are wonderful scenes where women writers gather to discuss literature, which are like the world's first reading groups. As usual, in a Lisa See novel, the reader learns much about the traditions and culture of China. Though it is a tragedy, Peony in Love has a happy and satisfying ending. This is Lisa See's best book so far.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC TO GIRLS
The Importance of Music to Girls, Lavinia Greenlaw, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2007, 205 pp
I learned about this book in Susan Salter Reynold's "Discoveries" column in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She made quite a discovery. It is a memoir of a girl growing up in the 70s and 80s in Great Britain, seen through her relationship to music. I can't express how amazing the book is because I am still trying to figure out how she did it. Lavinia Greenlaw is a poet, so that might partly explain how she distilled twenty years of life into short gem like chapters of pure essence.
Also, though I was a mother while she was growing up; though I grew up in the USA and she in England, I could easily experience through her writing how it was for her. Remembering those moments of pure music throughout my childhood and especially my teen, college and early adult years, was like a gift to me from her. She had her punk, I had Joni, but the music ran deep into our lives and it was how we made sense of our worlds.
I learned about this book in Susan Salter Reynold's "Discoveries" column in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. She made quite a discovery. It is a memoir of a girl growing up in the 70s and 80s in Great Britain, seen through her relationship to music. I can't express how amazing the book is because I am still trying to figure out how she did it. Lavinia Greenlaw is a poet, so that might partly explain how she distilled twenty years of life into short gem like chapters of pure essence.
Also, though I was a mother while she was growing up; though I grew up in the USA and she in England, I could easily experience through her writing how it was for her. Remembering those moments of pure music throughout my childhood and especially my teen, college and early adult years, was like a gift to me from her. She had her punk, I had Joni, but the music ran deep into our lives and it was how we made sense of our worlds.
I HAVE A GREAT FAMILY
I am back from Michigan. OK, I confess, I have been back for 8 days. And catching up and feeling guilty about not blogging. It was a wonderful trip filled with happy and hilarious moments and I did not want to come home. I am so blessed to have a family that is not one bit dysfunctional and full of love and respect for each other.
I got to do quite a bit of reading despite all the goings on (a Big Birthday BBQ celebrating 5 birthdays plus the Family Reunion to celebrate my Mom's 90th which is coming up on Jan 1, 2009. The reunion was attended by 80 friends and family members. My two sisters and I made all the food, with lots of help from sons and daughters.)
I read a great first novel, All About Lulu, by Jonathan Evison.
I got to read my friend Laurie Gailunas' first sci fi novel in manuscript form; about infertility and how a planet dealt with and overcame it. Very good, very full of women and sex and hormones. I can't wait until she gets published so you all can read it.
At long last I read Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. Now I can read The Hours and see the movie.
The latest foster child memoir, Hope's Boy, by Andrew Bridge was fabulous.
I napped my way through A World of Love, by Elizabeth Bowen; a book from the 1955 reading list.
I started but have not finished: Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, by Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler, recommended by my daughter-in-law's sister, who is a twin and both sisters read more than I do.
I also started Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, Volume Two of his Baroque Cycle. After 800+ pages of that plus another 800 or so in Volume Three, The System of the World, I will get to read his new book, Anathem, which was just released. My husband is reading it now.
So that is the roundup. I am thinking of starting a weekly post called What I am Reading. What do you think?
As always, I love to hear from you, my readers, to find out what you are reading and anything else you have to say about the reading life.
Stay tuned for micro-reviews of the books mentioned above.
I got to do quite a bit of reading despite all the goings on (a Big Birthday BBQ celebrating 5 birthdays plus the Family Reunion to celebrate my Mom's 90th which is coming up on Jan 1, 2009. The reunion was attended by 80 friends and family members. My two sisters and I made all the food, with lots of help from sons and daughters.)
I read a great first novel, All About Lulu, by Jonathan Evison.
I got to read my friend Laurie Gailunas' first sci fi novel in manuscript form; about infertility and how a planet dealt with and overcame it. Very good, very full of women and sex and hormones. I can't wait until she gets published so you all can read it.
At long last I read Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. Now I can read The Hours and see the movie.
The latest foster child memoir, Hope's Boy, by Andrew Bridge was fabulous.
I napped my way through A World of Love, by Elizabeth Bowen; a book from the 1955 reading list.
I started but have not finished: Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, by Brad Barkley and Heather Hepler, recommended by my daughter-in-law's sister, who is a twin and both sisters read more than I do.
I also started Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, Volume Two of his Baroque Cycle. After 800+ pages of that plus another 800 or so in Volume Three, The System of the World, I will get to read his new book, Anathem, which was just released. My husband is reading it now.
So that is the roundup. I am thinking of starting a weekly post called What I am Reading. What do you think?
As always, I love to hear from you, my readers, to find out what you are reading and anything else you have to say about the reading life.
