HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Today is Barbara Kingsolver's birthday. She was born in 1955 and is one of my top three favorite authors, along with Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood. I have read all of her novels, in this order:

The Bean Trees: Read in 1999. I had never heard of her but picked this up on a whim. I felt like she knew my life when I read it. I became a fan for life.

The Poisonwood Bible: Read in 2000. Of course, now that I knew her name, how could I have missed this? EVERYONE was talking about it and no wonder. It is a classic, a masterpiece, and even my husband read it last month and was blown away.

Animal Dreams: Read later in 2000. I probably need to read it again because I think it went over my head. Anyway, not my favorite of hers.

Pigs in Heaven: Read in 2001. It is a sequel to The Bean Trees; she gets a bit more political as she was obviously destined to be.

Prodigal Summer: Also read in 2001. If you are female and do not enjoy this book, we might not be able to be friends.

Then came her non-fiction and I confess I skipped it. Though I did read one or two of her essays in Small Wonder which made me realize she can write about anything and be wonderful.

The Lacuna: After making me wait for nine years, I read it before it was released in 2009, because I got to review it for BookBrowse. I believe she surpassed even The Poisonwood Bible with this one.

Which ones have you read? Which is your most loved?

GOOD NEWS: She has a new novel coming out in November of this year: Flight Behavior. I cannot wait. What a great reading year 2012 is turning out to be. Toni Morrison has a new novel coming out in May: Home.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARBARA KINGSOLVER!

BEEZUS AND RAMONA

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Beezus and Ramona, Beverly Cleary, William Morrow and Company, 1955, 159 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Beezus and Ramona have been characters in some of Cleary's earlier books about Henry Huggins. Now they get a whole book of their own.

It is a story of a nine-year-old girl whose biggest problem is her younger sister, four-year-old Ramona. I could relate to Beezus because I had a younger sister who was quite different from Ramona but who still made me crazy sometimes.

To put it mildly, Ramona has a lot of energy, a strong will and something adults call imagination. Beezus is often called upon to watch her little sister and has to take her out in the neighborhood. She has to read to Ramona and take her to the library. She has to take her along to the recreation center, where Ramona is supposed to stay on the playground while Beezus has art class. She has to babysit her while their mother does errands. None of these things seem to go well for Beezus.

But when Ramona begins to ruin Beezus' birthday, it all becomes too much. Being a good obedient girl, Beezus finds her special day spoiled by the guilty feeling that she just does not love her little sister the way she thinks she should.

I never read this when I was nine, but I wish I had. It might have saved me hours of guilt.


(Beezus and Ramona is available on the children's shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore click on the cover image above.)

TIME OUT OF JOINT

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Time Out of Joint, Philip K Dick, J B Lippincott, 1959, 255 pp

When I was a reckless, drug-taking hippie, I must have been hanging out with the wrong people. How else can I explain that I never heard of Philip K Dick just when I needed him the most?

I have only recently begun to read his heady concoction of science fiction mixed with a sort of Zen spirituality. The message in this somewhat disjointed novel is that one can only life safely in the science fictional universe called "reality" if one is half asleep and gullible as hell.

Ragle Gumm is not quite in step with "reality." He is a 46-year-old man who lives with his married sister and makes his living as the long-standing champion of a newspaper puzzle contest. Did I mention that he has hallucinations?

Eventually he finds out what's really going on, all of which is made clear in the last ten pages. Also made clear is the author's true message: When Ragle Gumm took his first journey into space, "as he left Earth, he passed from that experience to another, the experience of true freedom. It answered, for him, a need that he had never been aware of. A deep restless yearning under the surface, always there in him...but not articulated. The need to travel on. To migrate."

As I lay on my bed, recovering from the flu and waiting for spring to truly arrive, I read those words and they felt like a correct diagnosis for the cause of my malaise.


(Time Out of Joint is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THE GOOD CONSCIENCE

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The Good Conscience, Carlos Fuentes, Ivan Obolensky Inc, 1961 (Spanish edition 1959), 148 pp

Suppose your father is the black sheep in his Mexican bourgeois family and he marries a lower class woman, who becomes your mother. Then your father's sister, who has dutifully married a suitable but impotent man, decides to take you and raise you as her own, relegating your father to the background and your mother back to the slums. You are brought up in Catholic piety close to the bosom of your aunt who is called Mama Asuncion. As you reach puberty you begin to figure out who's who in your home.

So Jaime Ceballos, sole heir to the family's wealth, spends his teens in secret rebellion and religious confusion. The whole story of this novel is the price Jaime must pay to grow up into a young man with a "good conscience."

The tale of an idealistic youth being won back into the fold of respectable, if essentially dishonest family tradition, is not new nor is it confined to any particular culture. What stands out in Fuentes's second novel is the vivid depiction of both Jaime's inner life and the environment of a provincial Mexican city.

The dangerous brew of Spanish descendants, Catholicism, native Indians, and class warfare, produces a colorful yet cautionary example of the ways nothing ever changes but nothing stays the same.


(The Good Conscience is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE

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The Invisible Bridge, Julie Orringer, Alfred A Knopf, 2010, 758 pp

I would characterize Julie Orringer's tome of a novel as comfort reading for women who like historical fiction infused with romance. I used to love this type of novel. It is big, fat, and long; set in Paris and Budapest; filled with richly developed characters one can love; written in a smoothly readable style.

Now in my curmudgeonly late middle-age, I found myself alternately laughing or growling at each romantic moment. It is WWII, the Jews are getting their worst treatment in history, and everyone's lives are severely disrupted. There is hunger, death, fear, and unbelievable loss. Perhaps it is true that love could make everything less horrible but I don't completely buy it.

I have read lots of WWII fiction, Lord knows, in My Big Fat Reading Project. I had not read any so far set in Hungary so that was a new perspective. I didn't mind reading all those pages except it was for a reading group and therefore I had a deadline for finishing it. (I always finish reading group books, mostly to set a good example and also so I can speak intelligently about the book.)

The most telling thing is, I didn't make it to the meeting. I was pretty sure most of the ladies in the group would say they loved it, giving me the choices of either not saying much or being the lone dissenter.


(The Invisible Bridge is available on the shelf in paperback or by order in eBook from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

TETE A TETE

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Tete A Tete (The Tumultuous Lives & Loves of Simone de Beauvoir & Jean Paul Sartre), Hazel Rowley, HarperCollins Publishers, 2005, 353 pp

I have been abducted! The tale goes like this: Two years ago I read Beauvoir's incredible account of her investigations into womanhood: The Second Sex. I had already read her four novels: She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal, and The Mandarins. The novels were intriguing but The Second Sex tempered my feminism in ways that changed me forever.

