TO INFINITY AND BEYOND--well, not really. Just to my 2020 goal and beyond.

Last year, I set a reading goal, which I met and passed. The books I read have been reviewed in the last several posts here.

So, what to do for 2020?  Why, set the same goal, of course. It worked last year, no need to crank it up a bit as I already went passed what I had set in the prior year.
So, here are reviews of the first two read this year, and one from last year I had not yet reviewed.

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of OthersBy Barbara Brown Taylor

I previously read (and reviewed) Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church. I was far less enamored with that book, so with reluctance I approached this book. Why, you might wonder, did I read a book by an author whose previous work I had not enjoyed?

Well, I belong to a book discussion group (called Reformed Readers!) which does a fair bit of reading books which lend themselves to discussion of matters of faith. AND Holy Envy is the next book up in our discussion calendar.

The book started out with a tone that seemed to be replicating the shallow tone that had previously frustrated me…but, then. THEN! Almost immediately after the introduction Taylor begins to deliver insight after insight on how religions are alike and different. Given her position as a college professor teaching an Introduction to Religions course, she has ample examples of the religious illiteracy that plagues the United States (and maybe other parts of the world). Her students are mostly drawn from various Christian backgrounds, with a few students from other religious traditions.

Having been a college instructor during my professional career, I was struck with the wonderful creativity she brought to her course teaching. Her desire to help expose students to other traditions, as well as her intention to help them becomes more literate not only about other religions but also their own, shines through the narrative of the book.  She gives examples of her technique—giving them a quiz at the beginning of a semester asking them basic questions about the five religions they study. These quizzes are then returned to them on the last day of the semester. What a wonderful teaching technique!

The title—Holy Envy—requires some explaining. By this Taylor means that there are things in other religious practices that she envies for various reasons. Throughout the book, as you read about the various faith places she takes students, and the experience of other religious worship that affords, she does say what “holy envy” she might have for a particular religious practice.

If you read this work, you will be enriched. Perhaps, like Barbara Brown Taylor, you will come to cherish even more your religious traditions at the same time to learn to understand and accept other religious traditions.


The Great Quake : How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet By Henry Fountain

First, I need to confess that I am a science geek. No, I am not a trained scientist. It’s just that most books which deal with, explain, describe--you name it—natural phenomena always grab me. The title of this  book was all I needed to want to read it. I do not live in Alaska, and have only visited it (and did see where many of the landmarks mentioned in the book can be found). But, I did have an aunt who was living in Anchorage on that fateful date, March 27, 1964. It was for her one of the most terrifying experiences of her life.

True to the title, the book details how the post-event analysis of the earthquake helped geologists and geoscientists to recognize and define what we now plate tectonics (another one of the subjects I love).  To take you on the journey, the author introduces to a variety of people who were all players in the event. The primary focus is on George Plafker, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who was one of the first scientists on the scene. It was his careful data gathering and then analysis that led him to posit a cause of the earthquake—what kind of fault—and in so doing lay out a description of plate tectonics.
 You also meet a myriad of people living in different areas in southern coastal Alaska where the quake struck. These people help the reader appreciate the human dimension and scope of loss.  The book requires a reader who does not easily tire at detail. In doing so, the reader is treated to an ably told thoroughly enjoyable account of one of the greatest earthquake in history. 


Where the Grawdads Sing
By Delia Owens
(read in 2019)

Fate led me to reading this book. I had seen the title of the book advertised, and offered again and again on Amazon. But since it was touted as a best seller, and since I am skeptical of the value of other people's choices of best books*...i.e. big sellers...I eschewed buying and reading it.

Enter fate. On a rainy morning in October, I was on my way to an appointment. I was certain the time was 10:30 a.m. It was a rainy miserable morning, and my appointment was for a massage--perfect antidote to a rainy day. I arrived, went to the door, knocked--and NOTHING. No answer. So I quickly texted about the timing, and learned my appointment was later in the afternoon.  So, I trudged back to where my car was parked, turned over the key--and NOTHING.  Engine...aka battery totally dead. Did I mention it was raining.  I called AAA, was informed they could get there in 2 or 3 hours (really!). So what to do? I walked to a nearby local bookstore--and there it was—WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING—prominently displayed on the front table.

In my moment of weakness, I bought it. And started reading it. With a cup of chai latte tea in hand, and a rainy outside, and a delayed appointment, I read. And read--and fell in love with the novel.

The novel is all of these things: a coming of age story. You can find elsewhere the basics of the plot of this novel. It is also a murder mystery, a story of survival under the most difficult of circumstances--parental abandonment. It is a story revealing love of nature, and the power of community.

*Yes, I recognize the irony--my reviews are in their own way MY best books--and you, the reader, have every right to be skeptical.

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TO INFINITY AND BEYOND--well, not really. Just to my 2020 goal and beyond.

YES, I'M STILL READING

But it's summertime and things slow down a bit. Other activities occupy me--e.g. flowers, flower and flowers.



But I have kept reading.  

Here are three more reviews.
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THE FISHERMEN by Chigozie Obioma

A friend of mine recommended The Fishermen--of which I had not previously heard. Since I have read a fair bit of fiction coming out of Nigeria, I was drawn to reading it.