Stay tuned for micro-reviews of the books mentioned above.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
I AM OUT OF HERE
I am off on vacation tonight. I am taking a break from phones, computers, email, blogs. Of course I will be reading as much as I can.
I will be with family celebrating my mom's 90th birthday. So it will be all about family and luckily I have a great family with a minimum of dysfunction and only a few weirdos to keep life interesting.
I'll be back in two weeks. If you miss me, you can catch up on earlier posts you might have missed or hey, read some books yourself instead of blogs. While it is fun to read about books, I believe it is much more fun to read them. What do you think?
See ya'!
I will be with family celebrating my mom's 90th birthday. So it will be all about family and luckily I have a great family with a minimum of dysfunction and only a few weirdos to keep life interesting.
I'll be back in two weeks. If you miss me, you can catch up on earlier posts you might have missed or hey, read some books yourself instead of blogs. While it is fun to read about books, I believe it is much more fun to read them. What do you think?
See ya'!
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
THE MARTIAN CHILD
The Martian Child, David Gerrold, Tom Doherty Associates, 2002, 190 pp
Another book about adoption, recommended to me by my friend Laurie, the sci fi writer. This one is from the viewpoint of the adopting parent. Gerrold turned his experience into a novel and I devoured it in a few hours.
The man is single, gay and a sci fi writer living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The boy he adopted was 8 years old, abandoned by his mother (who was a drug abuser) and in foster care since he was a year old. He was considered not adoptable because of all his behavior troubles plus he told everyone that he was from Mars.
Despite qualms and self-doubt, David adopted him and made a success of it. Another child saved by love. Good writing and excellent insight into the Martian thing. Apparently it is somewhat common for kids in the foster care system to believe they are from Mars.
Another book about adoption, recommended to me by my friend Laurie, the sci fi writer. This one is from the viewpoint of the adopting parent. Gerrold turned his experience into a novel and I devoured it in a few hours.
The man is single, gay and a sci fi writer living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The boy he adopted was 8 years old, abandoned by his mother (who was a drug abuser) and in foster care since he was a year old. He was considered not adoptable because of all his behavior troubles plus he told everyone that he was from Mars.
Despite qualms and self-doubt, David adopted him and made a success of it. Another child saved by love. Good writing and excellent insight into the Martian thing. Apparently it is somewhat common for kids in the foster care system to believe they are from Mars.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
WORD OF THE DAY
Today's word is crenelate. It comes from p 16 of Children of Men by P D James. This is a word that I usually go past, knowing that it has something to do with buildings but not really knowing what it means. So this time, I got honest and looked it up. Then I was in a can of worms known by dictionary users as a word chain. Here we go:
crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
which led me to crenels.
crenel noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure.
which led me to battlement and embrasure.
battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort.
which led me to parapet (at which point I moved to an easier dictionary.)
parapet noun meaning a wall or bank for protecting troops from enemy fire. From French from Italian from papare, to guard + petto, breast from Latin pectus.
Sentence: OK guys, get behind the parapet before you get shot.
enbrasure noun meaning an opening, as in a parapet, with the sides slanting outward to increase the angle of fire of a gun. (Here we got a much needed picture.) From an obsolete French word, embraser, to widen an opening.
Sentence: Even though the guy was over to the right, I managed to pick him off thanks to the embrasure I was shooting through.
OK back to battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort. From Middle English batelment from Old French bataillier, to fortify from battaille, fortification on a wall or tower. (Another great picture.)
Sentence: The soldiers were placed along the battlement with their bows, arrows and kettles of boiling oil.
OK, cool, so a crenel is a noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure. (A crenel is an embrasure, one of those openings with the slanted sides.) It is from Old French, diminutive of the Vulgar Latin crena, a notch.
Sentence: While stooping behind the battlement, I shot an arrow through the crenel.
Back to the original word crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
Sentence: We finished the sand castle but it looked a bit plain so we crenelated the tops of the walls.
There, now you and I can read lots more historical fiction and know what they are talking about instead of guessing. We can also name the parts of our sand castles. All thanks to P D James. How about some sentences, guys?
crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
which led me to crenels.
crenel noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure.
which led me to battlement and embrasure.
battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort.
which led me to parapet (at which point I moved to an easier dictionary.)
parapet noun meaning a wall or bank for protecting troops from enemy fire. From French from Italian from papare, to guard + petto, breast from Latin pectus.
Sentence: OK guys, get behind the parapet before you get shot.
enbrasure noun meaning an opening, as in a parapet, with the sides slanting outward to increase the angle of fire of a gun. (Here we got a much needed picture.) From an obsolete French word, embraser, to widen an opening.
Sentence: Even though the guy was over to the right, I managed to pick him off thanks to the embrasure I was shooting through.
OK back to battlement noun meaning a parapet with open spaces for shooting built on top of a castle wall, tower or fort. From Middle English batelment from Old French bataillier, to fortify from battaille, fortification on a wall or tower. (Another great picture.)