Last month I acquired a copy of a memoir by Claude Lanzmann (The Patagonian Hare) with the agreement that I would review it for BookBrowse. How could I turn this book down after learning that Lanzmann was one of Beauvoir's lovers and in fact had lived with her from 1952 to 1959? Even though she was in an intimate relationship with Jean Paul Sartre from 1929 until his death in 1980, they never lived together.

My only problem was I knew nothing of Lanzmann. I had read Beauvoir's first volume of autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, but it ends in 1929 just as she first meets Sartre. I knew Beauvoir as a novelist, as a young girl up to her 20th year and as a feminist philosopher but not as a grown woman. It may seem odd to some but for me I could only approach the Lanzmann memoir from the world of Simone de Beauvoir.

I made myself a reading list. I already had Tete A Tete on my own book shelves so that went to the top of the list. Hazel Rowley was an accomplished biographer when she decided to tackle this dual biography. She published Christina Stead: A Biography in 1994, followed by Richard Wright: The Life and Times in 2001. Unlike Deirdre Bair, whose Beauvoir biography was published in 1990 and who had interviewed her subject many times between 1981 and 1986, Rowley worked from Beauvoir and Sartre's letters as well as interviews with their still living lovers and associates. (And isn't it amazing how many viewpoints it takes to encompass these larger than life figures?)

Tete A Tete is fascinating, addictive, and revealing. Rowley says, in the interview at the back of the Harper Perennial paperback edition, that she did not want to write another big fat doorstop of a book on this famous couple. "The answer, I realized, was selectivity. I had to trim my narrative with a sharp razor: sublime detail, but no superfluous detail."

She accomplished her goal beautifully. I tore through pages in which both of these passionate intellectuals came to life as persons with high ideals yet sometimes petty natures, who did their best to live by their ideals as they personified their natures. Beauvoir and Sartre, from the first hours of their relationship, vowed to tell each other everything and kept that vow for over 30 years.

All of Beauvoir's novels are fictionalized accounts of her own affairs: romantic, philosophical, and political. Her memoirs are partial revelations because she chose not to hurt anyone who was still alive when she wrote them. But in their letters, they told all, so that Hazel Rowely could tell us more, not excusing them but giving a picture of two hardworking, prolific public intellectuals who developed their views by living them.

By the end of the book, having been through all the relationships of both, the secrets, the lies, the passion and the heartbreaks, the highs and lows of career, the travel, disillusionment, aging, and death, I was weeping as uncontrollably as Beauvoir often did. But I was still hungry for more. I opened Beauvoir's second volume of memoirs, The Prime of Life and continued to read.


(Tete A Tete is available in hardcover, paperback or eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.
To find it at your nearest Indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THE PARIS WIFE

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The Paris Wife, Paula McLain, Ballantine Books, 2011, 314 pp

I was so curious to read this novel about Ernest Hemingway's first wife. Not that I am a big Hemingway fan; I only like For Whom the Bell Tolls. The rest of his novels left me either unimpressed or filled with something between anger and disgust. Sacrilege I know, but that is the way of it.

Hadley Richardson, the wife, got what she deserved in my opinion. She comes across as far too innocent, too accommodating. She tried to turn her man into a faithful and dependable husband and as it became obvious that was not going to happen, she went on hoping. In the novel, when she finally left him, it came as a long overdue relief.

Reading about all the other authors and artists was pretty much a People Magazine-type experience. F Scott Fitzgerald did it much better in The Beautiful and the Damned. Somehow Nancy Horan's Loving Frank, though a similar tale, was exciting, tragic, even inspiring. I was expecting the same from The Paris Wife but did not get it. I am not sure if that was due to Hadley or Paula McLain; probably a bit of both.

Women beware when you decide to stand by your man if he is a self-absorbed, troubled genius. Know yourself, keep some life of your own, don't let him get away with being a jerk or cut him loose before it is too late. I mean, what do you suppose would happen if you behaved in the ways these men do? Only Simone de Beauvoir managed that and even she had her troubles.


(The Paris Wife is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

SALVAGE THE BONES

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Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward, Bloomsbury USA, 2011, 258 pp

Because Jesmyn Ward's Katrina novel won the National Book Award and is a contender in the Tournament of Books, it has been widely reviewed, mostly favorably. So I won't go into plot or spend any of our valuable time rehashing what others have already said.

My reading experience of Salvage the Bones was mixed. I certainly got involved with the story and the characters. She put me into their world and made me care what would happen to them as she also personalized the Katrina experience. But something kept jarring my attention.

For days after finishing I found myself thinking about the book and knew that I had been emotionally affected. It was during these moments of reliving the story that I figured out what had bothered me.

Ms Ward chose to have the fifteen-year-old Esch tell us what happened during the twelve days of Katrina. When Esch speaks to her brothers, father, and friends in the book's dialogue, she sounds like an impoverished Black teen from a small Mississippi town. But when she is narrating to the reader she sounds like a well-educated writer and professor of creative writing; she sounds like Jesmyn Ward instead of Esch.

To get technical, I wonder why our author wrote her novel in the first person narrative mode instead of the third person limited. In fact, she mixed the two, while staying in first person and thus diluted my reading pleasure.

Otherwise, I think Salvage the Bones is a prizeworthy and important novel for giving us one of the stories that should accompany all those images we saw on the news feeds in 2005.


(Salvage the Bones is available in hardcover, 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.)

SAN FRANCISCO BOY

San Francisco Boy, Lois Lenski, J B Lippincott Company, 1955, 176 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Felix is a Chinese boy of ten or eleven living in San Franciso's Chinatown with his sister Mei Gwen who is nine and his six-year-old twin brothers Frankie and Freddie. We don't know why the boys have American names and the girl has a combination name, though from other books I've read, it was common in the 1950s for Asian immigrants to give American names to their children.

Felix can do pretty much what he likes after school but Mei Gwen has to watch over the twins. Their mother works in a jeans factory (more like a sweat shop) and Mei Gwen goes there after school to babysit the little kids who are brought to work by their moms. The father of the family is head cook at a restaurant.

After some free time, Felix must go to Chinese school in the late afternoon and arrives at home very late. He is unhappy in the city and yearns for the tiny rural town of Alameda where the family lived when he was very young. Mei Gwen has grown up in the city and has friends of all nationalities for blocks around.

Though the story follows the usual Lois Lenski arc, it is the most exotic of her books due to the location and subject matter. Through the children we get a tour of the key San Francisco sights and the relation of Chinese to other nationalities there.