The novel centers on four brothers--Ikenna, Boja, Obembe, and Benjamin. Their family also includes their father and mother, as well as two little siblings--David, the youngest brother, and Nkem, a daughter who is the baby of the family.

The settings is Nigeria in the mid-1990s. The family lives in Akure, and their tribal background is Igbo, one of the larger tribal groups of the some 300 tribes in Nigeria. The father works in the Central Nigerian Bank, and the family is solidly middle-class. The Nigerian Civil War (which is sometimes called the Biafran War, as it involved the breakaway state of Biafra, to the east of the setting of this novel) occurred about a decade before the time frame of the novel. Occasionally, the effects of the civil war are alluded to--so it helps to know a bit about the impact of tribal rivalries.

The novel is not, however, as a commentary on African national development. 

The pivot of the novel occurs when the four older brothers decide they want to go fishing--to become fishermen. The river where they go is a forbidden site--once a clean free-flowing river, it is now contaminated by human development with the waters being unclean and smelling foul. It is also a river that was once viewed with reverence, and is now cursed by locals. Because of that, the boys have been strictly forbidden to go fishing there.

That prohibition cannot stand up against their youthful drive and curiosity, however. So they become "fishermen." They acquire the requisite gear, which they manage to hide in their house at night.

The second pivot is the absence of the father. At the outset of the novel, told from the memory of Benjamin, the father is transferred from his job in Akure to another town. He is able to return home only occasionally. Since he was the one who disciplined the older children--with the mother consumed with caring for the two youngest children--the four older boys are able to pursue their fishermen dream.

At the river, they encounter Abulu, a crazy man who lives on the edges of society. He is portrayed as filthy, frequently naked, given to sexual transgressions in public. But he also shouts "prophecies" which seemingly come true. One day, after the boys have tormented him, he chases them and calls out after them a detailed prophecy that essentially say Ikenna will be killed by "a fisherman." Ikenna takes the prophecy to heart, and determines he will be killed by one of his brothers.

His greatly changed behaviors, as he grows more and more rebellious, coincides with a normal teenagers' quest for self-identity. However, for Ikenna, he goes beyond what might be seen as normal and becomes violent and confrontational.

When he is killed, the family unravels. In the course of the novel, three of the four older brothers die, and it is left to Benjamin to tell the story.

This book is a very compelling read, and particularly satisfying. Not surprisingly, the book was nominated for various awards, including the Man Booker prize. The author Chigozie Obioma was rightly lauded for this novel, his first.

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SO BRAVE, YOUNG and HANDSOME by Leif Enger

I was drawn to So Brave, Young and Handsome because of the author. I had read Peace like a River by Leif Enger some years ago, and while I don't recall the plot of the novel, I do recall the sense of satisfaction at having read what seemed like a perfect book (for me). (Parenthetically, I recognize we all having varied reading interests, so what may be the epitome of good writing may be dreary to another reader.) I admit that at first I found the going a bit...tedious...where is this novel going? 

So Brave, Young and Handsome began slowly. You meet the main character, or at least the one who is the common thread throughout the novel, Monte Becket. He is an author--in fact, a one book wonder. Having published a wildly successful novel MARTIN BLIGH, he is now like a ship on a becalmed ocean. He has lost whatever inspiration guided him in that first work. In short, he has severe writer's block. His loving, supportive wife Susannah encourages him to keep trying to recover that writer's skill. He sets writing goals--so many words per day. Gradually, the inspiration leaks out and he reduces the daily count until he finally stops. Oh, he writes. And completes novels. But his publisher continually rejects his latest offerings. So he is himself becalmed.

Into this introduction sails Glendon Hale. He is standing upright in a small boat, rowing down a river. We soon learn that Glendon Hale is on the run from the law. And when he sets out to escape his would be captors, he invited Monte to accompany him--just for 6 weeks.

Thus begins the adventure of a lifetime for Glendon.

Structured in the form of a journey across country, from Minnesota to California--we meet along the way various characters: Hood Roberts, Charles Siringo, Blue (aka Arandano) and Claudio. They all become part of Monte's journey. And eventually provide the inspiration that unblocks Monte the novelist.

The novel, which began slowly, ended very satisfyingly for me. When the novel ended, I was sad to leave the characters behind.

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THE MOTHER TONGUE: English and How It Got that Way

By Bill Bryson

Well, you’d think I learned my lesson. A few books ago (check back in the blogs to see the review) I reviewed Bryson’s NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND. But once again, the title intrigued me—I love English and learning about its history—so I bit.

Here’s the good part—there are sections of the book that are truly engaging.

And, here’s the bad part—once again, he goes on and on long after the point has been made.

And then there’s the erroneous part. After I had begun the book, I read the reviews on Goodreads. I was somewhat startled to find a fair number of people who absolutely panned the work. The main reason was the opinion of the reviewers that parts of the book were erroneous. Since I am no linguist, I thought “piffle—just over-smart people who know everything.”

But then I encountered two passages that gave me pause.

At one point, Bryson refers to the South African language Xoxa—well, I grew up in southern Africa, and as far as I know, there is NO such language. I suspect he means Xhosa which is a southern Africa language—frequently referred to as the click language. X is one of the letters clicked. 