Sentence: The soldiers were placed along the battlement with their bows, arrows and kettles of boiling oil.
OK, cool, so a crenel is a noun meaning any of the indentations or loopholes in the top of a battlement or wall, embrasure. (A crenel is an embrasure, one of those openings with the slanted sides.) It is from Old French, diminutive of the Vulgar Latin crena, a notch.
Sentence: While stooping behind the battlement, I shot an arrow through the crenel.
Back to the original word crenelate transitive verb meaning to furnish with battlements or crenels, or with squared notches.
Sentence: We finished the sand castle but it looked a bit plain so we crenelated the tops of the walls.
There, now you and I can read lots more historical fiction and know what they are talking about instead of guessing. We can also name the parts of our sand castles. All thanks to P D James. How about some sentences, guys?
THE WHISTLING SEASON
The Whistling Season, Ivan Doig, Harcourt Inc, 2006, 345 pp
I had heard about this author. He writes about Montana in the homesteading days of the early 20th century. And I liked this book a great deal, though some say his earlier books are even better. He reminds me of Wallace Stegner but he is less ponderous-that's a good thing. He does not judge his characters.
The Whistling Season could be a Young Adult novel. Paul is the oldest of three sons and tells the story, looking back on his thirteenth year. His father, Oliver, is a homesteader who had lost his wife and the boys' mother a year ago to a medical emergency. Oliver decides to hire a housekeeper from an ad in the paper. Rose and her brother Morris arrive from Wisconsin and bring change to the area.
These two interlopers are surrounded by a certain amount of mystery and Doig does not reveal their secrets until the last few pages, so all through the story, though they each do wondrous deeds that improve life for Paul and his family, there is a certain uneasiness simmering just beneath.
All the characters are fabulously created. Paul and his brothers attend a one-room schoolhouse complete with bullies, buddies, lug heads and scholars as well as annoying girls. Morris becomes the school teacher and being well-educated as well as the flamboyant character he is, he teaches like his hair is on fire. My favorite parts of the book were the schoolhouse scenes.
It all ends happily with a sense of uprightness tempered by wisdom about people and the vagaries of the human heart. Doig has recreated a time we shall never see again in America and yet the juxtaposition of goodwill and values with lawlessness and a certain anarchy is still the essence of our country's character.
I had heard about this author. He writes about Montana in the homesteading days of the early 20th century. And I liked this book a great deal, though some say his earlier books are even better. He reminds me of Wallace Stegner but he is less ponderous-that's a good thing. He does not judge his characters.
The Whistling Season could be a Young Adult novel. Paul is the oldest of three sons and tells the story, looking back on his thirteenth year. His father, Oliver, is a homesteader who had lost his wife and the boys' mother a year ago to a medical emergency. Oliver decides to hire a housekeeper from an ad in the paper. Rose and her brother Morris arrive from Wisconsin and bring change to the area.
These two interlopers are surrounded by a certain amount of mystery and Doig does not reveal their secrets until the last few pages, so all through the story, though they each do wondrous deeds that improve life for Paul and his family, there is a certain uneasiness simmering just beneath.
All the characters are fabulously created. Paul and his brothers attend a one-room schoolhouse complete with bullies, buddies, lug heads and scholars as well as annoying girls. Morris becomes the school teacher and being well-educated as well as the flamboyant character he is, he teaches like his hair is on fire. My favorite parts of the book were the schoolhouse scenes.
It all ends happily with a sense of uprightness tempered by wisdom about people and the vagaries of the human heart. Doig has recreated a time we shall never see again in America and yet the juxtaposition of goodwill and values with lawlessness and a certain anarchy is still the essence of our country's character.
Monday, July 14, 2008
LIFE OF PI
Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Harcourt Inc, 2001 319 pp
I finished this book several weeks ago, so some of the impact has faded, but it was a large impact at the time. I dreamed about it all night after finishing it right before bed.
The story begins in India when Pi is a young boy. His parents own and run a zoo, so he grows up surrounded by hundreds of animals from all over the world. He is a bookish boy, taunted by his schoolmates and given to spiritual yearnings. By the time he is a teen, he is a practicing Christian, Muslim and Buddhist.
But hard times come and his family decides to emigrate to Canada. The animals are sold to other zoos and they set out on an ocean journey with some of the animals, which are bound for America, on board. Their ship is a Japanese freighter and sinks. Pi is left on a lifeboat with a hyena and a Bengal tiger for company.
He spends seven months on that lifeboat and manages to survive, living on fish and learning to use the meager emergency supplies he finds. Alone with the tiger, who would eat him in a heartbeat, Pi uses his knowledge of animals to keep the beast at bay, while he practices his three religions to keep from succumbing to hopelessness.
Martel writes the book as though it were Pi's true story but according to interviews he made up the whole thing. Some people found all kinds of symbolism in the story, others found it to unbelievable. I just let myself be completely taken in and marvelled at the contrasts between faith and despair. It is one of the best books I've read so far this year. I don't know how I missed reading it for seven years with everyone telling me how great it was. They were right.