Lenski presents these people with her customary grace and tolerance of the differences in people. Her love of children and her fascination with the growing up process is palpable in San Francisco Boy. I was captivated on every page.


(San Francisco Boy is out of print and best found in libraries or from used book sellers.)

THE MAGIC BARREL

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The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1959, 214 pp

I am not particularly a fan of short stories. I like novels because they go on long enough for me to sink into the story, the characters, the ideas. When I read a whole book of short stories, I feel I am getting interrupted too often and become annoyed. But Bernard Malamud, whose first two novels have been impressive and made me a fan, won the National Book Award for this collection in 1959, making it "required reading" on my list for that year. Sometimes My Big Fat Reading Project feels like a college syllabus; in fact it is a self-created one, making it a reading college with one student where the professors are all authors so I don't mind.

As it turned out, the stories in The Magic Barrel were amazing. I was fully engaged from the first page and finished the collection feeling satisfied by each story. Because they were not related except for their variations on the theme of Jewish life in America, instead of a buffet I felt I was having a series of complete meals created by a versatile chef.

I was raised in a Lutheran family though I gravitated to Jewish kids as I was growing up. While I can't say having those friends make me any kind of expert on what it means to be Jewish, I suppose I developed an affinity for Jews and escaped the peril of seeing a Jewish person as part of a generality or stereotype.

I say this because great writing about an aspect of life, such as religious or national or racial origins, also dispels stereotypes and enriches the understanding of a reader who is not a member of that religion, nation or race. I think what Malamud does that is so powerful is give the reader the experience of being Jewish through the individual consciousnesses of his characters and thereby overcomes the sense of otherness which prejudice and oppression drape over such individuals. He performs his own magic.


(The Magic Barrel 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,)

ARCADIA

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Arcadia, Lauren Groff, Hyperion, 2012, 289 pp

This book is amazing! Because I had reservations about her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, I was wary but Lauren Groff has exceeded the promise I felt in one of her early short stories and has broken the spell of the sophomore novel curse.

Arcadia is a hippie commune in upstate New York. The founders spent some time as nomads, traveling around the country in a calvalcade of broken down trucks and vans, until one of the members inherited the New York property. How we did relive the caveman history back in the day.

The somewhat hapless but utterly endearing hero is Bit, born soon after the group arrived at Arcadia, when they still lived in their vehicles and in tents. He was always small and got his name, Little Bit, from the charismatic but cracked musician Handy, around whom the group revolved. Bit's mother is Hannah, who suffers from depression. His father Abe, one of the "leaders" in a leaderless community, is strong, tireless and the kind of guy who gave hippies a good name; the kind we all tried to be.

Yes, I was a hippie, from 1969 to 1973. Along with my first husband, we made our trip to California in an Econoline van, camping, smoking weed and hash, eating vegetarian food, and attempting to create a Free School in San Francisco. Later we had two sons, started the first Macrobiotic food store in Ann Arbor, MI and lived communally with friends.

So I know that what goes on in Arcadia is true, not exaggerated and certainly not watered down. Lauren Groff writes like the daughter of hippies, which she very well may be, but unlike many hippie progeny, she is not bitter or resentful or mocking. She has captured the spirit, the underlying philosophy and purpose of that segment of the generation who though we had invented a counter-culture.

When Bit is a young teen, Arcadia comes apart. He is thrust into the "outside" basically grieving for what had seemed to him a paradise and for Helle, the love of his life, who is the daughter of Handy and a very fucked up young lady. The rest of the novel is about how he survives, copes, raises a daughter, and tries to follow the dream as he saw it.

This is a sad, sad book. As sad as a Child ballad, as sad as the story of mankind, as sad as the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The writing is so beautiful it hurts. Bit's life is a tragedy but not a hopeless one. Many from Arcadia were ruined but I guess not any more than the percentage of ruined people who come out of any generation, any social strata, any cult, any war.

There will always be survivors who hold to the fundamental truths and do their best to live by them, come what may. Bit is a bit like Jesus, a bit like Job, a bit like any true hero, and a bit like you and me.

I suppose there will be critics, gainsayers and readers who don't get it, but if Arcadia is not one of the most talked about novels of 2012, I will be surprised. Actually, I will be bummed. Please read it and talk among yourselves or leave your comments here.


(Arcadia is available in hardcover and eBook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THE CAVE

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The Cave, Robert Penn Warren, Random House, 1959, 403 pp

Robert Penn Warren is of course best known for his 1946 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All The King's Men, probably his best and a hard one to top. He rather fell out of favor with critics after that, but I have enjoyed all his novels as I've read them. He has that essence that all great Southern novelists have, getting down deep and dirty into the souls of the hill people, and the effects of poverty, loneliness, and stature either lost or never gained.

The Cave takes place in a small Tennessee town during the 1950s, a place where modern life may come in slowly but come in it does. Dominating the town is a hard-living, uproarious man who hunted bear, chased women, played guitar and drank whiskey until he lost his heart to a fine young woman. Jack Harrick then gave up his wild ways, got baptized by his best childhood friend, a preacher, settled down to his business as a blacksmith, and did his best to raise two sons. His best was not good enough.

When the elder son, Jasper, gets lost in the caves, the search for him brings out the worst in everyone living in Johnson, TN. Greed, power, fame, and a desperate need to escape take over its people and Robert Penn Warren lays bare both the individual and collective emotions of his characters.

At first the story felt awkwardly told and I could not begin to guess where he was going with it. Eventually though, the characters, their stories, their entanglements emerged and converged and drew me into the spell of his writing. I resonated and stumbled around with these people in a fever-like state that is so much like real life and so little like much of the current writing that issues forth from MFA grads.

The Cave is like a good, old fashioned country song. It tells us how the various characteristics and quirks of American life combine in a part of the nation which still has its own flavor to this day. Most definitely a worthwhile read.


(The Cave is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

GATHERING OF WATERS

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Gathering of Waters, Bernice McFadden, Akashic Books, 2012, 252 pp

"Both the Native man and the African believed in animism, which is the idea that souls inhabit all objects, living things, and even phenomena. When objects are destroyed and bodies perish, the souls flit off in search of a new home."

When I read this quote in the early pages of Gathering of Waters, I was prepared to love the book. That did not quite happen, though I mostly enjoyed reading it. The trouble for me was an unevenness of intensity in the story, because the subject matter is intense, violent, and provocative.

The narrator is a place: Money, Mississippi is a small town in the delta, first built by real estate developers in 1900 and always racially divided. Through the generations of its residents, a single soul returns over and over. She is wanton, without conscience, as well as destructive. In 1955 comes the real incident culminating in the hanging of Emmett Till. The final pages are set during Hurricane Katrina.