And the passage talks about Scrabble.  He claims that the highest scoring in a game was 3,881—and it included the word “psycholanalyzing.” HUH?  How is that even possible. The only way I can figure that out is that a player laid the letters “analyzing” and connected that to a “g” already on the board. Then in a later move, someone added “pyscho.”  Yet, Bryson reports that word earned 1,539 points. Can that be done? Maybe, if you’re a Scrabble player, you can figure it out and let me know.

That's all for now...more books await.

I'm Making Progress

Now that gardening time has arrived, I find it a bit more difficult to keep up my reading pace.
BUT, I have finished read two more books. So I better get to reviewing them.
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HUM IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS by Bianca Marais
 I was drawn to reading this novel, as I grew up in southern Africa and have a long-time interest in reading non-fiction and fiction about the experience of a country moving from colonial, white-dominated rule to native black rule.

This novel is NOT about that, but within it are references to the seeds of that transition. Nelson Mandela is referenced as someone who will emerge as a leader in the struggle for freedom. What this novel is about the growing realization by two characters that "the other" is just as human as they are.

The story revolves around two people: a young girl named Robin and a middle-aged woman name Beauty. Robin is white living with her parents in a wealthy white area of Johannesburg, South Africa. The time is 1976 in the days leading up to, and then beyond, the Soweto uprising.

In the days immediately before the Soweto uprising Robin's parents are killed. She is taken under the care of her aunt, who is barely able to handle the responsibility of having a child. Robin had been cared for in large degree by her family's black maid, Mabel. When the parents are killed, Mabel disappears.

When the story switches to Beauty, who lives in the Transkei, we learn that Beauty is an educated black woman who leaves her remaining family, two sons, to go to Johannesburg to find her daughter who is living in Soweto.

By focusing on these two characters, we get a highly charged account of the unfolding events that pull these families apart and disrupt the lives of both. 

The author is very successful in creating believable characters--who operate with motives entirely consistent with their natures. At least, through the first half of the novel. As events move toward a climax, the believability factor, particularly where Robin is concerned, goes awry. I had a great deal of difficulty believing that a 9-year-old girl would proceed as Robin does.

Had the author kept the characters staying true to their natures, I would have rated this book higher. At the outset of the novel, the plot unfolds because it grows out of the characters' natures. BUT, toward the latter part of the novel, the plot takes over and drives the actions of the characters.

One of the hallmarks of a well-constructed novel is that the novelist creates the characters and THEN lets them develop the events that unfold. A novelist who uses characters as a puppeteer would manipulate a puppet is less believable, for me.
I must add that the novel is a GOOD READ--and I read it quickly, pulled forward by story being told.
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 JUDAS by Amos Oz
 When I first began reading this novel, I was annoyed at the central character, Shmuel.
But through marvelous story telling, his character grows on the reader.

In many ways, the novel is a very interior work. Plot is spare (I'm fine with that). Characters are very well drawn (I am thrilled about that). And dialogue goes on for pages (very interesting, however) because that is part of the point of the book.
The setting is Israel in the mid-1950s, after its creation as a state and the 1948 war. The question of the validity, urgency, and justification desirability as a separate nation state has been debated and settled, and then defended by military action. Some knowledge of that setting is essential to understanding the themes of the novel.
Judas, of course, refers to the disciple of Jesus who betrayed him, leading to the crucifixion. Shmuel is a student wrestling with a thesis--the essential premise is that Judas was the first Christian, believing in Jesus Christ even when Jesus had no intention of being anything but a Jew. But Shmuel's studies stall. He is somewhat estranged from his parents, is very close to friendless, so he answers an ad. The ad is for a companion for an elderly man.

Shmuel answers the ad and is introduced to Gershom Wald, who is an invalid aged man in need of company. In turn he meets Wald's daughter-in-law, Atalia Abravanel. As the story unfolds, we learn of Atalia's history--she had married Wald's son who was then killed in the 1948 war.

Shmuel's duties are to spend several hours a day with Wald, converse with him, give him porridge, and feed the goldfish. The rest of his time is his own. 

As these conversations between Shmuel and Wald unfold, we learn many aspects of the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, of interaction with the Arab population that inhabited Palestine, and the politics of establishing Israel. Atalia's father Shealtiel Abravanel opposed establishing Israel as a separate Jewish state. He argued to a single country shared by Jews and Palestinians. 

One can glean some of the seeds to today's present conflict over whether to have a one state or two separate states. 

There are several narrative techniques that I enjoyed--one is that the novel is a journey--for Shmuel. And it is a discourse on the merits of modern day Jewish/Arab relations. It is also a coming of age story for Shmuel. AND it is a bit of a romance story. By the time the novel ended, I was deeply attached to Shmuel, and wonder how his life unfolded.

OK-- because this novel is so richly layered, so informative, and so engaging, I highly recommend it. It may feel like it's slow going at the outset, but stay with it.
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The next two books I am working on are THE FISHERMEN and HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE. Stay tuned.

Summer is for Reading...

...but then, so is the whole year around.

Now that I am retired, I have the luxury of reading whatever I want at any time.  The closest I come to "having" to read something is reading the selection for a book group I attend.  There was a time--when I was teaching literature--that I might be only one chapter ahead of the students.  And, then the pressure was to read what I "had" to read.