I finished this book several weeks ago, so some of the impact has faded, but it was a large impact at the time. I dreamed about it all night after finishing it right before bed.
The story begins in India when Pi is a young boy. His parents own and run a zoo, so he grows up surrounded by hundreds of animals from all over the world. He is a bookish boy, taunted by his schoolmates and given to spiritual yearnings. By the time he is a teen, he is a practicing Christian, Muslim and Buddhist.
But hard times come and his family decides to emigrate to Canada. The animals are sold to other zoos and they set out on an ocean journey with some of the animals, which are bound for America, on board. Their ship is a Japanese freighter and sinks. Pi is left on a lifeboat with a hyena and a Bengal tiger for company.
He spends seven months on that lifeboat and manages to survive, living on fish and learning to use the meager emergency supplies he finds. Alone with the tiger, who would eat him in a heartbeat, Pi uses his knowledge of animals to keep the beast at bay, while he practices his three religions to keep from succumbing to hopelessness.
Martel writes the book as though it were Pi's true story but according to interviews he made up the whole thing. Some people found all kinds of symbolism in the story, others found it to unbelievable. I just let myself be completely taken in and marvelled at the contrasts between faith and despair. It is one of the best books I've read so far this year. I don't know how I missed reading it for seven years with everyone telling me how great it was. They were right.
WORD OF THE DAY
I haven't posted one of these in a while so I have a huge backlog. Please play the game and leave a sentence in the comments.
accidie
Found on page 3 of Children of Men by P D James.
accidie may also be spelled accidia or acedia. In Webster's New World Third College Edition the definition is given after acedia.
It means spiritual sloth or apathy and is one of the seven deadly sins.
It is derived from the Greek akedia which comes from a-, not + kedos, care.
My sentence: In college she discovered drinking which often happened on Saturday nights and led her to accidie on Sunday mornings.
What is your sentence?
accidie
Found on page 3 of Children of Men by P D James.
accidie may also be spelled accidia or acedia. In Webster's New World Third College Edition the definition is given after acedia.
It means spiritual sloth or apathy and is one of the seven deadly sins.
It is derived from the Greek akedia which comes from a-, not + kedos, care.
My sentence: In college she discovered drinking which often happened on Saturday nights and led her to accidie on Sunday mornings.
What is your sentence?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
THREE LITTLE WORDS
Three Little Words, Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Atheneum, 2008, 297 pp
One day at work, business was slow and I was there alone. I was looking through the Young Adult shelves and came across this memoir of a foster child who finally got adopted. I read anything I find on this topic as research for the novel I am not writing. By the time I went to bed that night I had finished the book.
The story takes place in South Carolina and Florida, where Ashley lived with her single mom and brother, later with her maternal grandmother and then in a long succession of foster homes. As usual, it is a heart wrenching tale of loss, neglect, sometimes abuse; of bureaucratic inefficiency and heartlessness, sometimes corruption.
Finally after nine years in fourteen different foster home, Ashley is adopted and has to work through lots of issues like trust, eating and accepting a new mother. She makes it. The new mother is novelist Gay Courter. I read and loved two of her novels in the 1990s: Flowers in the Blood and The Midwife. Gay Courter was instrumental in helping Ashley write her memoir and it is well written. They are both advocates for children who are lost in our failed foster care system.
I fully realize that this is a naive question with no easy answers, but how can the wealthiest nation in the world have so much poverty, messed up health care and so many children who are left adrift in our society? Lest we become complacent or over-confident, books like this should be required reading for all citizens.
One day at work, business was slow and I was there alone. I was looking through the Young Adult shelves and came across this memoir of a foster child who finally got adopted. I read anything I find on this topic as research for the novel I am not writing. By the time I went to bed that night I had finished the book.
The story takes place in South Carolina and Florida, where Ashley lived with her single mom and brother, later with her maternal grandmother and then in a long succession of foster homes. As usual, it is a heart wrenching tale of loss, neglect, sometimes abuse; of bureaucratic inefficiency and heartlessness, sometimes corruption.
Finally after nine years in fourteen different foster home, Ashley is adopted and has to work through lots of issues like trust, eating and accepting a new mother. She makes it. The new mother is novelist Gay Courter. I read and loved two of her novels in the 1990s: Flowers in the Blood and The Midwife. Gay Courter was instrumental in helping Ashley write her memoir and it is well written. They are both advocates for children who are lost in our failed foster care system.
I fully realize that this is a naive question with no easy answers, but how can the wealthiest nation in the world have so much poverty, messed up health care and so many children who are left adrift in our society? Lest we become complacent or over-confident, books like this should be required reading for all citizens.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
GIRLS LIKE US
Girls Like Us, Sheila Weller, Atria Books, 2008, 527 pp
Though the writing is weak and actually slowed my reading, this is the best book I've read about music, the 60s and 70s and the female musicians of my generation. Joni Mitchell, Carole King And Carly Simon are featured section by section, in an ambitious triple biography that is also social history. Weller follows each of these woman from early childhood through their respective peaks of fame and on up to the present.