I felt there were too many times when the narrative slowed or flattened out into small day by day details. The writing suffered from a subdued emotional tone.

Other than that, the premise and construction are not quite like anything else I've read. Both races have admirable and despicable characters. I could feel the Toni Morrison influence and tribute throughout. Because of these qualities and because she has a moral vision I found intriguing, I will read more Bernice McFadden.


(Gathering of Waters is available in hardcover or paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

GODS WITHOUT MEN

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Gods Without Men, Hari Kunzru, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 384 pp

What could a UFO hippie cult, a British rock star, a Spanish Franciscan priest, the son of a Sikh and his autistic son have in common? The Mohave Desert, for one thing. A search for meaning that connects the earthbound physical plane with the spiritual, for another. In his fourth novel, Hari Kunzru confronts head on the quandries of modern life while walking a fine line between irony and emotion, between serious and lighthearted, without missing a step.

He opens with a piece of flash fiction involving Coyote, Trickster of the World, attempting to make crystal meth. With a little help from his friends Cottontail Rabbit, Gila Monster, and Southern Fox, Coyote succeeds. The author succeeds in purveying a recipe for meth right there in his novel. Dangerous!

Jumping frenetically around in time with incidents from 1947 to 2008 to 1778 to 1958 to 1969 to 1920 and so on, Kunzru reveals the power of a god-like force, emanating from a rock formation called The Pinnacles, to a variety of characters. These people share the quality of standing to one degree or another outside what would be thought of as normal or mainstream.

When any author goes after the big ideas he or she has to anchor the story somewhere. Kunzru anchors his by means of these characters. Jaz Matharu, a math whiz, successful beyond his wildest dreams in terms of income and marriage, carries with him the fatal flaw of personal uncertainty and the Achilles heel of his origins. An American born son of Sikh immigrants, Jaz married Lisa, a stunning beauty of white American liberal sentiments and together they produced the autistic Raj. By the age of four, the child has ruined the idyllic love and life of this New York City couple, driving a deep wedge between their cultural differences.

The cult members, the rock star, the priest and other characters frame the story. The desert itself serves as another anchor. Even readers who have never experienced the searing desolate miles of the Southwestern American desert will feel its eerie power and sense the unease found there.

While on vacation in the Mojave, Jaz and his wife intersect with the history and characters already introduced in the story. When little Raj disappears in the midst of his parents' marital meltdown, the power and disquiet of the location become the forces that will be either the destruction or the salvation of their family. I found it fitting that Kunzru left me wondering whether destruction or salvation was the result of these forces in the final chapter.

This is not a nice, good family saga about people working out their issues. Nor is it a neatly wrapped up story with a hopeful ending. It is as full of strange goings on as is daily life in the 21st century. Along with a large dose of entertainment, Kunzru made me look around and wonder through a different lens than I usually employ.


(Gods Without Men is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson, Grove Press, 2011, 230 pp

RELEASED IN US BOOKSTORES TODAY

The title of this compulsively readable memoir is a direct quote from Jeanette Winterson's adoptive mother. Though I am sure my mother wanted me to be happy and certainly she was a good deal more sane than Mrs Winterson, the motherly quote felt like something that lurked behind my mom's parenting rationale.

I've not read Jeanette Winterson's fiction. Her novels are on a list I never seem to get to; a list that includes Octavia Butler and early novels by Jane Smiley and Hilary Mantel. Like many voracious readers, my unread lists haunt me.

But now, though apparently her first, award-winning novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, is a fictional account of Winterson's early life and covers some of the same life experiences as the memoir, my determination to read her is renewed. Her writing is exquisite. She handles painful emotion with a searing gaze mixed with wit. So English, I know. Playing down the horrific with a deadpan sardonic stoicism. But I also felt a huge heart beating.

Left out on a frigid front stoop overnight, being locked in the coal hole, having her secreted but discovered books burned, are incidents out of Dickens, but they made her a fierce fighter and a crusader on a quest for happiness.

It seems that adopted kids looking for the hidden birth mother are everywhere these days. Jeanette's experience is familiar territory including the likelihood of disappointment once Mum is found. In this case, Mrs Winterson being the over-the-top witch that she was, two mothers turned out to be possibly too much. The message seems to be that not many of us get the mothering we crave, no matter what.

I loved the portrait that emerged here: a survivor of abuse, poverty, and the sexual orientation wars, whose love of reading and refusal to give in did in fact bring to her about as much happiness as anyone gets in life. If you are female and/or adopted and/or gay, or just a "normal" female, you need to read this.

HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE

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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu, Pantheon, 2010, 234 pp

Here is another novel I chose because of the title. I had fun reading this story. More than anything it reminded me of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Charles Yu (yes, the main character shares the author's name) is a time machine repairman, sort of a Cable Guy of time machines. He is searching for his father who he thinks is lost in time, but Charles himself is caught in a time loop. He feels doomed to keep repeating a certain period of his life as he makes the same mistakes over and over.

So instead of a tessaract, he has his weird time loop. Instead of Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which, he has TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a virtual dog. They co-exist in a box the size of a refrigerator set sideways, called the TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device. This thing runs on "chronodiegetical technology," a made-up term for something that generates science fictional experiences. It is all very clever, like a creation Michael Chabon's kids would make by combining different Lego sets.

Despite all the intriguing whatchamacallits, the real story is about a boy who grew up trying to assist his dad, an amateur inventor of time travel devices who epically failed and then disappeared. Charles harbors a deep sense of guilt and regret about his dad, leading the author to pursue the cosmic question of how to escape the results of failure.

I personally know only one other person who has read the book and she purely hated it. (We are reading buddies who don't always like the same books but we can nerd out talking about books for hours. We have our own time machine.) She thought it had no plot and threw her copy against a wall. I can understand this reaction but mine was a strong desire to meet Charles Yu, the author that is.

The closest I could come to that was reading interviews with him (just google Charles Yu writer.) He is a lawyer by day, also a husband and father of two small children, and he lives in LA! Maybe I will meet him someday.


(How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe 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.)

DEAR AND GLORIOUS PHYSICIAN

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Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell, Doubleday and Company, 1959, 562 pp

Can you be mad at someone who is dead? Well, I suppose so. I am mad at Taylor Caldwell because it took me so long to read this book. It was the #7 bestseller of 1959. I have read a fair share of what I call "Jesus books" in My Big Fat Reading Project so far. The tone in these books is usually a similar one of wonder and faith but after a while you see that it is all conjecture because no one writing these books was there. The Gospels in the Bible are I guess the closest thing to a true account.