But, old habits die hard, and I still associate summer with a time to read.

So, herewith a couple of recommendations and one warning.

RECOMMENDATIONS
I have just finished reading the book The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.  This novel captures with stunning effect what it was like to live through the siege of Sarajevo, which began in April, 1992 and continued until February, 1996.  The novel revolves around a factual event--a cellist appears one day in a public place (keep in mind, the city is being bombarded with shells, and snipers in the hills that ring the city are shooting anyone), sets up a chair, takes out his cello and begins to play Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor. The achingly beautiful music speaks to the pain and suffering the residents of Sarajevo must endure.  The impetus for the cellist is his vow to play every day for 22 days as a way to honor 22 people who were killed while standing in a bread line.

In the novel, three other characters' lives are slowly revealed in pieces.  You do not learn everything you could about a character.  You really have little sense as to how they looked.  You only learn first names, and the cellist himself is unnamed.  And yet, each of the characters is affected by the cellist.
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A second novel I recommend is The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich.  I previously have recommended Erdrich as an author, having identified her novel The Master Butchers Singing Club.  And once again, she met my expectations.  The Plague of Doves draws on some of Erdrich's own background, as native American, and yet the work is far more complex than simply drawing on personal biography.  The book begins with a farm family being brutally killed, except one crying baby.  It is not until the end of the novel that you learn the identity of that baby.  Not surprisingly, the people who are seized and charged with the crime are several native American young men from a nearby reservation.

Erdrich moves across decades, intertwining generations and families, and only at the end does she gather up the many strands and reveal the final mystery of her tale.
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In a completely different vein is the delightful and informative non-fiction work A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage.  Standage writes about beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola.  These six beverages, in chronological order, can be used as a means to view human development and history.  It is the sort of book you can pick up, put down, interrupt, resume--and not lose the train of thought of the author.  Along the way you learn many fascinating tidbits about each beverage.

Here's a quick example.  Did you know that beer was originally drunk from a communal bowl, with partakers drinking from the same vessel rather than individual glasses?  So, when you clink glasses with someone, and say CHEERS (or whatever), you are recreating the experience of the communal bowl.
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WARNING
This warning can be summed up in a quick sentence: don't trust the promotional blurb you get from Amazon.
Yes, dear reader, Amazon can phony up the description of a book, and can even have all manner of glowing reviews--and the book turns out to be crap.

So it is that I ordered No Regrets, Coyote by John Dufresne.  It was billed as a murder mystery (those can be fun summer reads, but you need a skilled author such as P.D. James or Tony Hillerman).  What it turned out to be was a foolish trifling melange of too many characters, ridiculous descriptions, totally confusing names, and an improbable plot that manipulates the characters rather than letting things develop out of the character's personality.  

Mind, if that's your kind of book--by all means, get it.  Otherwise, save your money...and your time.
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How about you?  Do you have any recommendations?

Intimations of Immortality

Time for a terrific read designation. It's been...ages since I made such a pronouncement.

I have just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, and I highly recommend it.

This non-fiction work details two story lines: the fate of Henrietta Lacks, who died of virulent cervical cancer, and the early efforts to culture and maintain live human cells. The intersection of the two stories is what occupies the heart of the book.

Skloot first heard of Henrietta Lacks when a biology teacher wrote the word “HeLa” on the board, the name of a most important line of human cells. The teacher went on to say that the cells had come from an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks, but that no one knew anything else about her. From that moment, Skloot was hooked.

When she began the search to learn more, she spent more than twelve years to learn the true identity of the source of the HeLa cells. Her search gave rise to the book. No wonder, it reads as though it is a fiction mystery story—the unfolding story pulls reader along, so be prepared for reading it late into the night.

In addition to teaching you a whole lot about cell culture techniques and challenges, the book also explores medical ethics. When Henrietta Lacks’ cells were sampled and grown, informed consent was not a common practice at all. Henrietta died in 1951, and it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that informed consent and patient information about testing that what we take for granted today became common practice.

However, two historical frameworks complicate that observation. First, immediately following World War II, when it became clear that the Nazis had been conducting horrific experiments in the name of medicine, the doctors involved were tried at the Nuremberg trials and convicted. To rectify an perceived legal lack of a guiding code. Dr. Leo Alexander—who was the principle medical advisor—developed a ten point code to govern using humans as test subjects: the Nuremberg Code. The first of those principles was the unequivocal need for voluntary consent by human subjects. Of course, the doctors at Johns Hopkins—where Henrietta Lacks was treated and where her cells were sampled and cultured—would not have viewed using cells outside the human body as experimenting ON the human body.

Second, the history of public health in the United States has been woeful where African-Americans are concerned. Perhaps one of the worst examples of the failure of health care for African-Americans is the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. This study began in 1932 when the Tuskegee Institute linked up with the U.S. Public Health Service. They enrolled almost 400 African-American men who had already contracted syphilis. They offered them free medical care, meals and burials—all in exchange for drawing their blood. The men were NOT told they had syphilis nor were they treated for it, even after penicillin was developed in 1947 and became the widely accepted standard treatment. Instead, the men were told they had “bad blood.” A leak of information brought the study--which was examining the ravages of the disease on untreated humans--to an abrupt halt in 1972. In the meantime, unsuspecting wives were exposed to and contracted syphilis, and children were born with congenital syphilis.