Carly Simon is the only one who consented to interviews so the rest is based on research and interviews with people surrounding these women. One wonders about the reliability of those other interviewees. Still I was absorbed in these women's lives, their many love affairs and marriages, and the stories behind their songs. The organizing principle behind the book is the connection with feminism which the author handles well.
Having been a fan of Joni Mitchell since I first heard her perform in 1968 and even met her backstage, just before her first album was released, I was most interested in the Joni sections. I learned things about her that I've not read elsewhere. Carole and Carly have never been favorites of mine though I like reading about Carly and James Taylor.
But this is a good book for any woman born between the mid-1940s to early 1950s, because whether famous or obscure, we all lived through the second women's movement toward independence and self hood and our story must be preserved. We've come a long way and it is not over yet for the women of this world.
Though the writing is weak and actually slowed my reading, this is the best book I've read about music, the 60s and 70s and the female musicians of my generation. Joni Mitchell, Carole King And Carly Simon are featured section by section, in an ambitious triple biography that is also social history. Weller follows each of these woman from early childhood through their respective peaks of fame and on up to the present.
Carly Simon is the only one who consented to interviews so the rest is based on research and interviews with people surrounding these women. One wonders about the reliability of those other interviewees. Still I was absorbed in these women's lives, their many love affairs and marriages, and the stories behind their songs. The organizing principle behind the book is the connection with feminism which the author handles well.
Having been a fan of Joni Mitchell since I first heard her perform in 1968 and even met her backstage, just before her first album was released, I was most interested in the Joni sections. I learned things about her that I've not read elsewhere. Carole and Carly have never been favorites of mine though I like reading about Carly and James Taylor.
But this is a good book for any woman born between the mid-1940s to early 1950s, because whether famous or obscure, we all lived through the second women's movement toward independence and self hood and our story must be preserved. We've come a long way and it is not over yet for the women of this world.
Monday, July 07, 2008
THE HOST
The Host, Stephenie Meyer, Little Brown and Company, 2008, 619 pp
In her first novel for adults, Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight series, delves into sci fi. It is the sort of sci fi that anyone could like because it is about people and their interactions, something like The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. In fact, I was amused to see a sci fi novel take #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for two weeks in a row.
Thank goodness that she is a good storyteller because the writing is just OK, as it was in Twilight. She repeats herself and draws out the tension too long. I had to gulp down all 600 pages in a weekend because I was assigned by my boss at the bookstore to read it and rule on whether we could sell it to our teenage customers. (We can. No explicit sex, no gratuitous violence, though as in Twilight, plenty of sexual tension and rough stuff and injuries. It is one of Meyer's feats that she can do sex and violence without upsetting the YA censors.)
A race of outer space beings, known as souls, has invaded earth. No war or weapons are involved. They take over human bodies, replacing the personality while using the body as a "host." The emotions, senses and memories of the original person are left intact but the humans naturally feel invaded and look on these souls as parasites.
Melanie is invaded by Wanderer but in this case, she fights back hard and the two female personalities just about equally share one mind and one body. Melanie had a brother and a lover before the invasion and she convinces Wanderer to search until they are found.
Some humans have escaped capture and live literally underground in caves. Wanderer/Melanie find Jamie (the brother) and Jared (the lover) in such a hideout. At this point in the story, events get more tense than ever. The souls' purpose in coming to Earth is to bring peace to a violent and warlike planet, but that's a dicey proposition since human beings don't like being told how to behave by an outside influence.
Stephenie Meyer has amazing powers of imagination in all this and in the way she moves the story through all the conflict. I liked how Melanie and Wanderer become best friends. Imagine if you had an imaginary friend in your mind who was a fully realized personality. The ideas here include honor, courage and sacrifice in dealing with love, loyalty and anger. The theme is that love conquers all and is handled without sentimentality or melodrama though with plenty of drama. Pretty impressive actually, if you can stick with it for over 600 pages.
In her first novel for adults, Stephenie Meyer, author of the wildly popular Twilight series, delves into sci fi. It is the sort of sci fi that anyone could like because it is about people and their interactions, something like The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. In fact, I was amused to see a sci fi novel take #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for two weeks in a row.
Thank goodness that she is a good storyteller because the writing is just OK, as it was in Twilight. She repeats herself and draws out the tension too long. I had to gulp down all 600 pages in a weekend because I was assigned by my boss at the bookstore to read it and rule on whether we could sell it to our teenage customers. (We can. No explicit sex, no gratuitous violence, though as in Twilight, plenty of sexual tension and rough stuff and injuries. It is one of Meyer's feats that she can do sex and violence without upsetting the YA censors.)