Anyway, Jesus is just alright with me. I was raised to believe that he loved me; helpful to a child when she feels no one else does. Some of the teachings of Jesus still inform the way I treat others when I am acting in a manner that makes me respect myself: loving my friends, family, and enemies; practicing forgiveness; standing up in opposition to war; etc. But I am pretty much over the historical novels about him.

Dear and Glorious Physician is the story of how Lucanus, son of freed Greek slaves, became Saint Luke. Caldwell worked on the book for decades. Her descriptions of ancient Greece, Rome, Alexandria, and the Holy Land are nicely done, but much too frequent. While reading this novel, I learned to skim.

I also admired the passages showing Luke's healing powers. Though he is pictured as a man with an almost mystical ability to heal the sick, he could not heal his own broken heart and bitterness toward God after the death of the first woman he loved. It took the message of Jesus to do that.

Another interesting historical aspect was the way Caldwell traced the many predictions concerning Jesus the Messiah, showing that philosophers and mystics of all stripes were aware of these prophecies.

Overall it was a mixed reading experience. Some parts gripped me and sped by. Others were tedious and felt endless.

I came across a great interview with Taylor Caldwell when she was in her seventies and still writing bestsellers. (I have five more to go in the next decade of the reading plan.) She was wonderfully crotchety and inconsistent--I heard the voice I sometimes hear in her books. She took her work seriously and admitted that it was grueling hard work. She made a lot of money from it and was never financially dependent on a man though she was married many times. What a woman!


(Dear and Glorious Physician is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN

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The Summer Without Men, Siri Hustvedt, Picador, 2011, 182 pp

I don't much pick up books because of their covers, but I am often seduced by a title, as with this short but smart novel by Siri Hustvedt. I had read an earlier novel of hers, What I Loved, which left me shaking with awe.

Hustvedt is able to bore right down to the emotional impact people have on each other. She is self-assured on many other topics as well: psychology, art, poetry, and as it turns out in The Summer Without Men, the inner life of teenage girls.

Mia Fredrickson is a poet, published but not particularly successful, married to a self-absorbed and successful neuroscientist. He goes all midlife crisis on her after 30 years of marriage and calls for a "pause" while he has an affair with a much younger woman.

First sentence: "Sometime after he said the word pause, I went mad and landed in the hospital." This is what I like about Hustvedt. When her characters get upset, they don't go halfway. She is diagnosed with Brief Psychotic Disorder, meaning she was only temporarily crazy, but after being released from the hospital, decides to spend the summer back in her small Minnesota hometown.

Somehow Hustvedt manages to combine a wry humor (something along the lines of Nora Ephron) with some deep psychological insight and a good dose of hard-line feminism. The mix creates a moving meditation on womanhood from the stages of budding sexuality through young motherhood to mature (sort of) woman and all the way to widows in assisted living.

Mia is no slouch and she is definitely not airy-fairy. As she sorts through emotion, the meaning of love, the pitfalls of marriage and the weaknesses of men, she made me happy to be female but even happier to be a reader.


(The Summer Without Men is available in paperback and ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

HENRY AND RIBSY

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Henry and Ribsy, Beverly Cleary, William Morrow & Company, 1954, 192 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

This was the best book about Henry Huggins so far. Ribsy, Henry's dog, has been getting in trouble lately. Henry wants to go fishing with his dad. The deal is if Henry can keep Ribsy out of trouble for several weeks, he can go fishing.

It is hard, Beezus helps Henry, but Ramona is worse than Ribsy. All the incidents are hilarious as the kids manage to keep Ribsy in line. The pace in this book is relentless.

Then comes the fishing trip with all the great descriptions of the Oregon coast along with the details about how much of a fishing trip consists of discomfort and boredom. Henry as usual is in competition with Scooter.

The climax of the fishing trip is so exciting. I was reading as fast as I could. Henry and Ribsy is the standout of the collection up to this point.


(There are currently four copies of Henry and Ribsy on hand in paperback at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

FREE FALL

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Free Fall, William Golding, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1959, 253 pp

I finished this book three weeks ago. I kept no notes as I read it and was enduring various major family and physical issues at the time. All I remember is that it moved me, it spoke to me. It was his most accessible book so far (I am reading Golding's books in the order that he wrote them.)

A man who was born in poverty to a mother supporting herself by prostitution, who found himself an orphan at five years old or so, who became a successful painter, looks back over his life. He wants to discover when he lost his freedom, his power of choice.

What was extremely interesting to me was that he survived all manner of horrific incidents but though in his adulthood he had managed to achieve the usual security one strives to accomplish, he had lost his personal freedom.

Well, if that isn't the story of life, I don't know what is. I have also discovered through my reading project that it was THE major concern of 1950s literature.


(Free Fall is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) To find it at your nearest indie store, click on the cover image above)

THE GOLDEN MEAN

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The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon, Alfred A Knopf, 2010, 288 pp

This was just great. A novel about Aristotle during his years as tutor of a teenaged Alexander the Great. Annabel Lyon is yet another wonderful Canadian author.

Finishing The Life of Greece by Will Durant just two weeks prior was the best preparation for a good deep reading experience. After all, these two characters loomed large in Greek history and had far reaching effects throughout the ancient Greek world.

Durant gave his signature balanced account of political, philosophical and social life in The Life of Greece, but Annabel Lyon brought the lens in even closer by including close ups of the women. Aristotle's wife was a former concubine gifted to him by a Persian ruler. The first paragraph of Chapter One, the first sentence:
"The rain falls in black cords, lashing my animals, my men, and my wife, Pythias, who last night lay with her legs spread while I took notes on the mouth of her sex."

Yes, first person. Aristotle tells the story from his scientific, philosophical Grecian mind. He married Pythias, he thirty-seven, she fifteen, and ravished her night after night. "I tried to make it up to her with kindness. I treated her with courtliness, gave her money, addressed her softly, spoke to her of my work." Alas, she is frigid but takes care of her husband with an insightful hand. He is prone to depression, a bit bipolar.

Alexander had close ties with his mother, who would have babied him into obscurity had it not been for his hard-fighting, ruthless father, King Philip of Macedon. Aristotle perceives the conflict laid in by the parents and does his best to prepare Alexander for the life ahead of him; to instill some wisdom and reasoning power as a balance to the young conqueror's intense physical energy and will to rule the world.

On it goes. Despite his intelligence and insatiable curiosity, the philosopher never quite achieved his dreams, which included teaching at Plato's school in Athens. But oh what exhilarating times he lived in, what out-sized historical figures he influenced!