No wonder, African-Americans in general are deeply suspicious about the medical establishment. And it helps explain why Henrietta Lacks’ family in particular were deeply suspicious of Johns Hopkins and its use of Henrietta’s cells.

What Henrietta’s cells did was grow in the culture medium, and they thrived. In fact, they are still “alive” today, doubling every 24 hours. The estimate is that today there are more cells derivative of Henrietta Lacks than she had in her body when she was alive.

All in all, a terrific read.

Terrific Read--Red Glass

I have just finished reading Red Glass, one of the books given to me by my friend who we met on our France trip.

We met up on our recent trip to Utah--she and her husband live in Colorado and had planned a vacation trip to Salt Lake City, so the timing was perfect. She is multi-talented but particularly of interest (and a touch of envy) for me is that she is a writer. She belongs to a writing group, and as a gift for me she brought along two books written by members of her writing group.

I was greatly in need of an enjoyable book to read, and selected first Red Glass, probably because it had a catchy cover.

Well, I have just finished the book, and it is a terrific read. It's been quite a while since I awarded a "terrific read" label to a book, but this one certainly merits it.

Curiously, the book is described on Amazon as being for younger readers--and it is very accessible, so I can understand that designation. But it appeals perfectly well to an older reader--such as me. The novel begins in Tucson with a blended family of a mother, originally from England, her husband who is step-father to her daughter. A distant great-aunt has come into their lives, and eventually her boyfriend and his son.

The plot revolves around a young boy who has been found in the desert with his parents who have died trying to cross from Mexico into the United States. The blended family take him in. After the boy, Pablo, has recovered, they decide to take him back to his village in Mexico. The trip includes an extension into Guatemala in quest of lost family connections.

Narrated by Sophie ( I find it significant that this name means "wisdom"), the young teen daughter of the English mother, the story is a coming of age story, and so much more. It raises very gently the question of illegal immigration. It throbs with the dreams and desires of people longing for a better life.

Many elements make this a terrific read--there is a very compelling and interesting plot; there are authentically drawn characters who speak in their own voices; there is an undercurrent of a significant issue being explored as the story unfolds.

I am already thinking of two places where I hope to recommend this marvelous book--for our church's youth group, and for one of my community college colleagues who teaches reading. Our church youth group recently completed a mission trip to El Paso, Texas, where they encountered first hand some of the consequences surrounding our country's complicated immigration policy.

And, for any reader out there looking for a very charming, terrific read--pick up Red Glass by Laura Resau.

Finally, thank you Leslie for the wonderful gift, and thank you Laura for your gift of writing.

Cheating...er, make that Reading

I have been known to cheat. In fact, this tendency is somewhat of a joke within my family--because the subject on which I am cheating is reading. Many times, when I first begin a book and have met the characters, I am overwhelmed with a curiosity--will this character still be here at the end of the book?

So, I cheat--I skip to the end and read a page or two. Not a pretty habit, but there you have it--one of my weaknesses. In no way does this habit ruin books for me. I keep reading through to the end to see HOW the ending comes about.

Now, with the Kindle, my habit has been reined in. Tough to skip to the end when you are reading a book on an electronic reader. Add to that the fact that Kindle does NOT use page numbers, and I am really foiled.

No matter--I love reading so much I keep reading whether I know the ending or not.

I have just finished, in relatively short order, three books--all of which I commend to you. I will not award my label of "terrific reads" to all, but maybe to one. Herewith the three.

I first read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The literary device that tells the story in this book is a series of letters between Juliet Ashton, an author who was writing light literature during World War II, and her publisher and also various friends. The novel is set in London and on Guernsey immediately following World War II. England is emerging from the ravages of war, as are the Channel Islands--English possessions dating back to the time of William the Conqueror. The Channel Islands, of which Guernsey is one, were the only "English soil" occupied by Hitler's troops.

As you read the work, you learn of the great deprivation people on Guernsey suffered. That is what I enjoyed most about the book. I found it a bit difficult to keep track of all the characters--most of them letter writers. I also was not as invested in them as people as I sometimes am. But I loved the historical aspects, and kept running to the Internet to look up this or that item.

The next book I read was one I downloaded on to my Kindle--hence the inability to thumb through to the end to "see how it turns out." Probably a good thing--this books is a definite page turner (er, page clicker). Titled People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, this novel creates a fictional back story for a real object--the Sarajevo Haggadah.

A Haggadah is "...a book that Jews read on the first night of Passover - and on the first two nights outside of Israel. It tells about our slavery in Egypt and the miracles God did for us when freeing us. The word haggadah means "telling," which comes from the Biblical command: "And you shall tell your child on that day, saying: 'God did (miracles) for me when I left Egypt so that I would fulfill the Torah's commandment." (Exodus 13:8 and Rashi)" (from Ask the Rabbi).

When the Germans marched into Sarajevo in 1941, German officials visited the museum there and demanded the Sarajevo Haggadah be turned over to them. What makes it so unusual is that it is a 14th century document written in Hebrew and illustrated with marvelous lush jewel-like illustrations. Quick thinking on the part of museum officials saved the document--I will let you read how. One of the wondrous things is that along the way, Muslims and Christians played a part in helping to keep this Jewish book from the flames of the Inquisition and from the covetous hands of the Nazis.