A race of outer space beings, known as souls, has invaded earth. No war or weapons are involved. They take over human bodies, replacing the personality while using the body as a "host." The emotions, senses and memories of the original person are left intact but the humans naturally feel invaded and look on these souls as parasites.
Melanie is invaded by Wanderer but in this case, she fights back hard and the two female personalities just about equally share one mind and one body. Melanie had a brother and a lover before the invasion and she convinces Wanderer to search until they are found.
Some humans have escaped capture and live literally underground in caves. Wanderer/Melanie find Jamie (the brother) and Jared (the lover) in such a hideout. At this point in the story, events get more tense than ever. The souls' purpose in coming to Earth is to bring peace to a violent and warlike planet, but that's a dicey proposition since human beings don't like being told how to behave by an outside influence.
Stephenie Meyer has amazing powers of imagination in all this and in the way she moves the story through all the conflict. I liked how Melanie and Wanderer become best friends. Imagine if you had an imaginary friend in your mind who was a fully realized personality. The ideas here include honor, courage and sacrifice in dealing with love, loyalty and anger. The theme is that love conquers all and is handled without sentimentality or melodrama though with plenty of drama. Pretty impressive actually, if you can stick with it for over 600 pages.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
HIGHWIRE MOON
Highwire Moon, Susan Straight, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001, 305 pp
What a great book! It is the story of a mother and daughter who are separated when the daughter is only three. Serfina was an illegal Mexican immigrant who came to California from Oaxaca to work the oranges. Being Mexican Indian, she is considered the lowest even by other Mexicans. She was only 16 and got stranded in Rio Seco, which is Straight's fictional town based on Riverside, CA.
Serfina ends up with Larry, a white man who works various construction jobs, uses speed and was raised in foster homes. They have a daughter, Elvia, but they hardly connect because Serfina does not learn English or even venture out much. She pines for home. When Elvia is three, immigration gets Serafina and sends her back to Mexico. Elvia winds up in foster care for many years until her father finds her, takes her back into his crazy life and becomes fiercely protective of her in his own way.
When the story opens, Elvia (now called Ellie) is 16 and living with Larry and his speed freak girlfriend. For all these years she has thought that her mother abandoned her but now she is pregnant (though Larry does not know this) and decides to find Serafina. Meanwhile, Serafina is stuck in Tijuana caring for her own sick mother and pining for Elvira.
It could be an Oprah-like sentimental story but it's actually more like a prayer or an aria as these two women overcome dangers and pitfalls in their search for each other. The writing is perfect: images, just enough story, the viewpoints of the main characters clearly evolving in each one's distinctive voice. The life is hard, violent, unpredictable; there is barely enough love and hope to keep life going. Possibly this book is too dark for some, too lightweight for others. For me it was a jewel of a book.
MIDDLESEX
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2002, 529 pp
I guess everyone in the world had already read this book. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and went on to be an Oprah selection. I even found two copies of it in my house. Finally it was picked as a selection in one of my reading groups. (I am currently in 5 reading groups.) So now I have read it too!
I liked it; it is a bit over-written in sections and thus over-long, but generally I enjoy long books. I learned plenty about human hermaphrodites, which caused me to recall that I became interested in genetics back in high school, except then I got a steady boyfriend and my sexual research took place with him. Since I lived in Ann Arbor, MI, for all of my early adult years, I loved that the book is mostly set in Detroit from 1922 to 1975.
What I enjoyed most was the main character. Calliope Stephanides was born a girl with Greek parents and a big fat extended family, but because of a recessive mutation on her fifth chromosome, she turned out to be a boy. As Cali becomes Cal, we learn the entire story of her family from a small Turkish town where Greeks lived in the shadow of oppressive Turks, to how that quirky chromosome showed up and made this character's life a misery.
It is not however a book about misery. It is about large characters, American society, love and coming of age. I now have scenes of joy, despair, humor, sex, shady business, and private girls school indelibly in my mind. Middlesex raised as many questions as it answered and maybe that is why I will never forget it.
I guess everyone in the world had already read this book. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and went on to be an Oprah selection. I even found two copies of it in my house. Finally it was picked as a selection in one of my reading groups. (I am currently in 5 reading groups.) So now I have read it too!
I liked it; it is a bit over-written in sections and thus over-long, but generally I enjoy long books. I learned plenty about human hermaphrodites, which caused me to recall that I became interested in genetics back in high school, except then I got a steady boyfriend and my sexual research took place with him. Since I lived in Ann Arbor, MI, for all of my early adult years, I loved that the book is mostly set in Detroit from 1922 to 1975.
What I enjoyed most was the main character. Calliope Stephanides was born a girl with Greek parents and a big fat extended family, but because of a recessive mutation on her fifth chromosome, she turned out to be a boy. As Cali becomes Cal, we learn the entire story of her family from a small Turkish town where Greeks lived in the shadow of oppressive Turks, to how that quirky chromosome showed up and made this character's life a misery.