Interesting that Mary Renault wrote Fire From Heaven (1969), a novel about Aristotle from Alexander's perspective. Now fifty years later Annabel Lyon turns the perspective around. I just love smart women.


(The Golden Mean is available in paperback and ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)

THIRTEEN REASONS WHY

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Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher, Razorbill, 2007, 288 pp

I put off reading this story of teen suicide for five years. For over a year, it was one of the hottest YA sellers in the bookstore where I used to work. I just wasn't sure I could deal with the subject matter. I'm still not sure about that (I have some deeply ingrained feeling that suicide is taboo) but I am sure this is a masterful novel.

Hannah Baker, new girl in small town, gets bullied in subtle, almost psychological ways right from the first few weeks of high school. Actually it begins with teasing and I remember how emotionally painful it was to be teased by male classmates and then have certain girls join in.

Hannah is not weak, not even all that innocent. She is just dreaming about boys and friends and the usual things young teen girls dream about. The bottom line is that she has no one to talk to; no best friend, no boy friend, parents distracted by money troubles. When she goes to a counselor (male) at school for help after what amounted to rape, he lets her down in the worst possible way.

I was not crazy about the structure. The 13 reasons are recorded by Hannah on seven cassette tapes, one reason per side. By a clever ruse, she makes sure each person who either tormented her or failed her is compelled to listen to the tapes after her death.

Clay Jenson had a crush on Hannah but his insecurities prevented him from getting close to her. The book follows Clay through a day and night as he listens to the tapes and fills in his back story while Hannah tells hers.

The structure seemed a bit too forced, a miffed attempt by the author to be clever, but if I had been 15 or 16 when I read the book, I would have been enthralled. The overly melodramatic mood, the revengeful tone of Hannah's tapes (is suicide a form of revenge? I thought it was inspired by apathy) and Clay's extremely dense but grief-stricken attitude all made me cringe.

Yet I could not stop reading. In fact I stayed up all night with Clay, to find out all thirteen reasons and to see the bullies get what they deserved.


(Thirteen Reasons Why is available in paperback on the YA shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie store, click on the cover image above.)

LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL

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Last Night in Montreal, Emily St John Mandel, Unbridled Books, 2009, 247 pp

Those Canadian novelists are something, especially the women. This stunning novel is the first from Emily St John Mandel, born in British Columbia.

Lilia is a young woman compelled to travel. After a certain short amount of time in any given location, she must move on, not so much because she wants to leave but because she needs to go. Like any compulsion, the reason for it is lost to Lilia in a cloud of amnesia.

The novel opens on a day when she has just left a man who loved her, who accepted that she would not reveal her mysteries. Since this entire story is a mystery, we are drawn right in by the bereft puzzlement suffered by Eli, a frustrated grad student unable to complete his thesis on endangered languages.

Eventually Eli goes in search of Lilia and her story is revealed: abusive insane mother, rescuing father, a life on the road, a detective in pursuit. A horrific story of alienation and frustrated dreams emerges, centered on a woman who does not remember the defining incident of her life.

Mandel's writing is a crystal clear style of unpretentious storytelling. She could write a page-turning thriller, and in a sense she has, but it is the characters and their relationships that thrill. The feeling is almost gothic but the lives are embedded in our times. Daphne du Maurier reincarnated?

Near the end, when you know almost everything, all you want to know is will Lilia and Eli find each other again?

OTIS SPOFFORD

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Otis Spofford, Beverly Cleary, William Morrow and Company, 1953, 191 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

Otis Spofford is the "bad boy" in the neighborhood. His mother is a single parent, the ballet teacher of the town, and is not home much. He first appeared in Ellen Tebbits, where he was fond of tormenting Ellen.

In this volume he gets his own story and is introduced like this: "There was nothing Otis Spofford liked better than stirring up a little excitement." He proceeds to stir up trouble at school and in the neighborhood but always weasels his way out. He clearly is in need of attention.

Eventually he meets his match when one of Ellen's friends gets her to stand up to him. (Otis has been chasing Ellen on the way to school and indulging in other torments.) Ellen gets him good and he pays a mighty price, but in the end the balance of power shifts only a small amount.

The book left me feeling uneasy. In one way it was true to its times, because kids mainly had to work out their troubles with each other on their own in those days. These days with the huge amount of attention on bullying, Otis looks unrealistically innocent. But Cleary does present an example of how to fight back.


(Otis Spofford is on the children's shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it in your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.

THE CONFUSION

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The Confusion, Neal Stephenson, William Morrow, 2004, 815 pp

I remember like it was yesterday when I first read Neal Stephenson. I learned about him from a lit blog in 2004 when I had started reading blogs but had not yet started my own. I read Snow Crash (1992) and was blown away. He opened up a whole new world of reading for me called "cyber punk" and led me to William Gibson and on from there.

I have read Stephenson's books in the order he wrote them: The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver. The only glitch is that his books are so long and take me over a week to read. I never seem to catch up. Every time a new Stephenson comes out (Reamde came out last September) I read another one, but I am still behind by three.

Cryptonomicon (1999) was his first venture into the past, with part of the action taking place in the present, being the 1990s at that point, and the remainder during World War II. The infamous Bobby Shaftoe makes his first appearance.

Then in 2003 came Quicksilver (the first volume of a trilogy, The Baroque Cycle.) These books are set in the 1600s. We meet the original Bobby Shaftoe, aka King of the Vagabonds, aka Half-cocked Jack, due to an unfortunate incident involving his cock. We also meet the indomitable Eliza, Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Louis XIV, and a lesser known member of the Royal Society, Daniel Waterhouse, whose descendant is a major player in Crytonomicon.

I got to meet Neal Stephenson once, the year that Books Expo America was held in Los Angeles. I blurted out garbled gushing phrases about what a big fan I was and got an autographed copy of Anathem. I will read that one of these days. He is a tiny, slim guy with no hair on his head but a dark beard on his face. He exudes a calm intelligence and is possessed of a shy nature. Hard to believe that he can hold all that he knows in his head--proof to me that the mind is not the brain.

So The Confusion is volume two of The Baroque Cycle. In 815 pages the story moves along a mere four years. Eliza has her tale of woes and triumphs centered in the court of Louis XIV; alternating chapters follow Bobby Shaftoe and his pirate adventures from Spain to Mexico to the Middle East to India and back to England.

Though the volume is packed with action, adventure, sorrow, and history, it seemed just a tad slow compared to Stephenson's earlier books. However, it has been four years since I read Quicksilver. I do remember in each earlier book times when I felt held back by his torrents of words.