The novel tells the story of Hanna Heath--a rare book expert--who is invited to examine the book in the mid-1990s when it came to light, after having been "missing" for decades following World War II. Rumors were flying that the Nazis had spirited it away, or that it had been destroyed. In her examination, Hanna finds various small items within the book that help to tell its history and its long journey from 14th century Spain to modern Sarajevo.

Geraldine Brooks is a marvelous writer--and I had previously read her books Nine Part of Desire, The Year of Wonder, and March. I loved these three books and entirely expected to love People of the Book. I was not disappointed. An extra plus is that this book has been picked for our church book club, and also for a two county wide event where I live--One Book, Two Counties.
And, I simply can't resist a book that features a map like this on the inside cover--remember, I read the Kindle version. I found the map on the Internet and saved it. I also liked the double play on words in the title--the novel tells about the people of THE book, i.e. the Haggadah, and it interweaves characters from the three religions generally called the people of the book--Jews, Christians, and Muslims.


The final book I read I just finished today. I have picked this book up on a whim from the Costco book table. I didn't know a thing about it, except what the cover announced--that is had been short-listed for the Booker Prize. I have previously mentioned my penchant for seeking out Booker Prize winning books, as a kind of short hand recommendation system.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is told first person by two people--switching back and forth between Roseanne Clear, a 100 year old patient in a mental institution that is slated for destruction, and her doctor, Dr. Grene, whose job it is to assess all the remaining patients to determine their fitness to be set "free." In assessing Rose, he slowly learns her life's story.

The book goes back and forth between the past--Ireland in the years around the world wars--and the present. Roseanne, despite her symbolic last name, is anything but forthcoming in telling her tale. She hides her history, so that the good doctor has to extract it slowly and lovingly. His name--Grene--takes on significance by the time the reader reaches the end of the book. You learn that his greenness--naivete--has kept him from understanding a critical piece of information.

Oh, for the record--I was absolutely good and did not cheat on reading this book. So the ending, when I got there, came as a complete surprise to me.

Would I give any of these book my "terrific read" award. Yes, People of the Book. The Secret Scripture is close, but not quite--rather like the Booker Prize panel which twice has bypassed Sebastian Barry.

I know summer is almost over, but do add any or all of these books to your reading list.

Sometimes you just have to buy a book TWICE. . .

Well, you might wonder, why would someone buy a book twice. First, let me point out that I have bought several books twice.

As you can imagine, a lit major has bookshelves stuffed with all manner of books. Add to that a portion of my career devoted to teaching, with the attendant free books. And you perhaps can begin to envision places in our house--here a bookshelf, there a bookshelf. I have never counted all the books in the house, but I am quite sure there must be 500 or 600 hundred books. Oh, wait--I forgot the basement. Make that 1,000 books.

So, why buy a book twice. Well, the main reason is I decide I want to re-read a book I have already given away. I separate my books into two basic categories: keepers, and give-aways. When I loan a give-away to someone, I really don't expect or even want the book back. I urge my friends to pass the books along to yet someone else.

If I LOVE a book, and don't want to risk its never being returned to me, I don't loan it. Or, if I loan it most reluctantly, I say--PLEASE please give it back when you are done.

I have just finished reading a definite keeper book. But--and here's the catch--I read it on my Kindle. Now, one nice feature of the Kindle is that ALL books are keepers--Amazon keeps them for you, even after you have read and deleted them. But, I loved this book so much, I want the print copy. So, I will be buying it (waiting, of course, until it comes out in paperback).

I had not heard of the book Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, until this year's Pulitzer prizes were announced. Olive Kitteridge won for fiction. One of the other nominees is A Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich, which sits on my waiting to be read shelf. I figured, if Olive Kitteridge won over a novel by Louise Erdrich--who I love as an author--then Olive Kitteridge must be some book.

So I ordered it for the Kindle. And read it voraciously. And LOVED it! Just loved it. Here's the New York Times review of Olive Kitteridge. The work is a collection of 13 short stories that form a novel of sorts. For comparison sake, the work reminds me of one of my all-time favorite works--Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Like Winesburg, Ohio, Olive Kitteridge is set in a small town. Where Winesburg is obviously in Ohio, Olive Kitteridge is set in a small town in Maine.

Like Winesburg's residents, the residents of Crosby, Maine, lead desperate quiet lives. One of my favorite stories in Winesburg, Ohio features a spinster who keeps waiting for a beau who is never going to return. One night, she can stand her lonely life no more, and when it begins to rain, she strips and runs out into the street naked. She thinks the rain will somehow renew her. Ironically, the only person she encounters is a deaf bum who stumbles about. She tries to make contact with him, but in his deafness, all he can say is "What?"

The characters in Olive Kitteridge have that kind of desperation. The title character Olive is not particularly likeable, but she grabs your heart, nevertheless, and engages you. At one point, when she encounters an anorexic teen, she tells the teen that she breaks Olive's heart, because she--Olive--is starving. Since Olive has been described as a large woman, the reader recognizes that Olive does not mean physical hunger--but emotional hunger.