It is not however a book about misery. It is about large characters, American society, love and coming of age. I now have scenes of joy, despair, humor, sex, shady business, and private girls school indelibly in my mind. Middlesex raised as many questions as it answered and maybe that is why I will never forget it.
Monday, June 30, 2008
A PERSON OF INTEREST
A Person of Interest, Susan Choi, Viking Penguin, 2008, 356 pp
A "person of interest" is an FBI term meaning someone deemed important to an investigation. Professor Lee, a Japanese immigrant and American citizen for over 30 years, a mathematician in his 60s who has tenure at an insignificant mid-western college, is possibly one of the least interesting persons around. Yet after a bomb explodes in the office next to his, killing a colleague, Professor Lee becomes of interest to the FBI and finds himself a suspect in the eyes of his department, his students and his neighborhood.
He enters a state of extreme fear and anxiety. Susan Choi so expertly details Lee's turmoil that as a reader, I was in that state along with him for the several days I was reading this literary thriller. And literary it is. Long sentences, somewhat deep ideas about math, competition, love, insecurity, the immigrant experience, made for a slow start but I could not stop reading and the pages turned fairly rapidly.
The novel could be called When Bad Things Happen to Ordinary People. No one comes out as a particularly likable person. Lee and his main FBI contact become enmeshed in a curiously symbiotic relationship and completely unexpectedly become heroes, each in his own way. The last 100 pages left me breathless, panting really, and deeply satisfied. As they say in the blurbs, a triumph.
A "person of interest" is an FBI term meaning someone deemed important to an investigation. Professor Lee, a Japanese immigrant and American citizen for over 30 years, a mathematician in his 60s who has tenure at an insignificant mid-western college, is possibly one of the least interesting persons around. Yet after a bomb explodes in the office next to his, killing a colleague, Professor Lee becomes of interest to the FBI and finds himself a suspect in the eyes of his department, his students and his neighborhood.
He enters a state of extreme fear and anxiety. Susan Choi so expertly details Lee's turmoil that as a reader, I was in that state along with him for the several days I was reading this literary thriller. And literary it is. Long sentences, somewhat deep ideas about math, competition, love, insecurity, the immigrant experience, made for a slow start but I could not stop reading and the pages turned fairly rapidly.
The novel could be called When Bad Things Happen to Ordinary People. No one comes out as a particularly likable person. Lee and his main FBI contact become enmeshed in a curiously symbiotic relationship and completely unexpectedly become heroes, each in his own way. The last 100 pages left me breathless, panting really, and deeply satisfied. As they say in the blurbs, a triumph.
I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK
I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron, Alfred A Knopf Inc, 2007, 170 pp
Nora Ephron is famous for her screenplays of "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle", "Michael" and "Bewitched." She is very good at making people laugh as I did, out loud, through much of this collection of essays on getting to be a woman of a certain age.
Though I have no plans to go under the knife, the title essay is all too true about what happens to aging female bodies. "I Hate My Purse", her futile search for a purse that works, pretty much paralleled my own experiences. I loved "Parenting in Three Stages" and my personal favorite "On Rapture" captures the joy of reading.
Funny thing though: like her movies, once I was done I could hardly remember a thing about the book. Just a few bright scenes remain. Perhaps when a writer so closely identifies certain human feelings common to many, it is so similar to what is already in our minds and hearts that there is a canceling out of emotion. More like therapy than art. We discussed this book at one of my reading groups and had hardly anything to say. Well thanks, Nora. That was the cheapest therapy session I ever had.
Nora Ephron is famous for her screenplays of "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle", "Michael" and "Bewitched." She is very good at making people laugh as I did, out loud, through much of this collection of essays on getting to be a woman of a certain age.
Though I have no plans to go under the knife, the title essay is all too true about what happens to aging female bodies. "I Hate My Purse", her futile search for a purse that works, pretty much paralleled my own experiences. I loved "Parenting in Three Stages" and my personal favorite "On Rapture" captures the joy of reading.
Funny thing though: like her movies, once I was done I could hardly remember a thing about the book. Just a few bright scenes remain. Perhaps when a writer so closely identifies certain human feelings common to many, it is so similar to what is already in our minds and hearts that there is a canceling out of emotion. More like therapy than art. We discussed this book at one of my reading groups and had hardly anything to say. Well thanks, Nora. That was the cheapest therapy session I ever had.
Friday, June 27, 2008
RESERVATION NATION
Reservation Nation, David Fuller Cook, Boaz Publishing Company, 2007, 199 pp
This is a priceless little treasure of a book. The narrator is Warren, a young Native American man, who was raised on a reservation in the 50s and 60s. His grandparents brought him up after he lost his parents in a car crash and imparted to him, through stories and example, the truths of what it means to be Indian.
As Warren relates the incidents of his childhood, you meet many of the key characters on the reservation. Some maintain the traditional ways and others struggle with assimilation into the white man's world. It is Warren's grandfather who trains him to recognize his power and his role. Despite tribal politics, continuous betrayals and rip-offs by white government and business, even murder, Grandfather's wisdom brings clarity to Warren's quest for understanding life.