I think he is laying a strong and sturdy foundation that will support the conclusions he comes to in the final volume, The System of the World. While these books are hyper-active historical fiction, they are also a look at the foundations of the political, monetary, and scientific issues we now live and grapple with in our daily lives. Never have I had so much fun learning history.


(The Confusion as well as the other volumes in the trilogy, are available in paperback and ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find these books in your nearest indie bookstore click on the cover image above.)

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION II: THE LIFE OF GREECE

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The Story of Civilization II: The Life of Greece, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster, 1939, 671 pp

I took a long break from Will Durant after finishing Volume I: Our Oriental Heritage. When I cracked open The Life of Greece, it wasn't long before the Trojan War and Homer's legends showed up. About 40 pages actually. So I went to read The Iliad. That took me a long time on the 10 page a day plan. I intended to read The Odyssey, but kept putting it off.

Meanwhile I had begun to read novels by Nikos Kazantzakis beginning with Zorba the Greek, then The Greek Passion, followed by Freedom or Death. I must credit Kazantzakis for giving me a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the Greek people (and I suppose I should also give a nod to Eugenides and Middlesex.)

My personal reading odyssey finally led me back to The Life of Greece. I buckled down, reading a small section a day for months with frequent breaks and finally got to the end. It was worth all the work it took to read it. I feel I could not complete my quest to be truly well-read without reading at least some history.

Because of Durant's self-professed goal to approach history by covering the entire expanse of civilization (from government, religion and philosophy to the arts, daily life and commerce as well as the progressions of wars and leaders) these volumes have given me a broad overview that now informs my reading and my understanding of current events. He has unlocked for me the old conundrum: you don't know what you don't know.

At some point in my schooling I was forced to read The Golden Fleece. I did not get it at all. All I remember is some guys called argonauts and "rosy fingered dawn." Now that I have read about the ancient beginnings, the rise, the Golden Age, and the fall of Greece; now that I have learned when and how the great philosophers, the dramatists and even Alexander the Great fit into the history of Greece, I feel oriented in an entirely new way as a reader. Just as a small example, I learned that Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great during Alexander's teen years.

I understand why we were made to learn about Greece, Plato, Aristotle, etc in school. The template for modern civilization was formed in Greece, a true crossroads of East and West. Mankind is still playing on that stage. I have begun Volume III: Caesar and Christ and am determined to press on until I get through the series. Wish me luck!


(The Life of Greece is available as an ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

IN MEMORIAM: WHITNEY HOUSTON

Whitney Houston
1963-2012

Goodbye to one of my musical heroines. Her beauty, her voice, her spirit have always been an inspiration to me. But of course, her life had its pain and sorrow. Now she can lay her burden down. I wish her well wherever she is going.

"God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing." Tagore

The story from my hometown paper: The Los Angeles Times.

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION I: OUR ORIENTAL HERITAGE

The Story of Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster, 1935, 938 pp

WILL DURANT WEEK

I read this first volume of The Story of Civilization off and on for over a year. It was my first successful attempt at reading history and taught me how to do so. I have to thank Will Durant for that. Finishing it was a triumph for me as a student of literature, the world, and life.

We all probably remember doing a unit in Social Studies on the cradle of civilization, Babylonia and all that. Boring but some cool pictures. My theory on the study of history during childhood is that we have our whole lives ahead of us, we are interested in the future, not the past. So to that teacher who did her best with me, I can report that I finally learned what is so important about the cradle of civilization. Our Oriental Heritage even got me to read The Epic of Gilgamesh.

I felt enriched and full of learning. I had many ah ha moments and wish that I had taken notes. Most of all I learned (as if I did not already know) that the same insanities have been replayed over and over for thousands of years. It became true for me that though we have made great strides in learning to control and handle the material world, we lag in mental and emotional growth and have not brought about much more peace or security.

I grew to appreciate what a long and winding road mankind is traveling. If it is our destiny to evolve to any sort of higher state, it will not be happening anytime soon and attempts to predict such an evolution are laughable at best though entertaining to contemplate. And yet, knowing where we have come from and how it has gone has value. Our Oriental Heritage gave me hope. We are capable of much understanding, we can create and build amazing things, even while we are stupid, greedy and much too adept at destruction.

Durant takes the reader from the earliest evidences of civilization through ancient Sumeria, Egypt, and Babylonia and the countries of the Old Testament. He covers India, China, and Japan. As he says in the Preface, "I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to the cultural heritage of mankind." He did do that in as readable a history as I have come across.


(The Story of Civilization volumes are out of print. They are best found in libraries and through used book sellers.)

WILL & ARIEL DURANT, A DUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Will & Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1977, 406 pp


WILL DURANT WEEK

This is the first book by Will Durant that I ever completed. In April, 2001, I was in the midst of his first volume in The Story of Civilization series. (More about that in my next post.) I had attempted to study history in college, but being a lazy student in those days, I would get bored. From my college texts it seemed that history was just a list of rulers and wars. I could not see how it was helping me to understand the world. Later in life I actually learned how to study by looking up the words I did not know in a dictionary, using a globe and an atlas to find locations geographically, and taking the time to ponder how I could use what I was studying in life. When I heard that Will Durant wrote books about history and philosophy (another subject that baffled me in college) with the aim of making them accessible to lay readers, I got curious.

So while making my way through Our Oriental Heritage, I discovered this autobiography of Will and his wife Ariel. Will Durant began his education studying religion, because his mother wanted him to be a priest. Like many people, not being really sure what he wanted to do or be in life, he tried to please his mother and dutifully entered the seminary after college. But his real passion lay in history and philosophy. In his autobiography he relates how the study of history and philosophy led to the loss of his religious beliefs. (More about that in tomorrow's post.)

He became a teacher instead and in 1926 published a book called The Story of Philosophy. (I have read about three quarters of that one and it DID open up the mysteries of philosophy for me.) The book was a surprising bestseller and led Durant into a career as a traveling lecturer. He went all over the country, mostly by train, giving talks to many types of groups and continued to do this for most of the rest of his life. He was like a rock star of history. Between tours, he would travel the world, visiting the countries and historical sites about which he was writing; then he would go home and organize his data into books.

Back when he was still a teacher he met and married one of his students, Ariel, who was only 14 at the time! More rock star behavior. Wasn't it Jerry Lee Lewis who married a child bride? But also perhaps evidence of how deeply involved in history Durant was. Back in ancient times, plenty of women married when they were 14. Ariel became his devoted helper and by the seventh volume of The Story of Civilization, he gave her equal authorial billing.