This novel is definitely ONE terrific read--and I heartily recommend it.

Reading Miss Oprah

It's safe to say that reading is one of the passions of my life. I love to read. Make that--I LOVE TO READ. I am ALWAYS in the middle of at least one book. And I love to find and read "terrific reads"--I've even written about a few of those on this blog.

As an English lit major, I had better love reading. Out of curiosity, I began recording all the books I have read--as well as I can recall them. I try to write them down as I read them. Going back to my English lit days, I have read about 450 books. That means I have been averaging about 10 books a year. Hmmmm--I must have missed some on that list, as I know I read more than 10 books a year.

Painting: Young Girl Reading by Fragonard

Now that I have a Kindle (which I got as a Christmas present), I can read several books at once without making the book pile next to my bed too high. I have downloaded 6 books on my Kindle, and have finished one of those.

I haven't recommended a book as a terrific read for quite some time. The last book that I did recommend was Water for Elephants, which I finished in September, 2007. A few books that I read since then came close: Purple Hibiscus by the young Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, was very good. I also enjoyed Monica Ali's Brick Lane--but each of these fell short of "terrific read" because of a few flaws--example Brick Lane's fizzled ending.

So, what do I mean--Reading Miss Oprah. When it comes to picking books, I tend to eschew someone else's list: The NY Times bestseller list, or Oprah's list. Pfffftttt--if I am not inclined, I won't read the book. But, this time, I did buy one that has the big OPRAH sticker on the front: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I am still midway in the book, so I won't know if I like this one or not for a bit.

Right before starting into Edgar, I read This Republic of Suffering. I found that work to be a marvelous piece of careful research. Written by Drew Faust Gilpin who is president of Harvard, the book details how the Civil War changed our view of death. Prior to the Civil War, death was a family affair--people died at home, surrounded by loving family. They were prepared for burial by family, and were lovingly laid in graves near their homes. The Civil War changed all that. Soldiers died under horrific circumstance, far from home, in absolute anonymity. Sometimes families did not even know if their sons, fathers, lovers, or brothers had died. The men died in battle, and lay on the abandoned fields of fighting for weeks and months after combat had ceased. Their corpses were left to the elements, and to scavengers--both human and animal. Rarely was a body shipped home. As a result of these radical changes in the manner of death, we never recovered that idyllic view of death that dominated pre-Civil War.

While the book is a terrific read (in my "book"), I recommend it only if the subject matter appeals to you.

So, now you can see why I needed to read Miss Oprah--after This Republic of Suffering, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, about a mute boy whose father dies under mysterious circumstances, seems like a light read!

TERRIFIC READS--Water for Elephants

It's been a while since I wrote a blog on terrific reads, but I have a book to recommend now which I just loved. I had been reading Christopher Hitchen's book God is Not Great--and while he makes many interesting points, it took me a long time to plow through it. Furthermore I was totally frustrated while reading it--he makes some errors in logic that drove me nuts.

At any rate, by the time I finished that book I was ready for a truly enjoyable read--and I found one. A friend of mine had told me that she recently read Water for Elephants and "just loved it." So, I bought it on her say-so alone. (I had a bit of fun buying the book--while my daughter was here visiting, we went to a bookstore one day, and this book was one I wanted to buy. But I couldn't remember the author's name. So I went to the help desk and said Water for Elephants, but I don't know who wrote it. Oh, the help desk woman said, Sara Gruen--only the woman's accent was a very thick German accent, so the R in Sara was swallowed, and Gruen came out like, well, Gruen--only said in the back of her mouth. But she immediately knew where the book was!)

I LOVED IT.

Let's see--from the opening scene, where the reader meets the main character, Jacob, and learns that a catastrophe has just occurred in the Big Top (there is an animal stampede) to the very closing scene, where this catastrophic scene is reprised, this book is a charmer.

Told in first person narrative, the novel alternates sections in the voice of Jacob, who shares the narration with himself. The reader hears the voice of young Jacob (during the Depression) interspersed with the voice of 90 + year old Jacob (in current time). Young Jacob is a student at Cornell who, for reasons the reader learns, has to leave school suddenly. Since he has nowhere to go, he wanders disconsolately and, on a whim, hops aboard a passing train. Much to his surprise, the train turns out to be a circus train.

Eventually, he gets a job as the circus vet--he had been in the vet training program at Cornell. And from there, his life takes off.

The characters are vividly, lovingly and convincingly drawn. The dialogue crackles with authenticity of real people speaking. Some of the most poignant scenes are with old Jacob, now in a nursing home, longing for authentic experiences in life--including real food.

Along the way, the reader learns all sorts of inside information on life within the travelling circuses of the Depression era. And, one of the central characters is an elephant named Rosie.

The book simply flies by--it is such an easy enjoyable read. In fact, I made myself slow down a bit to savor the enjoyment a bit.

All in all--another TERRIFIC READ.

TERRIFIC READS

I have written several posts with the label of TERRIFIC READS. And I always list what I am currently reading in the side column of my blog. I have just finished a book that I would call a terrific but difficult read.

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is a marvelously crafted novel. It won the Booker Prize several years ago and I have decided that if a book wins the Booker Prize, I will no doubt love the work. I have yet to read a Booker Prize winner that I didn't like, though I would be quick to add I have not read them all.