In the final chapter Warren has become The Seed, his Indian name and role. He states the Indian view of the universe and of life. It was deeply moving to me as he said, "The ways of the white man will pass, their influence will fade like the waning moon, because they are founded upon lies." Truth in fiction.
This is a priceless little treasure of a book. The narrator is Warren, a young Native American man, who was raised on a reservation in the 50s and 60s. His grandparents brought him up after he lost his parents in a car crash and imparted to him, through stories and example, the truths of what it means to be Indian.
As Warren relates the incidents of his childhood, you meet many of the key characters on the reservation. Some maintain the traditional ways and others struggle with assimilation into the white man's world. It is Warren's grandfather who trains him to recognize his power and his role. Despite tribal politics, continuous betrayals and rip-offs by white government and business, even murder, Grandfather's wisdom brings clarity to Warren's quest for understanding life.
In the final chapter Warren has become The Seed, his Indian name and role. He states the Indian view of the universe and of life. It was deeply moving to me as he said, "The ways of the white man will pass, their influence will fade like the waning moon, because they are founded upon lies." Truth in fiction.
THE MONSTERS OF TEMPLETON
The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff, Nyperion, 2008, 361 pp
I wish I could say that I loved this book, but I didn't. I was looking forward to it with high expectations because I had read a story by the author in the 2007 Best American Short Stories which just took my breath away.
I think this is an ambitious novel with plenty of elements that I usually like: a young woman who is quirky and intelligent, history, a family tree which figures in the story and a bit of the supernatural. But I found it hard to follow, which is saying a lot because I can follow even the most convoluted novels. I just could not completely believe Willie Upton, the twenty-something heroine, and I could not get a grasp on her mother Vi in such a way as to feel involved with either one.
Willie has gotten herself in a jam and come home from an archeology dig that would have figured in her graduate thesis. She feels she has totally blown it and that her life is ruined. For such an independent and intelligent young woman, she spends the whole book being nasty to the mother she came home to for shelter and being about as silly emotionally as any chick lit heroine. It didn't seem to fit together right.
Getting through the novel was an effort, took way too long for a mere 361 pages and while the reader is supposed to feel that Willie changed and grew, I did not feel that she did. However, due to the short story that introduced me to Lauren Groff and to the large amount of potential I see in the novel, I will certainly read the next one she writes.
(The Monsters of Templeton is available in paperback and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
LOST CITY RADIO
Lost City Radio, Daniel Alarcon, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007, 257 pp
I was attracted to this book by the reviews and by the idea that a radio show called "Lost City Radio" brought separated people and families back together after a decade of civil war in an unnamed South American country. As it turned out, while the story is centered on the radio announcer Norma and her missing husband, it is not really about the show or its results.
The story is about war, displacement of peoples, oppressive government versus rebels and most deeply, about the effects of all this on a marriage and the great love between Norma and Rey. Since this is a novel about South America, the story goes in a South American trajectory, which is so different from the North American story telling tradition. I like this sort of story and after reading much of other such writers, I am beginning to see the influences of it in contemporary North American fiction.
Some readers I know get annoyed by a story that goes back and forth in time, circling round and round itself until all is told. It doesn't bother me. I could say that not a lot happens in Lost City Radio in terms of events, yet much occurs in the lives of the characters. The degree of uncertainty and upheaval portrayed here would most likely do me in and books like this make me realize how stable life is in the United States, how predictable, at least for the middle class. Alarcon writes about all these factors in wonderful prose. I felt the city and the jungle, the terrible fear and instability in these people's lives, the complete unreliability of the government and the news.
Somehow he has written a powerful story in a quiet way. I won't forget it soon.
I was attracted to this book by the reviews and by the idea that a radio show called "Lost City Radio" brought separated people and families back together after a decade of civil war in an unnamed South American country. As it turned out, while the story is centered on the radio announcer Norma and her missing husband, it is not really about the show or its results.
The story is about war, displacement of peoples, oppressive government versus rebels and most deeply, about the effects of all this on a marriage and the great love between Norma and Rey. Since this is a novel about South America, the story goes in a South American trajectory, which is so different from the North American story telling tradition. I like this sort of story and after reading much of other such writers, I am beginning to see the influences of it in contemporary North American fiction.
Some readers I know get annoyed by a story that goes back and forth in time, circling round and round itself until all is told. It doesn't bother me. I could say that not a lot happens in Lost City Radio in terms of events, yet much occurs in the lives of the characters. The degree of uncertainty and upheaval portrayed here would most likely do me in and books like this make me realize how stable life is in the United States, how predictable, at least for the middle class. Alarcon writes about all these factors in wonderful prose. I felt the city and the jungle, the terrible fear and instability in these people's lives, the complete unreliability of the government and the news.
Somehow he has written a powerful story in a quiet way. I won't forget it soon.
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