Here is what I had to say in April 2001 when I finished A Dual Autobiography:

"I just spent almost a week of my life reading this book. It was utterly fascinating to me. Will Durant was a lover of philosophy and history. I can't even imagine how many books he must have read.

He devoted his life to writing about philosophy and history so that the common literate man could learn it, understand it, and hopefully learn from it, therefore becoming able to assist in building a lasting civilization.

I have found a new hero. I would like to read all his books, though it would take me so long. I wish I could have known him."

Yes, I was right. It is taking me years and years to get through his books. But every hour spent has turned out to be worth it.


(Will Durant's books are out of print; a crime in my opinion. They can be found in libraries and through used book sellers. I purchased the entire eleven volume Story of Civilization series for $40 at a Friend of the Library sale in my town.)

THE HOUSE ON THE LAGOON

The House on the Lagoon, Rosario Ferre, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1995, 407 pp

I belong to four reading groups, all of which meet in real time. Because I read so much, I am always dying for people to discuss books with, but reading group picks are an unpredictable mix. What a treat it is then to read a great book I might otherwise have missed if it weren't for those reading groups.

The House on the Lagoon is historical fiction set in Puerto Rico; Rosario Ferre is a Puerto Rican writer, poet and essayist. She writes in both Spanish and English, self-translating her books. The English edition of this novel is apparently out of print, but can be found in libraries and through used book sellers.

Buenaventura Mendizabal, a Spanish immigrant, arrived penniless on the shores of Puerto Rico in 1917 with nothing to recommend him but a good family name. He rose to be a wealthy man in the highest levels of Puerto Rican society and begat a dynasty, passing on the ruthless and violent ways of Spanish conquest. Through the generations his descendants intermingled and even at times intermarried with other levels of society and heritage, as is the way of colonized lands.

When I was in grade school, we were taught that Puerto Rico was an island of friendly people who were proud to live in a United States territory and whose fondest dream was that their island would become a state. So typical of the "Social Studies" taught to us in the 1950s. Reading The House on the Lagoon gave me a much truer picture of Puerto Rican history in the 20th century.

So that is fine on an educational level, but this novel works on many levels, one of which is a clear-eyed look at the position of women in a culture that combines Spanish aristocracy, wealth and business with the indigenous population. In that regard it is a triumph of historical writing including politics, finance, the arts and real social studies, as well as a finely wrought piece of literature.

Isabel Monfort is writing her first novel. It is to be a history of the Mendizabal family, known to her because she is married to Quentin, the grandson of Buenaventura and current head of the family business. In alternating chapters we read Isabel's novel-in-progress and Quentin's reactions to her writing. Thus we are given both the male and female perspective as the history evolves and leads to a stunning conclusion.

Many thanks to the wonderful Mary Helen Ponce, a fine writer herself and member of one of my reading groups, for recommending the book. We eagerly await Mary Helen's next novel!


(The House on the Lagoon is available in English and Spanish, hardcover and paperback here.)

CORN FARM BOY

Corn Farm Boy, Lois Lenski, J B Lippincott Company, 1954, 180 pp

In the tenth volume of her American Regional Series, Lois Lenski goes to Iowa. Dick is the middle child of a corn farming family. He suffers from what was called rheumatism back in the 1950s and the condition sometimes keeps him in bed when he would rather be driving a tractor. He loves everything about farm work and also saves runts as pets and can heal all kinds of animals.

A corn farm is really a hog farm, but corn must be raised and harvested to feed the hogs. Dick's father rents his farm from his wife's brother who lives in town and takes most of the income of the farm. During the course of the story the reader gets a good overview of the cycle of raising corn and hogs on a farm.

This was the least impressive of the books I have read in the series so far. I had not read it as a child. Dick has to learn to live with his infirmity while his parents must live with their position in the family. I though Uncle Henry, the owner of the farm, was pretty much a creep. But as in all of the books, I got invested in the characters.

Now that I have read 10 of the 17 books in the series, it has dawned on me that each book is contemporary for the year in which it was published. Corn Farm Boy shows life as it was on an Iowan corn farm in 1954, with machinery becoming more important to successful farming. It makes quite a contrast to the agribusiness of today and in that way would be good history for kids.

The most interesting part was the section near the end when they take the hogs to market in Sioux City; the crowds of people, the pens and tunnels through which the hogs go to slaughter, etc all make a big impression.


(Corn Farm Boy is out of print so best found in libraries and through used book sellers.)

THE INNER CIRCLE

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The Inner Circle, T C Boyle, Viking, 2004, 418 pp

This is one sexy novel!! Be advised that you may feel aroused while reading it and chronically horny in between the hours spent reading. It is a fictional account of the years leading up to and immediately following the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Dr Alfred Kinsey in 1948.

I don't think many people heard the term "open marriage" until the 1970s. In fact, American views on sexuality remained conservative, Puritan and repressive until the "sexual revolution" and "free love" became buzz words as well as an open practice in the 1960s. Alfred Kinsey however, showed that sex before marriage, masturbation, and homosexuality were common practices in the 1930s and 1940s. Such things were never mentioned back then. Churches, mothers, and educators preserved a morality that was proven false by the publication of Kinsey's book, for which he gained wild popularity and of course major moral backlash. His book was a top ten non-fiction bestseller in 1948.

Boyle chose to tell the story through the first person viewpoint of John Milk, a fictional character who serves as Kinsey's first research assistant. Mike is a socially inept nerd, but the set up is brilliant. T C Boyle proves all of Kinsey's research to be truthful by showing us that a socially inept nerd is as horny and open to sexual adventure as any male.

He goes further though in making Milk a besotted, devoted follower of Kinsey, willing to do anything to help the research, even when it involves Kinsey's wife, Milk's wife, and his fellow researchers. Kinsey puts himself and those researchers through a grueling pace over many years as they travel around the United States taking the sexual histories of hundreds of men. The researchers are required never to exhibit being "sex shy". Kinsey himself is a tireless sexual enthusiast, at least as he is portrayed in The Inner Circle, his research lining up exactly with his natural proclivities.

Despite Kinsey's insistence on scientific objectivity and severe statistical methodology, I was left wondering if the "research" was not a tad slanted. But having been raised under the iron hand of the moralist mainstream Christian views on sex, then living the free love life in the 60s, and trying out the open marriage thing in the 70s to equivocal results, I am of the opinion that Alfred Kinsey did us all a favor. I think T C Boyle showed that it takes a slightly wacked guy to break through centuries of repression.


(The Inner Circle is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. To find it at your nearest indie bookstore, click on the cover image above.)