The God of Small Things is not, however, an easy read. Roy sets this novel in relatively contemporary India. The pivotal event of the novel is the accidental drowning of a little girl whose English mother has brought her to India to visit with her Indian father, from whom the mother is divorced. There, she meets her Indian twin cousins, a boy and a girl, who are throughout the novel referred to as the two-egg twins. They are, however, a blended personality.

The novel follows the family fortunes, moving back and forth in time. The time sequence can be a bit confusing because the reader is not always sure if this is the present or the past.

What is so elegantly exquisite about this novel is Roy's command of the English language and her sheer descriptiveness. The book shimmers with descriptions. Settings are described, people's appearances, motivations of characters--every detail is both essential and ephemeral. Here's one marvelous description of futility--"It was like polishing firewood." I thought about that description for a while. What better way to describe something as being futile than to say it is like polishing firewood.

If you want a breezy summer read, don't try this novel. If you want something to sink your mental teeth into, and you want something that will stay with you a long while, then DO try this novel.

I am now re-reading Drowning Ruth. I read this novel several years ago, and decided I wanted to read something to refresh my recollection. I loved this work when it first came out. It ended up being an Oprah book club pick (remember--don't tell me what Oprah is reading?). BUT when I bought this in a local book store, that pick had not been announced. The store clerk said to me--oh, good choice. Tomorrow Oprah is announcing this as her next pick.

Well, I bought it anyway. Here's a the description from the Barnes and Noble website:

Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut.

Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night.

Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered.

All set now with your summer reads? You could tell me what you are reading this summer?

Oh, the books I have read

I came upon the 100 books meme at Nature Woman’s blogsite. I rarely do memes but this one caught my eye as I am an avid reader. As explained by Nature Woman (aka Pam), here are the rules for participating (although I suspect many of her readers are also my readers and know “the drill”).

If you want to participate, this is how it works. Look at the list of books below.

• Bold the ones you’ve read.
  
• Italicize the ones you want to read.
  
• Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.

The one thing I do not know is the SOURCE of the list. Perhaps it started with someone’s “these are the books I have read thus far.” It is NOT a list of recommended books. Some are good, some are just trendy, a few are vapid.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) – with many many apologies to my brother who has read the LOTR series through. . .several times? BUT I did see the movies!
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) – another author I never got into.
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) -- anything by Irving!
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) -- I read The Shining by King, and must say, while it is well-written, the horror genre is not one that appeals to me.
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) – this was my son’s favorite book for quite some time; maybe it still is.
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) -- a marvelous reworking of the Genesis story in modern times.
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) – I never caught the Ayn Rand bug.
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) –very trendy a while back; I had no interest in it.
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) – in fact, her entire series.
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible (I can’t claim to have read it all, but a fair bit.)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) -- I know this is considered to be Tolstoy's masterpiece, but I suspect it would take longer to read than the actual war lasted. Besides, I much prefer Anna Karenina.
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies) -- one of my favorite authors, I have
read everything that I can by Davies.
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell) – again, the entire series.
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) -- also trendy for awhile, and I avoided it, partly because of that.
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) -- I love Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and feel as an English major I "should" read Ulysses.

Of the books listed above, I have read 53. Had I started with my list of books I have read—I tried to recreate a list of all the books I have read—my list would have been 391 books. That is my trying to recall what I have read, and also recording as I read what I have read. But, I frequently forget to record them, so I suspect I have read more than that.

In my recent TERRIFIC READS, I have suggested books not on the list above: here, here, and here. Perhaps, I should take a list of the best 100 books of English language from 1923 to the present, and bold or italicize those. Or the BBC list of the best-loved novels. Respectively, I have 36 on the first list and 44 on the second. So I have read MORE of the 100 list of unknown original. The point is—where do you start. Whose list matters? Or really captures THE BEST?

TERRIFIC READS--The Master Butchers Singing Club

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog about a terrific read--The Life of Pi. At the time, I didn't title my blog TERRIFIC READS, but since I read alot and love reading, and since I am frequently asked for book recommendations, I have decided to write the occasional blog about a TERRIFIC READ. (I suspect that writing blogs on TERRIFIC READS will outlast blogs on Saturday Soups!)

Two days ago, I finished reading Louise Erdrich's novel The Master Butchers Singing Club. Yes, this book is a terrific read. This is exactly the kind of book I would choose to use in a literature class. It is packed with wonderful characters, a sense of history, an episodic but compelling plot, and a wonderful narrative voice. If you want a bit more of a description of the novel, here's a handy reading guide site.

I had not previously read a Louise Erdrich novel. I knew her work as a poet, and when I saw novel titles of books she had written, I thought I'd give one of her works a try. She is known as a writer in the Native American Renaissance school, although I wouldn't want to limit her work to that view alone. Her biography is summarized here.

Among the many things about Louise Erdrich's life that endears her to me is the fact that she owns a bookstore in Minneapolis--bookstores are great places to spend the hours.

So, if you haven't read The Master Butchers Singing Club, and if you want a terrific read for now (or for the summer), I heartily recommend this novel. I enjoyed this book so much I am ordering her newest The Painted Drum. Maybe a future blog will deal with it.